Welcome to Bordertown

by Holly Black

  And there it was.

  The crux of all his problems.

  He could go home, be free of this whole mess … and then land in another one: home again, free all right, free to be Anush Gupta, Total Failure. Failed scholar, failed grad student, the world’s biggest disappointment to his family, the biggest disgrace that the Indian community of Sunnyvale, California, had ever known. Not to mention the fact that every girl his age would be thirteen years older than him.

  He pulled on his T-shirt. “I’m going out.”

  “By day? Like this?”

  “Why not?” he said bitterly. “It’s not like anyone will recognize me.”

  * * *

  Trish watched Cam walk off down the street. How did you get to look like that? It wasn’t the willowy, angular blondness—that, you had to be born with. It was the bounce in the mismatched shoes, the striped socks, and the Faerie charms dangling from her belt. That was pure Bordertown. Trish could stay here till she was thirty, and she’d never look like that. Would she? She was a jeans-and-T-shirt kind of girl, a simple, serious person. Even at home, she hadn’t been much for dressing up; that was for nonserious girls—and besides, if she could, she would dress in velvets and lace and skirts that swept the floor, nothing you’d ever find in Milltown.

  But this was Bordertown. There were vintage shops on Carmine Street. Not that she had anything to buy with, but maybe she’d go there early tonight and just look around to see what was there.…

  “Heads up! Monster on the loose!”

  The shout rang up the street. Everyone was turning, staring at the thing that ran, scuttling, along the curb, waving its hairy arms and howling. It wasn’t a monkey, but it wasn’t human. Its face was hidden in a tangle of matted hair. Its hair was white—or whitish gray, anyway—and its arms and legs were skinny, the arms and fingers long—

  “Gurgi!” Trish shouted, startled. The creature looked (and moved) just like Gurgi from The Chronicles of Prydain! She took off after him. Unfortunately, she wasn’t the only one. Whether they were scared or just mean, other kids were after the creature, throwing garbage and even rocks. She saw one hit the creature, heard him give a cry of pain.

  “Cut it out!” Trish cried. She stopped, turning, to stand between the creature and the crowd.

  “Fuckin’ noob!” a guy cursed her. “Get outta the way!”

  “It’s a monster from the Nevernever, bitch! Get it out of Soho before it goes toxic and destroys us all!”

  “You goddamned illiterate wastrel,” Trish yelled, so mad she didn’t care that she wasn’t sure how to pronounce it (was it waste-rel or wahss-trel?). “You ignorant peasant jackass! It’s Gurgi from the Prydain books! Now back off, you brainless wonder, before I rip you a new one!”

  Even Gurgi had frozen in the tirade of her wrath. He stood behind her, shaking and whimpering—it almost sounded like giggling laughter.

  And the other kids backed off and away, leaving Trish in command of her prize.

  The creature peered up at her through matted hair.

  “Crunchings and munchings?” it asked hopefully.

  Trish grinned. She’d said it was Gurgi, but she hadn’t fully believed it. Nothing in Bordertown was like the books she loved. Until now. But that clinched it; that was exactly how Gurgi talked. She’d fallen into the right story at last.

  “Are you hurt?” she asked.

  He had his arms crossed protectively over his chest.

  His arms were skinny but strong, just like Lloyd Alexander described him.

  “Come on, let me see,” Trish coaxed.

  His arms fell to his sides.

  What is Gurgi doing wearing a Harvard T-shirt? Trish thought. “This is so weird,” she said. “You’re the second … um … guy I’ve seen this week in one of those.”

  The shirt hung on his scrawny frame like a nightshirt on a little kid. “Noble lord was kind to Gurgi,” the creature said, his head bobbing up and down.

  “Anush gave you that? Where— How was he?”

  Gurgi pointed to her pack. “Noble mistress give crunchings and munchings to poor Gurgi now?”

  Trish said, “Well, I don’t really have any food. I was on my way down to Riverside; I heard you can pick up some work by the docks, like, carrying things. We could do it together, and then they’ll give us both crunchings and munchings.”

  The creature looked dubious. “Noble mistress saves Gurgi’s poor tender head from fightings and smitings?”

  “Of course I will,” Trish said. “Come on—I won’t let anyone hurt you.”

