by Holly Black
Allie, who was a Sagittarius—which giant rock star Jim Morrison himself had said was “the most philosophical of all the signs,” though he’d followed that up by saying he didn’t believe in any of that bullshit—said, “What do you mean, real signs?”
“The sun signs of the zodiac—Capricorn, Taurus, and so on—are based on ancient observations of the sky, from thousands of years ago. But the stars move, or rather, the precession of the equinox makes them appear to move, relative to the Earth. Someone born on, say, January fifth this year isn’t being born under the same configuration of stars as a person born on January fifth two millennia ago. The sun isn’t in the constellation Capricorn on January fifth these days, so even if being a Capricorn meant something, it wouldn’t apply anymore. I explained all that to my classes, and people burst into tears sometimes, because their whole fundamental concept of who they were got overthrown. Girls broke up with their boyfriends because they believed their star signs were no longer compatible. I was horrified. I’d meant to teach them to think, to understand why astrology was pseudoscience, but so many of them completely missed the point.” She sighed. “And now here I am. I’ve become what I hated—an astrologer.”
“No shit?” Allie said.
“Oh, yes. A very successful one. Rich mortals and Truebloods alike come to me so I can do their charts. I make a very comfortable living. There’s not much call for astronomy anymore, but everyone wants insight into the future or their own character. And the worst thing is … it works.”
Now Allie sat up. “But you said yourself, it’s dumb to think stars can affect your life.”
Psyche continued gazing skyward, and Allie wasn’t sure, but she thought tears were leaking from the corners of the stargazer’s eyes. Her voice was unchanged, though: “But a lot of people believe in astrology, and on the Border, belief is a potent force. This is a hard place to be a scientist. And under this strange sky, when I examine the movement and interrelationship of these strange stars, I do see patterns, and my predictions and insights do come true. I even predicted the closing of the Way, though not early enough to do much good, and the Trueblood politician I told refused to believe me … though he sent me a note of apology later, and he’s had a basket of fresh fruit delivered every week since the Borderlands reopened. He’s a client for life now.”
“Huh. So you want to do my chart? See how long it’ll take me to get famous?”
“You can’t afford me yet.” Allie thought she detected a smile in Psyche’s voice. “Once you become a rock star, of course, you’ll be welcome to my services.”
“So, what, your stars told you to come save me from a halfie gang?”
“Not exactly. They told me to find you and show you … that.” She pointed, and Allie looked. Now there was something new in the sky: a bright star, straight above, sapphire-tinted, bigger than the rest, surrounded by a ring of black sky, as if it had crowded the other stars out of its way. “That’s your star, Allie Land.”
“What’s that mean?”
“It means you get a wish. The star will appear to you every night, until you wish on it, and then it’s gone forever. So choose your wish carefully.”
“Are you messing with me?”
“Why don’t you go downstairs and find yourself something to eat? I need to do a chart for a Trueblood lord, and it will take me most of the night. You can sleep on the futon—just go to bed whenever you’re tired.”
“Hold up. You can’t just drop this thing on my head about me having a wish and not expect some follow-up questions!”
“Haven’t you ever read a fairy tale, Allie? If you haven’t, there are a few books on my shelves. They’ll tell you everything you need to know about wishes, and how careful you should be with them. Now, please, I need to work.”
Feeling well and truly dismissed, Allie went downstairs and scrounged around until she found oily peanut butter and some homemade bread she could slice, and made herself a couple of sandwiches. She sat on the futon reading stories about how profoundly ill-thought-out wishes screwed up people’s lives.
But assuming this was all for real, her wish was simple, and obvious, and she’d make it the first chance she got:
She’d wish to be the biggest and best rock star in the past and future history of the world.
* * *
Allie woke up in a beautiful white bedroom where all the furniture seemed to glow, as if carved from frozen moonlight. A window stood open, gauzy curtains fluttering, and Allie stepped out of bed and looked out the window. There was nothing out there but darkness and a vast and shining sea lapping at the base of the tower she was in. She caught sight of herself in the vanity mirror—an oval of shimmering reflective glass—and saw a sparkling, beautiful, flawless, plastic version of herself, dressed in the sort of beribboned lacy nightgown old ladies who read romance novels probably dreamed about.
