Welcome to Bordertown

by Holly Black

  They turn—even Grandmama didn’t hear me come in. He has paint under his fingernails and a gap between his front teeth.

  In thirteen days, Rabbit said, with that look on her face.

  “Sit down, honey,” says Grandmama. “There’s news.”

  Mama picks herself up, and she and Rabbit take the other two stools and the rest of the biscuits. They tell me what I’ve already half guessed.

  Thirteen days here with the Way in and out of Borderland closed meant thirteen years out in the World. Cash was six years old when he first scrawled that childish “Bordertown LIVES” in front of my plaster man.

  “When you gave me your name,” he says, “I looked you up. There are message boards on the Internet—I mean, anyway, this thing where people ask for information about friends and loved ones who got stuck on the wrong side of the Border. I found a request posted almost a decade ago from a Derek Thompson in Andalusia, Alabama, asking for any information about his daughter Peya and her mother, Althea. It fit.”

  Mama starts crying again. Cash looks down at the table, his Adam’s apple bobbing. I think I know where this is headed, but I can’t ask; I can barely feel my own skin.

  He pulls something out of his pocket and pushes it across the table. A photo of a man I’ve never seen but recognize anyway. His arm is around a smiling woman and a smiling little girl. “This is his family,” Cash says softly. “His wife sent me the photo when I tracked her down. Turns out Derek Thompson died last year. A heart attack. The girl in that photo is about twenty now.”

  Mama gets up from the table so abruptly that her stool falls with a clatter.

  “And why the hell didn’t that damn fool come here when he promised? When the Way here was wide open and all I wanted was him to walk it? He had to go and start some other family?” She storms upstairs.

  I half stand to follow her, but Grandmama just shakes her head and Rabbit puts her head on my shoulder.

  “It’s okay, honey. Leave her for now.”

  Cash swallows again. “I’m so sorry to have to tell you all this.”

  “No,” Grandmama says firmly. “We’re glad to have you, and we’re grateful for the news. You want some tea? Rabbit, fetch him some tea. I’ll see if that arugula isn’t ready yet in the garden. You look like you’d fall over if someone pushed you.”

  Cash and I stare at the table, awkward and suddenly alone.

  “What did all that mean?” I ask, daring a glance up at him. “ ‘Bordertown lives’?”

  He blushes, or at least I’m pretty sure he does. “It’s an underground thing. After a while, people thought Bordertown had disappeared forever, gone back into Faerie, you know. People who didn’t think so would scrawl that on the sides of buildings. I wondered if my stuff was somehow showing up in Bordertown.… That paint was so weird, but I wasn’t sure until I got your message.”

  “That mural is amazing, you know,” I say. “How did you find all those faces?”

  “Message boards. People who’d been here would put up drawings, poems, stories about what they’d seen here. I just collected it.”

  I shake my head. “And I thought I didn’t understand the World before.”

  “It’s all right,” he says. “It’s nothing important.”

  I lean into the ivy on the table and look up at him. My heart feels strange, like someone’s pumped it full of helium and stabbed it through.

  “You wanna go dancing?” I ask, at the same time he says, “Sorry about your dad.”

  “I never knew him,” I say. “Mama thinks he was a good guy, probably was, but he never came to find us. It’s … weird. That’s all.”

  “I’d love to dance, Peya,” he says, very formally, and for a moment he reminds me of my plaster man.

  Rabbit wanders back in with the tea as we’re standing to leave.

  “Grandmama says to give you this,” she says, and hands me a condom. Cash’s eyes get a little round, but to his credit he doesn’t say anything when I stuff it into the deep pocket in my skirt.

  “Thanks, bunny,” I say.

  But Rabbit looks at me a little sadly. “Did he say goodbye?” she asks.

  I nod. “And he thanked you. It all worked, in the end.”

  Her grin could light the sky. “I liked Prince. I’m glad.”

  “I liked him, too.”

  Cash looks slantwise at me when we step into the street. “What was that about?”

  I take a deep breath: honeysuckle and dirt and our neighbors’ twenty-four-hour stew. Home.

  “Oh, just thirteen years,” I say.

  He may know the World, but I know this city. I take his hand; we go dancing.

