Magic City

by Paula Guran

  The fox-girl hears the humans retreat, footsteps soft on the carpeted floor. She counts them along with her breath and her heartbeats, waiting until she can’t hear them anymore, and kneels. She opens the panel beneath the desk, seeing where the chip fits back into the computer. The next time one of the humans tries to access something from the chip’s memory, the essence of everything she was will infect the system, wipe it clean.

  A sound that isn’t a sound makes Ani’s head snap up. Crow Lords—she can feel them coming, she can smell them on the air, a scent like oil and shadows and blood. She snaps the panel closed and rises, running for the hall.

  Ani climbs, spiraling up into the dark. At the top of the stairs, she steps out onto the roof. Crows fall from the sky, screaming at her. Ten of them, whose taste she knows, throw their bodies between her and the bodies of their brothers, fighting beak and claw. She beats his brothers back, snapping with human teeth, trying to gather the birds belonging to her Crow Lord.

  All around the edges of the roof, men with hollow eyes watch her while their shadows do battle. Only one does not have hollow eyes. His eyes are full of fox-light. He trembles.

  Her gaze fixes on him, ignoring the feathers that snap against her skin and the beaks that draw blood.

  “Trust me,” she whispers.

  Ani holds up cupped palms. She can feel hot, sticky blood, running down her skin. She won’t fight the Crow Lords, not here, not now, not like this. Her war will be a quiet war, infecting the Crow Lords from within as she would have infected the humans. One of her birds lands, awkwardly in her out-stretched hands. She draws it close and holds it against her heartbeat. Then she lifts it to her lips.

  Across the rooftop, the man with full eyes twitches. His Crow Lord shadow melts between her lips, sliding down her throat. He surrenders. The nine birds remaining flock to her. She opens her arms wide, opens her jaws, and devours them all.

  When she has swallowed the last of her Crow Lord’s shadow, Ani screams at his brothers. “I’m one of you now! Your Fox Brother, your Crow Sister.”

  The Crow Lords shriek their rage. They slash at her with beak and claw. Twelve birds lift, swirling around one of the hollow eyed men at the corner of the rooftop. They coalesce, and his shadow lies long beneath him. He steps forward.

  “We still have your name.” His chuckle becomes a crow-caw. Ani answers with a fox-grin.

  “I don’t need it anymore.”

  She turns towards her Crow Lord. He is on his knees now, but he raises his head. His eyes are full of light. Even though he is shaking, she feels his shadow inside her, stronger than ever. He knows her name, and he will whisper it to her in the dark. His eyes are a promise. It is all she needs.

  He grits his teeth, and speaks. “Trust me. Jump.”

  She drops four paws onto the ground and runs for the edge of the roof. She leaps, trusting the shadow beneath her skin. She falls and the city streaks towards her from below. In the screaming wind, her shadow shreds, tatters, and spreads impossible wings. She soars.

  She bares fox-teeth, laughing, and tasting the stars. She is free, and she is alive.

  After an eternity of flight, of devouring the moonlight and drinking the world, she touches down. Four paws come to rest on dirty asphalt in an alley that smells of rotten food. Red neon spreads puddles of light beneath her feet. When she rises to stand on two legs, she is clothed in a coat as black as a crow’s wing. It hides her torn and bloodied skin.

  Yuki steps out of the doorway where the fox-girl first saw him, the human Ani behind him. She looks smaller away from the glow of the machines, half-broken by all that has been done to her.

  Fox-Ani closes her eyes and places her hand to her mouth. She tastes the stone, Crow Lord magic, smooth and cool on her tongue. It has been there the whole time, but she can touch it now. She pushes it onto her palm and opens her eyes, holding out her hand.

  Ani looks at her, questioning. “What is it?”

  “Forgetting. If you want, you can start over again.”

  Ani considers a moment, then holds out her hand. The Fox-Crow-Girl tips the stone onto the human woman’s palm. The woman considers it a moment, weighing it, then slips the stone into her pocket.

  “Thank you.”

  She turns away. Yuki moves after her. “Ani! Wait!”