Dreamed. Of course. “Whoo. Glad this isn’t real. What’s the deal, subconscious?”
“I’m glad to see at least this still works.” Alaunus stepped from the shadows, dressed in gorgeous silver-white costume drama clothes, and bowed low. “I have come to you in your dream, Allie, to show you how I might make your dreams come true.”
“See, this is usually the part of my dream where Katee Sackhoff comes in wearing nothing but a tank top and starts taking my pants off. Except I’m usually not dressed like an extra in an eight-year-old girl’s unicorn princess fantasy. Why am I dreaming about you?”
Alaunus sat on the edge of the bed. “Really? You feel no attraction for me, no adoration, no sense that you are blessed to be in my presence? No, to be crude, sexual excitement?”
“Wait, is this a magic thing?” Allie crossed her arms over her chest and noticed with annoyance that her boobs were bigger here. “You, the real you, is like on purpose inserting himself into my dream? Which is the only inserting you’ll be doing, let’s make that clear.”
Alaunus put his head in his hands. “I don’t understand this. I am a lovetalker, a gancanagh! Adored by men, irresistible to women … except for you.”
“What do you do with all those women you attract?”
“I love them.”
“All of them? How’s that working out?” And why are you bothering me?
Alaunus cleared his throat. “Eventually, of course, I tire of them and move on.”
“That’s pretty shitty of you. What happens to the women after that?”
“Traditionally, they pine away unto death. But that effect seems to be diminished on the Border, which is a blessing, really, though they are probably unhappy for a while, I suppose.” He stood up. “But you, Allie Land, I want you, and I don’t understand why you don’t—”
Allie took off one of her shoes—who the hell went to sleep in high heels?—and threw it at his head, but he vanished before it struck him, and the dream vanished with him.
* * *
In her next dream, which was one of her usual ones, she was onstage in a vast stadium, before a crowd so large it seemed to encompass all of humanity. Everyone was focused on Allie, standing in the spotlight at the head of Allison Wonderland—the current band lineup was a bit shadowy—and holding a guitar, about to open her mouth and launch into the first song of the set of her life.
Even in the dream, she thought, I’m just one little wish away from making all this come true.
* * *
Allie woke to an annoying and weirdly familiar voice saying, “But it doesn’t work!” in the vicinity of the front door. She was half sprawled on the futon, her mouth tasted like something furry had died of a wasting disease under her tongue, and she desperately wanted coffee.
She got up, stretched, and went to the front door, where Psyche was talking in a low and reasonable tone. “I’m not a fairy godmother. I didn’t grant the wish. I just showed you your star. I don’t know why it isn’t working on this girl—perhaps something in the wording of your wish provided a loophole.”
“Morning, Psyche. Who’s at the
door?”
Psyche turned, and there was Alaunus outside, looking rather more bedraggled than he had in her dream, though he did have on a stupid old-fashioned ruffly shirt. His face froze. “This is a conspiracy. You’re in this together.”
“Alaunus … this is the girl you’re talking about?” Psyche looked from me to Alaunus, her eyes wide. “You’d better come in. We’ll have some breakfast and … talk about this.”
Alaunus entered stiffly, and Allie narrowed her eyes. “Stay out of my dreams, jerk. Learn to take no for an answer, or I’ll find out whether elves are vulnerable to getting kicked in the balls.”
To her shock, Alaunus began sobbing. He sat on the futon, his arms wrapped around himself, and cried. Allie sat on a cushion on the other side of the low table, watching him with interest as Psyche brought over a pot of tea and some of that fresh fruit the elf politician had sent her. She sat beside Alaunus and patted him on the back a bit awkwardly. Psyche was nice enough, but motherly she wasn’t.