  THE SAGES OF ELSEWHERE

  BY WILL SHETTERLY

  It’s strange putting claws to keyboard again. It wasn’t that I planned to stop writing. It just happened. After I told the story of how a curse turned me into Bordertown’s resident teen wolf, Sparks and I had true love and our very own bookstore. I thought we were in Happily Ever After.

  But the Sequel had already begun at our Now Under New (Mis)Management Party. Mickey was happy about giving Elsewhere to us so she could teach at the University Without Floors, the Wild Hunt was playing in the middle of Mock Avenue, all my friends in B-town were dancing in the street, and Sparks looked great with rainbow-colored hair. I’d taken a break to make sure everything was okay in the store when Milo Chevrolet came up beside me.

  I nodded and gave him a big grin, but my eyes stayed on Sparks. She was dancing like so many girls who think they’re ugly, like no one could possibly be watching her so she might as well dance as if she were all alone, as if she were dancing with the universe. I was thinking I could watch her all my life when Milo said, “Wolfboy.”

  I signed, “Yeah?”

  He held up a book. Milo with a book is so common that if anyone makes a statue of him, he’ll be carrying a book or standing on a pile of ’em. It was easy to forget he’s one of B-town’s major magicians. Except for the ears, which said one of his parents was an elf, he looked like a human kid who needed to get out in the sun more. He said, “Would you buy this?”

  He’s a friend, so I didn’t even look. I signed, “Sure,” and started to walk over to dance with Sparks.

  Milo said, “It’s valuable.”

  “How valuable?”

  “Uh, valuable enough to let me have one book of my choice each week?”

  “Magic dude, if you want to take a book each week, take it. Friends look out for friends, right?”

  He blushed, which made me realize the most amazing thing about most of my friends is they don’t know how amazing they are. Then he said, “Okay, it’s a deal.” And he pushed the book into my furry hands.

  It was your quintessential Old Book, bound in dark leather with faint lettering you had to study closely to read. The pages were filled with tiny letters from an alphabet I didn’t know. I signed, “Elfin?”

  Milo said, “Late middle period. Just before Faerie left the World.”

  “Title?”

  “The Secrets of Seven Sages.”

  Before I could ask him more questions, Mickey and Goldy dragged him into the dance. So I put the book up on the shelf over the front window labeled “Collectible! Maybe even Readable!” I didn’t exactly forget about it after that, but it wasn’t a priority. I figure books find their owners eventually.

  * * *

  The next months were my kind of perfect. I was running a bookstore with Sparks in Soho, the Bordertown neighborhood that’s got everything I love: music, poetry slams, art shows, movies (and sometimes live shows) at the Magic Lantern, and cheap places to eat that serve every cuisine from the World and a few that may be telling the truth when they say they serve Faerie food.

  Elsewhere itself was definitely funky, meaning the shelves didn’t match, and the floor creaked, and I really couldn’t guess what color the ceiling originally was, and it had that used-book shop smell of old paper and leather, but to me, it was beautiful. The apartment upstai
rs was too cold in the winter, too warm in the summer, too small all the time, and exactly as funky as the store, even with the decorations we’d scavenged and made and been given. I loved it as much as the store. As long as Sparks was with me, I had all I wanted from life.

  That changed one cool, sunny afternoon when Sparks and I went walking up Dragon’s Tooth Hill. Most of the homes amused us. Whether human mansions or elfin palaces, they were enormous and ornate, the kinds of places people buy to impress themselves.

  Then we passed a house that was small compared to most homes on the Hill. It had a faded red door and ivy on its bricks and a turret that would be perfect for a library on one floor and an art room on another. It was run-down and nowhere near the poshest parts of the Hill, but the view from the turret had to be amazing. Sparks squeezed my hand and said, “When I was a foster kid, I dreamed of having a house of my own like that one.”

  That’s when I made a private vow. Someday, someone would buy The Secrets of Seven Sages. Then I would buy the house with the red door and hand Sparks the keys.

  * * *

  Cut to a few days ago, when we went to see a musical double feature at the Lantern. On the way back, it was drizzling, which inspired Sparks to re-create the title number from Singin’ in the Rain, which made us both laugh until she slipped and broke her foot.