  The human woman turns, a sad smile moving cracked lips, pulling bruised flesh tight around her eye. “That’s not my name anymore. I’m no one, now. A ghost.”

  She turns again and walks away. This time Yuki doesn’t try to stop her. Fox-Ani steps close and slips her hand into his, pressing warm skin against skin. “I’m sorry.”

  “Don’t be,” he answers, but she can feel the sorrow rolling off him. The air around him smells like tea and tears. “I never really knew her. I only had an image of her in my head that I wanted to love. Now there isn’t enough of her left to know.”

  “Maybe she’ll come back one day.”

  “Maybe.” Yuki shrugs. He turns to look at Ani, his tea-brown eyes clear. “What are you going to do now?”

  “Run. Fly.” She lets go of his hand and whirls, changes, a blur of fur and feathers, then she is a girl again.

  “Thank you for everything.” Her voice is soft in the neon-tinted dark. She means the words more than she has ever meant any words before. Though it was the Crow Lord’s shadow she devoured, Yuki has changed her, too.

  “We’ll see each other again,” she says. “If you want. We can eat noodles on the rooftops, up under the sky. The world is going to change soon. I’ll tell you what it looks like from above.”

  A smile touches Yuki’s lips, shadowed with pain, but still a smile. “I’d like that.”

  He lifts his hand to wave goodbye, and she is flying, fox and crow and girl, lifting up above the city to taste the light of the stars.

  A. C. Wise is the author of numerous short stories, which have appeared in Clarkesworld, Halloween: Magic, Mystery & the Macabre, Shimmer, and The Best Horror of the Year Volume 4, among other places. In addition to her fiction, she is the co-editor of Unlikely Story. For more information, visit her online at www.acwise.net.

  The City: New York City—again, Manhattan.

  The Magic: Lords of fairie sometimes walk among us. Even in places stinking of cold iron, up broken concrete steps to tiny apartments, or through the park and into odd little coffee shops . . .

  THE LAND OF HEART’S DESIRE

  Holly Black

  If you want to meet real-life members of the Sidhe—real faeries—go to the café Moon in a Cup, in Manhattan. Faeries congregate there in large numbers. You can tell them by the slight point of their ears—a feature they’re too arrogant to conceal by glamour—and by their inhuman grace. You will also find that the café caters to their odd palate by offering nettle and foxglove teas, ragwort pastries. Please note too that foxglove is poisonous to mortals and shouldn’t be tasted by you.

  —posted in messageboard www.realfairies.com/forums by stoneneil

  Lords of fairie sometimes walk among us. Even in places stinking of cold iron, up broken concrete steps, in tiny apartments where girls sleep three to a bedroom. Faeries, after all, delight in corruption, in borders, in crossing over and then crossing back again.

  When Rath Roiben Rye, Lord of the Unseelie Court and Several Other Places, comes to see Kaye, she drags her mattress into the middle of the living room so that they can talk until dawn without waking anyone. Kaye isn’t human either, but she was raised human. Sometimes, to Roiben, she seems more human than the city around her.

  In the mornings, her roommates Ruth and Val (if she’s not staying with her boyfriend) and Corny (who sleeps in their walk-in closet, although he calls it “the second bedroom”) step over them. Val grinds coffee and brews it in a French press with lots of cinnamon. She shaved her head a year ago and her rust-colored hair is finally long enough that it’s starting to curl.

  Kaye laughs and drinks out of chipped mugs and lets her long green pixie fingers trace patt
erns on Roiben’s skin. In those moments, with the smell of her in his throat, stronger than all the iron of the world, he feels as raw and trembling as something newly born.

  One day in midsummer, Roiben took on a mortal guise and went to Moon in a Cup in the hope that Kaye’s shift might soon be over. He thought they would walk through Riverside Park and look at the reflection of lights on the water. Or eat nuts rimed with salt. Or whatsoever else she wanted. He needed those memories of her to sustain him when he returned to his own kingdoms.

  But walking in just after sunset, black coat flapping around his ankles like crow wings, he could see she wasn’t there. The coffee shop was full of mortals, more full than usual. Behind the counter, Corny ran back and forth, banging mugs in a cloud of espresso steam.