Allie sipped some tea, which was too hot to taste much of anything, and peeled a banana. “So this guy got a wish, too? How many of those things do you give out, anyway?”
Psyche shook her head. “I don’t give them out. I saw my own star, soon after I got to Bordertown, and I made a wish on a whim, never expecting it to come true. I said, ‘I wish I could stay here, and have a good life, and keep studying the stars.’ And it came true. In a way.” She shrugged. “Last year, the stars directed me to Alaunus, and I showed him his star. Yesterday, they directed me to you.”
Alaunus lifted his head and stared at Allie. “She has a star, too? Could that be why my powers failed to work on her?”
“It makes sense,” Psyche said. “Your … charm … never worked on me, either. Allie, if I may ask, what’s your birthday?”
“September twenty-third. Why? You going to do my chart after all?”
“No. But you were born on the autumnal equinox. I was born on an equinox, and so was Alaunus—a day when night and day are in perfect balance, the same length, and we were each born at precisely the moment when day becomes night. A borderline time, a threshold time, a twilight time. What time were you born?”
“I don’t know exactly. Evening, I think.”
Psyche nodded. “Then you likely fit the pattern, too. Something about being born at that precise moment on that day—even in different years—brought us to the attention of … whatever’s up there, looking down on us. I’d hazard a guess that Alaunus’s wish-given powers don’t work on others like him, other children of the equinox. It’s a working hypothesis, at least.”
Allie frowned. “So, wait, how do you know he was born on the equinox? Do they have the same seasons over in elfy-welfy land?”
“Ah, no, Alaunus was mortal when he was born,” Psyche said. “His wish …”
Alaunus covered his face with his hands, and Allie laughed—she couldn’t help it. “Wait, you weren’t always an elf? You were a guy who wished to be an elf? How very Otherkin of you. And you gave me all that crap about how your kind are called Truebloods. Ha. Un-Trueblood more like it.”
“You’re so mean to me!” he said, uncovering his face. “No one is ever mean to me anymore!”
“Somebody oughta be.” Allie was pissed, and she was just getting warmed up. “If what you told me in that dream last night is true, you’re a walking, talking date-rape drug. The living embodiment of GHB in a bad Michael Jackson jacket, taking advantage of people. And now you’re crying about it? Boo-hoo, everyone loves you. I saw you in that club, girls hanging off you, guys buying you drinks—getting the total rock-star treatment, except you don’t have to actually do anything or have any talent. So what are you whining about?”
“Because I’m still so alone.” His voice was sufficiently miserable that Allie let her next line of attack die. “When I stood beneath my star, I was just a filthy human street kid, beneath notice, beneath contempt, ignored when I wasn’t being beaten—and I wished that everyone would love me. I transformed into this. An elf. A lovetalker—or something close enough. At first, it was a dream come true. Everyone loved having me in their company, and they were all willing to … do things for me.”
Alaunus picked at a bit of silver thread sticking out of the sleeve of his Ren faire–looking shirt, and Allie thought he was trying to avoid her gaze. “But something was wrong. The other el—the Truebloods—they’re very good to me. They adore me, they tell me their secrets, they show me their magics, but the truth is”—he slumped, shrinking down into himself—“I got to the point where I couldn’t stand the company of elves. I understand their language well enough—I guess that comes with this body—but I never get their jokes, if they are jokes, and they always talk about books, artists, musicians, people I’ve never heard of, and they just assume this shared knowledge, this weird, like, cultural heritage. I don’t have that, and being among them made me feel lonelier than ever. Sometimes the Truebloods I spent time with would make some gesture or say some phrase and look at me expectantly, and when I didn’t do whatever I was supposed to—make the secret sign, give them the special handshake, complete the famous line of poetry they were quoting—they’d just look at me, a little confused, and say my memory must have been affected by my passage through the Wall. So I stopped spending time with elves, started spending time with mortals, most of whom are half in love with elves anyway, but that doesn’t work too well, either. Humans never stop thinking of me as alien. They’ll pause in midconversation to explain things they think I won’t understand—what Sesame Street is, who President Nixon was, what the Apollo moon landings were—and that’s frustrating, so I snap at them and say I’m not an idiot, and they don’t even get annoyed with me, just apologetic, angry at themselves for making me mad.”