  That was what she used to tell Jimmy. As she walked downhill with Gurgi trotting by her side, she remembered Jimmy’s first day of kindergarten, when he’d been so scared. I won’t let anyone hurt you. I’ll never let anyone hurt you.

  What had happened to her little Jimbo? She hadn’t meant to leave him there. Sure, she’d been planning to go away to college, to the banks of the Charles, but she would have come back as often as she could. Hadn’t she promised to be home for Christmas? She would have made sure Jimmy had an escape route, too. That he didn’t have to go work down at the factory like Grampa and Dad and her three uncles if he didn’t want to. That nobody crushed the magic out of him.

  * * *

  I meet a guy in the stacks at Elsewhere Books who thinks he might have seen Trish. He studies the picture, then passes it to his companion, an Asian girl with her hair in many braids. “I’m sure I’ve seen her. It was at a music gig. Deki, what’s the name of that harper?”

  “You mean Ossian?”

  “Yeah, Ossian. I can’t remember where we were that night. At Sluggo’s, maybe? Or The Grand Conjunction?”

  I add these names to my list of possible leads and thank them for their help.

  I stop by the Poop at least once a day to check the message board. Still nothing there, but on the way out, I see a poster with the name Ossian. He’s playing an afternoon concert in Fare-You-Well Park, so I head in that direction.

  I enter the park through the Ho Street gate, pass the buskers (good and bad) and the sidewalk artists (ditto), the mobile health clinic in its horse-drawn Winnebago, and a demented-looking guy who is standing on a soapbox ranting about the Bordertown High Council. The park’s bandstand sits on a patchy stretch of lawn beyond the playgrounds and the bowling green. I reach it, and a hippie-looking girl in a “Respect the Realm” T-shirt hands me a concert flyer: “Traditional Music for the Elfin and Celtic Harps, Performed by Sashamia Leaves-upon-the-Water-at-the-Harvest-Moon and Ossian Feldenkranz.”

  The audience spread across the grass is small, and it doesn’t take long to see my sister isn’t in it. We’re west of the Old City now, and this isn’t a Soho crowd; it’s mostly old people, a cluster of silver-haired kids from the Elfhaeme Musical Academy (it says so on their bags), and two skateboard punks who look like they belong here about as much as I do.

  The concert has already begun. It’s the tinkling kind of music Trish likes, not me—but it reminds me of her, so I stay to listen, stretched out on the grass beside Rosco with my head propped on my tool bag. The sun pours down like honey, and the harp music floats upward (plonk, plonk, plonk), drifting over the grass and trees and the background roar of the surrounding city.…

  * * *

  The Fish and Farmers’ Market was all hustle and bustle, but Trish found work with a fishwife who was desperate to fill a huge last-minute order for a party on the Hill.

  “What they want with fresh fish at a midnight garden party I do not know,” she said in her funny singsong voice, “but you clean ’em up fast and you clean ’em up neat, and I’ll pay you in kind.”

  She set up Trish and Gurgi down by the water and left them to their task. Gurgi didn’t say much; he just seemed happy to be with her, happy to help. She found herself pouring out her heart to him as they cleaned and gutted the weird-looking Mad River fish. All the hopes, all the disappointments … the things she’d given up, and the things she’d loved …

  “I wa
s class valedictorian! I was on the honor roll! I got the best SAT scores Milltown High had ever had!”

  “Oh, wise and noble princess,” said Gurgi encouragingly.

  “I’m not a princess. I guess I thought I was, but I’m not. I’m just an assistant pig-keeper, Gurgi.”

  “No, no! Noble princess must fill her head with dreamings and schemings.”

  “But I did that. And look where it got me. Even in Milltown, we don’t have fish scales all over our hands.”

  “Noble princess is on a great quest for things—um, for thinking and blinking!”

  She looked around her. “This isn’t turning out to be much of an adventure. Maybe I’d better just go home and see if I can get my old job back. At least at Denny’s we don’t have to clean our own fish.”

  “Noble princess is full of yearnings and learnings.”

  “Maybe it was my essay.” It was such a relief to say it all out loud to someone, even if it was only Gurgi. “Maybe Harvard hated my essay. Or maybe they want all their applicants to already know French and classical music. Maybe refilling the ketchup bottles doesn’t count as an extracurricular activity. Or babysitting your baby brother. Oh, Gurgi …” she sighed sadly. Maybe she shouldn’t have started thinking about it, after all.