  The coffee shop had been furnished with things Kaye and her human friends had found by the side of the road or at cheap tag sales. Lots of ratty paint-stained little wooden tables that she’d decoupaged with post cards, sheets of music, and pages from old encyclopedias. Lots of chairs painted gold. The walls were hung with amateur paintings, framed in scrap metal.

  Even the cups were mismatched. Delicate bone china cups sitting on saucers beside mugs with slogans for businesses long closed.

  As Roiben walked to the back of the shop, several of the patrons gave him appraising glances. In the reflection of the shining copper coffee urn, he looked as he always did. His white hair was pulled back. His eyes were the color of the silver spoons.

  He wondered if he should alter his guise.

  “Where is she?” Roiben asked.

  “Imperious, aren’t we?” Corny shouted over the roar of the machine. “Well, whatever magical booty call the king of the faeries is after will have to wait. I have no idea where Kaye’s at. All I know is that she should be here.”

  Roiben tried to control the sharp flush of annoyance that made his hand twitch for a blade.

  “I’m sorry,” Corny said, rubbing his hand over his face. “That was uncool. Val said she’d come help but she’s not here and Luis, who’s supposed to be my boyfriend, is off with some study partner for hours and hours and my scheme to get some more business has backfired in a big way. And then you come in here and you’re so—you’re always so—”

  “May I get myself some nettle tea to bide with?” Roiben interrupted, frowning. “I know where you keep it. I will attend to myself.”

  “You can’t,” Corny said, waving him around the back of the bar. “I mean, you could have, but they drank it all, and I don’t know how to make more.”

  Behind the bar was a mess. Roiben bent to pick up the cracked remains of a cup and frowned. “What’s going on here? Since when have mortals formed a taste for—”

  “Excuse me,” said a girl with long wine-colored hair. “Are you human?”

  He froze, suddenly conscious of the jagged edges of what he held. “I’m supposing I misheard you.” He set the porcelain fragment down discreetly on the counter.

  “You’re one of them, aren’t you? I knew it!” A huge smile split her face and she looked back eagerly toward a table of grinning humans. “Can you grant wishes?”

  Roiben looked at Corny, busy frothing milk. “Cornelius,” he said softly. “Um.”

  Corny glanced over. “If, for once, you just act like my best friend’s boyfriend and take her order, I promise to be nicer to you. Nice to you, even.”

  Roiben touched a key on the register. “I’ll do it if you promise to be more afraid of me.”

  “I envy what I fear and hate what I envy,” Corny said, slamming an iced latte on the counter. “More afraid equals more of a jerk.”

  “What is it you’d like?” Roiben asked the girl. “Other than wishes.”

  “Soy mocha,” said the girl. “But please, there’s so much I want to know.”

  Roiben squinted at the scrawled menu on the chalkboard. “Payment, if you please.”

  She counted out some bills and he took them, looking helplessly at the register. He hit a few buttons and, to his relief, the drawer opened. He gave her careful change.

  “Please tell me that you didn’t pay her in leaves and acorns,” Corny said. “Kaye keeps doing that and it’s really not helping business.”

  “I knew it!” said the girl.

  “I conjured nothing,” Roiben said. “And you are not helping.”

  Corny squirted out Hershey’s syrup into the bottom of a mug. “Yeah, remember what I said about my idea to get Moon in a Cup more business?”

  Roiben crossed his arms over his chest. “I do.”

  “I might have posted online that this place has a high incidence of supernatural visitation.”

  Roiben narrowed his eyes and tilted his head. “You claimed Kaye’s coffee shop is haunted?”

  The girl picked up her mocha from the counter. “He said that faeries came here. Real faeries. The kind that dance in mushroom circles and—”

  “Oh, did he?” Roiben asked, a snarl in his voice. “That’s what he said?”

  Corny didn’t want to be jealous of the rest of them.

  He didn’t want to spend his time wondering how long it would be before Luis got tired of him. Luis, who was going places while Corny helped Kaye open Moon in a Cup because he had literally nothing else to do.