Now he looked up at Allie, and his eyes were wide and bright and almost blazing, and he said, “But at least they liked me. Their company was tolerable because of … well, the free drinks, and the free rent, and all the sex. Whereas you … you don’t like me at all. You mock me, laugh at me, dismiss me, no matter how hard I try. I wished to be loved, but I think I should have wished to be worthy of love.” He bowed his head. “I don’t want to be … this … anymore.”
“Eat a pear,” Allie said. “It’ll make you feel better.”
While he mournfully munched, Allie mused for a bit. “So what do you want to do? Can you get another wish? Wish yourself back to normal?”
Psyche shook her head. “Another star has not appeared for him. I don’t understand why they come, but I have no reason to think he’ll get another wish.”
And I’m not about to waste my wish turning him into a human again, she thought. He got himself into this. “The way I see it,” Allie said, “is you’ve got a magical problem. So maybe you should look for a magical solution.”
“Where? I can charm myself into the offices of the most powerful elves in Bordertown—they accept me as one of their own and find me endlessly fascinating—but magic here is so strange and unreliable, what good would it do? What if any attempted solution made things worse?” He took a ferocious bite from his pear.
“Okay. So go through the Wall.”
Alaunus stared at her, mouth open, bits of partially chewed pear showing. How can anybody find that charming? Allie thought. “You’re an elf, right? Or everybody thinks you are. You can do that whole elfy thing. Sure, you don’t know their knock-knock jokes or their legislative process, but you can charm your way past the Border guards. And magic is supposed to work better on the other side of the Wall. Go find the king or queen or whatever they’ve got over there and ask for help—hell, tell them you’re trapped in a Trueblood’s body and you want out. I’m sure they’ll get right on that. What’ve you got to lose?”
“They could kill me,” he said. “They could, I don’t know, turn me into a salamander. Turn me inside out. They could do anything!”
“Yeah, maybe … but before you get salamandered, you’d get to see what lies beyond the Border, w
ouldn’t you? How many guys born mortal get to do that?”
“I …” Alaunus looked at Psyche. “Can it work?”
“Let me examine your chart.” Psyche pulled a sheaf of pages down from one of her bookshelves. She sat on a stool at the drafting table and began poring over the sheets.
“Have you thought about your wish—” Alaunus began.
“Shhh!” Psyche said. “Quiet, please. Give me a moment.”
So Allie and Alaunus drank tea and eyeballed each other warily, and Allie tried to refrain from humming and tapping her foot. Finally Psyche said, “It’s impossible to predict what might happen if you try to cross the Border, as the magics preventing any penetration of the Realm beyond are too powerful, but it is definitely an auspicious day for a journey, Alaunus. I can say that. You will make it through Elfhaeme Gate unscathed, and the trajectory from there is promising.”
“I’ll do it.” He put down his teacup and stood, trying to go for the assured-confidence look, but with some trembly freak-out leaking from around the edges. “It will do me good to move on. And it will be an adventure.”
“You’re doing the right thing, Al,” Allie said. “This is the first non-dick move you’ve made, really. Come see my band play if you ever make it back this way. We should be huge by then.”
Alaunus nodded gravely and extended his hand. Allie shook it with a solemnity equal to his own, and Alaunus said, “I wish you the best,” apparently totally oblivious to the irony of that particular wording.
After he was gone, Allie flung herself down on the futon, exhausted by the whole exchange. “You ever think maybe you shouldn’t tell people about their wishes? Seems like they can make trouble.”
Psyche nodded. “Yes. But the stars compel me. I get my livelihood from them, and I’m unwilling to risk offending them. I’m sure they have their reasons. Would you like to come back to town with me? I can drop you off downtown while I go to my meetings.”