  When he touched her hand with his pale, skinny one, she only flinched for a second from the dry, inhuman touch. “Dreamings and schemings,” he whispered in his funny little voice. “Yearnings and learnings. Almost as good as crunchings and munchings!”

  Trish smiled a watery smile. “I dunno about that. Right now I’m pretty hungry. And look, it’s getting late. The sun will be setting soon. Let’s collect our pay and go get ourselves a really good dinner!”

  “Yes, yes! Noble princess collects, and Gurgi eats!”

  “Or better yet, I’ll bring you with me to this party I’m going to, at the Chimera. There might be food there. Maybe I should bring some fish.…”

  Paid for their labor with fish and coin, they set out together, the two companions. Some wharf rats laughed and pointed at them, but nobody came near. The sun was setting low over the river behind them, making beautiful colors in the sky above.

  As they passed through the Old City Wall into Soho, the shadows deepened. It wasn’t that cold, but Gurgi started shivering. Trish stopped and reached into her backpack. She didn’t really want to put her only sweatshirt on the hairy creature—he smelled kind of like a wet dog—but what else could she do?

  When she turned around again, he was gone.

  * * *

  I fall asleep, lulled by the harps, and when I wake, someone is sitting beside me. For a moment, seeing only a dark shape against the sun, I think that it might be Trish—but no, it’s a wild-looking girl, maybe ten or twelve, rubbing Rosco’s hairy belly. He’s lolling on his back, looking just about as foolish as an old black hound can look.

  “Hey, that’s my dog,” I say. I don’t know why, since this is obvious.

  “No,” the kid tells me, frowning, “you’re his boy.”

  “Same difference.”

  “No, it isn’t.”

  The girl has crazy brown hair, pointy ears, and dusky skin with a silvery sheen. She is feeding biscuits to my idiot hound, and I hope that they don’t make him sick.

  “He doesn’t like smelling like cherries,” she informs me.

  “He doesn’t?” I answer, humoring the kid.

  She rises, brushes the crumbs from her jeans, then turns her serious little face to me. “He says to ask Ms. Wu for the one that smells like apples. He says to tell you that he’ll like that better.” Then she gives me a crooked, gap-toothed smile. “And don’t worry. You’ll find it.”

  “Apple-scented salve?” I ask, confused.

  “Whatever you’re looking for. I have to go now. My mama is waiting. Goodbye, Steadfast.” She pats Rosco one last time.

  “His name is Rosco.”

  “No, it isn’t,” she says, and then she takes off across the grass.

  * * *

  Gurgi had disappeared into the darkness—and the darkness of Riverside was no place to be looking for monsters. Trish took her package of fish up to Carmine Street. It was the only thing she could think of to do. She stopped at a gallery to ask the way.

  “Are you doing the Smell Installation?” asked the ridiculously tall elf pinning uninflated balloons to the ceiling on tiptoe. “Because whatever they told you, that’s not till next week.”

  “N-no,” Trish stammered, “I’m looking for—”

  “Oh,” said the elf. “End of the street. Bright pink. Big house. Can’t miss it.”

  She raised her hand to knock, but just as her knuckles grazed the wood, the bronze head of the doorknob shouted, “It’s oooopen!”

  She jumped about a foot in the air. The door opened inward, and she stepped inside.

  “Cheerio, m’dearie-o!” It was a halfie with scraggly teeth and even scragglier hair that fell long and yellow from under his battered top hat. Behind him, the high-ceilinged room teemed with people of all shapes and styles.

  “Um,” said Trish, clutching her bag. “Is Cam here?”

  “Everyone’s here. We do just let in anyone, you know. Oh, fish!” The halfie took the bag. “How thoughtful! Spider will be pleased. He loves to feed the multitudes. Now, who brought the loaves?”

  “Tara!” Cam edged around him to hug her. “You made it! Tara, this is Billy Buttons. He doesn’t live here, he just acts like he does. Billy, Tara.”

  The halfie bowed, and declaimed:

  The harp that once through Tara’s halls

  The soul of music shed,

  Now hangs as mute on Tara’s walls,

  As if that soul were fled.