  Kaye ran the place like a pixie. It had odd hours—sometimes opening at four in the afternoon, sometimes opening at dawn.

  The service was equally strange when Kaye was behind the counter. A cappuccino would be ordered and chai tea would be delivered. People’s change often turned to leaves and ash.

  Slowly—for survival—things evolved so that Moon in a Cup belonged to all of them. Val and Ruth worked when they weren’t at school. Corny set up the wireless.

  And Luis, who lived in the dorms of NYU and was busy with a double major and flirting with a future in medicine, would come and type out his long papers at one of the tables to make the place look more full.

  But it wouldn’t survive like that for long, Corny knew.

  Everything was too precarious. Everyone else had too much going on. So he made the decision to run the ad. And for a week straight, the coffee shop had been full of people. They could barely make the drinks in time. So none of the others could be mad at him. They had no right to be mad at him.

  He had to stay busy. It was the only way to keep the horrible gnawing dread at bay.

  Roiben listened to Corny stammer through an explanation of what he had done and why without really hearing it.

  Then he made himself tea and sat at one of the salvaged tables that decorated the coffeehouse. Its surface was ringed with marks from the tens of dozens of watery cups that had rested there and any weight made the whole thing rock alarmingly. He took a sip of the foxglove tea—brewed by his own hand to be strong and bitter.

  Val had come in during Corny’s explanation, blanched, and started sweeping the floor. Now she and Corny whispered together behind the counter, Val shaking her head.

  Faeries had, for many years, relied on discretion. Roiben knew the only thing keeping Corny from torment at the hands of the faeries who must have seen his markedly indiscreet advertisement was the implied protection of the King of the Unseelie Court. Roiben knew it and resented it.

  It would be an easy thing to withdraw his protection. Easy and perhaps just.

  As he considered that, a woman’s voice behind him rose, infuriating him further. “Well, you see, my family has always been close to the faeries. My great great great great grandmother was even stolen away to live with them.”

  Roiben wondered why mortals so wanted to be associated with suffering that they told foolish tales. Why not tell a story where one’s grandmother died fat, old, and beloved by her dozen children?

  “Really?” the woman’s friend was saying. “Like Robert Kirk on the faerie hill?”

  “Exactly,” said the woman. “Except that Great Grandma Clarabelle wasn’t sleeping outdoors and she was right here in New York State. She got taken out of her own bed
! Clarabelle had just given birth to a stillborn baby and the priest came too late to baptize her. No iron over the doors.”

  It happened like that sometimes, he had to concede.

  “Oh,” her friend said, shaking her head. “Yes, we’ve forgotten about iron and salt and all the other protections.”

  Clara. For a moment, thoughts of Corny and his betrayal went out of Roiben’s head completely. He knew that name. And dozens upon dozens of Claras who have come into the world, in that moment, he knew the women were telling a true story. A story he knew. It shamed him that he had dismissed them so easily for being foolish. Even fools tell the truth. Historically, the truth belongs especially to fools.

  “Excuse me,” Roiben said, turning in his chair. “I couldn’t help overhearing”

  “Do you believe in faeries?” she asked him, seeming pleased.

  “I’m afraid I must,” he said, finally. “May I ask you something about Clara?”

  “My great great aunt” the woman said, smiling. “I’m named after her. I’m Clarabella. Well, it’s really my middle name, but I still—”

  “A pleasure to make your acquaintance” he said, extending his hand to shake hers. “Do you happen to know when your Clara went missing?”

  “Some time in the eighteenth century, I guess,” she said. Her voice slowed as she got to the end of the sentence, as though she’d become wary. Her smile dimmed. “Is something the matter?”

  “And did she have two children?” he asked recklessly. “A boy named Robert and a girl named Mary?”

  “How could you have known that?” Clarabella said, her voice rising.

  “I didn’t know it,” Roiben said. “That is the reason I asked.”

  “But you—you shouldn’t have been able to—” Everyone in the coffee shop was staring at them now. Roiben perceived a goblin by the door, snickering as he licked chocolate icing from his fingers.