  The next morning, I put out a Help Wanted sign. A few people applied, but I hired Copperjean, an elf with dyed shaggy hair like coils of copper. She said she’d just come from Faerie. She knew books like a book lover, and I remembered arriving alone in B-town, needing all the help I could get, so Sparks and I welcomed her to Elsewhere.

  * * *

  Though Copperjean had that upper-class accent of elves from Faerie and Dragon’s Tooth Hill, she worked hard, and she treated our customers, whether human, elf, or halfie, as if she was quietly pleased she could help them find books they would love. Just as Mickey had given Elsewhere to Sparks and me, I knew I would be passing it on to someone someday. By her second morning of work, I began to wonder if that someone would be Copperjean.

  That afternoon, I was shelving books and Copperjean was at the counter, when I heard, “Foolery, sir, does walk about the orb like the sun, it shines everywhere.”

  The fur on my ears tingled. The words were pitched in the range where male and female voices overlap, and I didn’t recognize the speaker. But I smelled a familiar elfin scent.

  I turned quickly. Tricksy Nixi stood framed in Elsewhere’s front doors. He owned Fair Folk Books, where the sign in the window claimed he was Nix Farseer, Gentleman of the Realm, Proprietor. He wore what might be the latest from Elfland, or Hollywood for all I knew: a frock coat, a high-collared shirt, trousers, and boots in shades of green. With his milk-white skin and pointed ears, he looked like a Dickens character from a Tim Burton film.

  In the Bordertown accent he saved for people he knew he couldn’t impress, Nixi said, “It’s a pleasure to see you, Wolfboy.”

  I was grateful I couldn’t talk. It was easy to nod and get back to shelving. If I’d been able to speak, I would’ve said, Why? What did I forget to lock or hide?

  Nixi headed to the stacks labeled “Spirituality, Sorcery, and Charlatanism.” I kept an eye cocked, but he didn’t linger. He scanned the spines, chose six, and brought them to the counter.

  Copperjean sat by the register, reading the sixth volume of Yotsuba&! She set the book aside and said, “Yes, sir?”

  A runaway straight out of Elfland was in no way ready to deal with one of B-town’s finest scamsters. I tapped her shoulder, then my chest, to say I’d take this one. She nodded and went back to reading.

  As I flipped through Nixi’s choices, I tried to figure out what he was really after. They were the usual books would-be magicians buy, things written by humans before Faerie returned. He ran a thin finger across a Carlos Castaneda jacket and said, “Judging by the dust, you have no market for tomes such as these. What say I take the lot off your hands for a baker’s dozen of four-leaf clovers, a pound of Kona beans, and a pristine copy of the plays of Aphra Behn?”

  He drew what he was offering from his shoulder bag. The clovers were not wilted, the smell of the coffee made me salivate, and the Behn was a university collection that wasn’t rare in the World, but it was rare in B-town, and Nixi was right about its quality.

  I pointed at the coffee and raised two fingers. Nixi laughed and said, “One and a quarter. You know that’s a fair price.”

  It was. I suspected he was offering it because he would gouge the noobs at his shop. I wanted to say no on principle, but the books he chose would probably have ended up in the free bin we euphemistically called the Elsewhere Public Library. I nodded.

  He added a quarter bag of coffee to his offer on the counter, saying, “You’re a cool man of business, Wolfboy.” Which meant I should’ve held out for at least a pound and a half.

  I gave him a big smile, showing all my fangs. Maybe the grin was friendly. Maybe it meant I was one second from biting his head off. Nixi’s smug expression faltered as he tried to decide which.

  Then I slid the books to him and gave him a little wave. He grabbed them up, said, “Always good doing business with you,” and headed for the door. Just a little fast. Which I credited to him being a bit shaken by my grin.

  I was feeling guilty about my juvenile streak when someone shouted in an androgynous elfin accent, “He that is robbed, not wanting what is stol’n, let him not know’t, and he’s not robbed at all!”

  Copperjean and I looked at the door. Nixi broke into a run as the same voice screamed, “The moon’s an arrant thief, and her pale fire she snatches from the sun!”