  Ignoring him, Cam pulled Trish deeper into the room and up to a girl with long brown hair and a pointy little chin—a mortal, like her. Good. Trish had nothing against halfies, but she didn’t want to be the only human here.

  “Tara, this is my girlfriend, Seal.”

  Seal looked nice. Trish had had a couple of girlfriends in high school. She hadn’t gotten around to writing to them from Bordertown yet. Jenny, who had also read The Lord of the Rings, and Sue, who worked at Denny’s with her and was very funny. They both thought she was crazy to go away to college. Jenny was working at the nursing home, and Sue was staying at Denny’s, waiting for her boyfriend to propose so she could quit. Or they had been, thirteen years ago. They were both probably moms by now. All grown up. Thinking about it made her head feel all buzzy again.

  “Seal works backstage at the Changeling Theater, like me.”

  “Hi, Seal!” Trish said brightly. “It’s nice to meet you!”

  Cam put her arm around Seal, and Seal leaned her brown head on Cam’s cute embroidered vest.

  Oh. Oh, no.

  Was that the kind of party this was? Did they think—did they think she … Trish looked wildly around the room. Because she lived at Carterhaugh, did they …?

  But Billy Buttons was right. Anyone, everyone, was here. Guys and girls were necking and flirting, and so were guys and guys, doing stuff she thought should embarrass them in public, but apparently not. Cam and Seal were as proper as PTA ladies, by contrast.

  “There’s apple wine,” Cam said happily. “Hector says it’s from over the Border, but he’s just trying to impress Poplar—”

  “Which is pretty hilarious,” said Seal, “considering she’s actually Trueblood.”

  “Shhh!” Cam mock-shushed her. “She thinks she’s passing!”

  “Milords and Ladies of the Royal Court!” A guy with a spiky mustache, in a tuxedo and a white bow tie, had jumped up on a chair.

  “Oh, good!” said Cam. “Lord Buckley’s here.”

  “Is he going to do the Gettysburg Address again?”

  He was:

  “Four big hits and seven licks ago, our before daddies swung forth upon this sweet groovy land a swingin’, stompin’, jumpin’, blowin’, wailin’ new nation, hip to the cool groove of liberty.�
��”

  Trish had never heard anything like it. She laughed so hard she could barely understand the words. Not everyone was laughing; some were swaying and snapping their fingers, as if Lord Buckley were playing jazz music—and in a way he was. But it felt so good to be somewhere that people jumped up on chairs and did crazy things. It felt good to have people who were glad to see her.

  “Where’s the apple wine?” she asked, and Cam said, “Right this way!”

  * * *

  Anush picked himself up off the sidewalk.

  His T-shirt smelled of wet dog. His loose trousers fit around his waist, just barely, and they ended right below his knees. He’d have to go home—but where was home? His elfin lover had silks waiting for him, and an invitation to a party with all the Lords of Elfland. She also, unfortunately, had the keys to his own Plum Street apartment in the pocket of his jeans, hanging in her cupboard.

  He made a few furtive steps down the street. Okay, fine. He was himself again. Barefoot, but okay. Down the street there were shops with lights on, colored lights, art installations. Clothes piled into boxes and racks outside one, just a tantalizing few feet away. Did he dare?

  “Take one, Leave one,” declared a hand-lettered cardboard sign, right on the box. Above it: “If you don’t want these, who does?” and “In with the Old, out with the New!”

  He could see why the stuff was in boxes outside the shop. Who in their right mind would want a pair of bright green slacks with little blue whales printed on them? Or a T-shirt featuring a giant white cartoon kitten saying “Hello!”? The pants would fit him, though. And at the bottom of the box he found a Star Trek T-shirt that wasn’t too bad.

  Farewell, Harvard. He laid his old, doggy-smelling shirt on top of the pile. Anush Gupta was an honorable man.

  Two kids with instrument cases went past him. Then one turned back. “Ooooh! Is that Hello Kitty? I can’t believe that’s in the swap box!”

  “Dude, cool threads!”

  “Are you going to the Chimera?”

  No, he started to say, I’m going to Dragon’s Tooth Hill with the elf babe of my dreams to do anthropological research.