  I couldn’t see the screamer, but the smell of Nixi’s fear filled my snout as I surrendered to the thrill of the chase. The Mock Avenue crowd of humans, elves, and halfies parted before me. Someone called, “Go, Wolf, go!”

  I heard another scream: “Who steals my purse steals trash; ’tis something, nothing. ’Twas mine, ’tis his, and has been slave to thousands; but he that filches from me my good name robs me of that which not enriches him and makes me poor indeed!”

  I caught Nixi on the street a few paces from Elsewhere’s big front window. The voice that was a scream whispered contentedly, “People usually are the happiest at home.”

  I jerked Nixi’s pack off his shoulder. As I pulled out books, he yelled, “Those are mine! I paid your price!” In the sunlight, it was clear the Castaneda jacket was a bit large for the book it was on.

  I tore off the jacket. The book under it was The Secrets of Seven Sages.

  Nixi said, “Wolfboy! Please, assure me you didn’t put a worthless old book into a good dust jacket—”

  “False as dicers’ oaths,” said the book.

  Nixi and I stared at it. Many kinds of strange are normal in Bordertown, but talking books aren’t among them.

  The book began to purr in my hand, so quietly I doubt Nixi heard it. Only the book lover in me kept me from dropping it.

  When I looked at Nixi, not grinning or growling at all, he sighed. “So. The book requires fair trade in fact, not semblance. Very well. Take half my books in exchange. Your choice.”

  I growled slightly.

  “Then take every item from my shop,” he said quickly. “Take the shop as well. That’s all I have of value.” He glanced at the book, but it didn’t speak. Since he was discussing its future, I decided he was telling the truth.

  Fair Folk Books was a quarter the size of Elsewhere on a side street that didn’t get much traffic. That’s why he advertised in The Tough Guide to Bordertown and plastered Soho with fliers announcing “Fair Folk Books for the True Bordertown Experience! A Proud Fey Business Where Friends of Elves Are Welcome!” The last line began appearing right after Bordertown was reconnected to the World, when Nixi saw he could triple his profit by selling that “True Bordertown Experience” to humans crushing on Orlando Bloom.

  Nixi’s whole shop would not come close to buying the house with t
he red door.

  Nixi said, “I’ll be honest”—he glanced at the book again—“I know a collector who’ll never deal with humans. She’ll pay ten thousand aurei from the reign of Septimus Severus. Pure gold coins, Wolfboy. Worth even more in the World for their historical value.”

  When I hesitated, he said, “I’ll take only twenty percent for a finder’s fee. Deal?”

  I did the math: Eight thousand might buy the house, but the full ten would cover it for sure and some improvements as well. I gave Nixi a look that I hoped said I would have accepted his terms if he’d offered them up front, but now I would wait until I found a buyer who’d deal with humans or the Queen of Faerie kissed my furry bum.

  My teeth must have been showing. Nixi said, “Please. For the sake of my children—”

  “Believe me, I do not believe thee, man,” said the book.

  I laughed, and Nixi grimaced. I stuffed the five books he bought honestly into his bag, handed it to him, and pointed for him to go.

  Among the people watching us were two elves, both wearing the red leather jackets of the Bloods. I recognized one. She had bought The Pillow Book of Sei Shonagon in paperback recently. Passing them, Nixi said loudly, “Well. It’s obvious where our kind isn’t wanted.”

  His fingers opened as his arm swept down, as if he was throwing something at the sidewalk in front of Elsewhere.

  The book whispered, in a worried, warning voice, “Double, double toil and trouble.”

  And my fur tingled.

  I didn’t have a clue what kind of spell Nixi had cast, but I didn’t doubt it was trouble.

  Then I saw how it could double: Three humans in the Pack’s black leather were also in the crowd. Mock Avenue is supposed to be neutral territory for Bloods and Packers—emphasis on “supposed to be.”

  While Nixi scurried away, a Packer with a Thor’s hammer tat on her forehead shouted, “Don’t let the Gate hit you on the ass!” I didn’t recognize her, but the big guy with her, Jed or Ted, was a regular at Elsewhere. He liked military history and gardening books.