It Gets Even Better

by Isabela Oliveira

  Humans are the barista’s favourites.

  Christopher walks into The Cafe Under the Hill at 9:35 on a Thursday morning, his time. He holds the door for a shadow, grins at a couple on their first date, and walks up to the counter. He moves with a grace and a confidence that is almost Fae-like, even as his kind smile betrays his humanity. His tight, short curls are a shock of blond against his warm brown skin, sitting like a crown against his temples.

  It is his first time here.

  “What can I get for you?” asks the cashier. She is here every day, and greets most guests with their usuals already rung up. Her goat-pupil eyes seem to spin as they take in their newest customer.

  “I’d like… A slice of carrot cake, please. And an iced latte.”

  “Want any flavouring in that?”

  Christopher takes his time answering that one, bushy brows scrunched up like caterpillars as he considers the question. “Is luck an option?” he asks finally.

  The cashier nods. “Of course!”

  A laugh explodes from the boy, who is probably a human twenty, twenty-one. His excitement is that of a child, regardless of his age. So many humans are delighted by anything even slightly out of the ordinary.

  “I’ll get that, then! Anything that helps with a happy ending. With soy? Or any non-dairy option. For here?”

  She types in what might be his order and what might be gibberish, or something else entirely in a language the Fair Folk have neglected to share. “That will be seven. And three pennies, if you have them. Older than ten years.”

  He takes a moment to count out exact coin. This cafe does not take card and does not give change.

  She takes it, popping a penny into her mouth and the rest of it into a drawer.

  “Oh! What’s the name for the order?”

  “Christopher,” says Christopher.

  The barista, midway through his latte, freezes. Their curls frizz with the tension, all standing on end. They turn to meet eyes with the cashier.

  Most people choose names that are obviously not theirs. That are nobody’s at all.

  “An interesting name,” the cashier gets out, shaking off her surprise.

  “Thanks!” says Christopher. “It’s mine.”

  The other patrons have started to shift, uncomfortable. It’s been so long since this happened. None of them have ever been around to see it.

  “Christopher,” calls out the one making the drinks. A bell tolls, although no one has moved to ring it.

  Do not give the baristas at The Cafe Under the Hill your True Name. Everyone knows that.

  Everyone, that is, but Christopher.

  “Thanks!” he says again, and takes his order to a table. He eats, seemingly oblivious to how everyone around him is pretending not to stare.

  Once he’s finished, he busses his plate and glass, and heads for the door with a wave.

  “Christopher,” says the cashier, and even though it is no one else’s name, every human and every creature flinches.

  All but Christopher.

  “Have a good one,” he says, and with a twinkle of his fingers he is out the door.

  He has left. He shouldn’t be able to, but he did so anyway.

  “We’re closed,” says the barista. No one moves.

  The cashier raises her voice. The lights flicker. “We are closed for the day!”

  Everyone scurries out, the spell-that-was-no-spell broken. With a wave of the barista’s hand, the door locks.

  The two Fae, who helped place the floorboards for this shop so long ago, who are indistinguishable from the roots of this place, stare at each other for a moment immeasurable.

  “But it was his name,” says one to the other. They know each other’s True Names, a marriage of trust and power as well as love. But even they do not speak them here, the traps they have set not clever enough to spare its creators if they slip up. They said them once, out loud to each other, far away from here, and then had to make do with compliments and endearments. That is how it is, for most Fae. Calling a lover by their name is as foolish as it is dangerous. Instead, they try to pack as much affection as they can into words that don’t really belong to them at all.

  “Darling,” says the cashier to the barista.

  It is not even the names that they crave. It is the intimacy, the trust.

  “Sweetheart,” replies Darling. “What happened?”

  It is the promise of forever.

  “I don’t understand,” says Sweetheart. “It was his True Name.”

  Darling reaches out, sending their power down past the floorboards, into the ground where their traps still glow, even after all this time. They are fine, as hungry and as patient as ever. It is not a problem with the traps.

  Sweetheart reaches up, makes sure every roof tile is still overlapping just so, checking for leaks and for secrets. Nothing is hiding, everything is hidden.

  There is nothing else they can do, with the information they have. The next day, the store is reopened. Only those who were there the day before know something has happened, and they don’t dare speak of it. For all that this cafe is a comfort and a port in a storm to some of them, they know that it is a place to visit and move on from, and none of them want to draw the wrong kind of attention lest the doors and windows cloud over and become a cage.

  Christopher doesn’t come back the next day, or the day after. But a week or a month later, he walks in with a friend. She has big eyes and clever hands and a haircut that says pixie but a height that says dryad, and she is none of these things at all — only human.

  “This is Abigail,” he says, and that is true.

  “It’s a pleasure to meet you,” Abigail says. “I’ve heard a lot about this place, I’m excited to finally be able to check it out.” This is also true.

  No trap springs. Abigail tips well, gets whipped cream on her nose when she sips at her hot chocolate, and laughs when Christopher points it out. They leave together, uncontested.

  Sweetheart pulls at her hair until the colour strips right out of it, leaving bits of blonde all over the floor. Darling sweeps it up with the cafe’s worn broom, humming something comforting for only Sweetheart to hear.

  Fae are not cruel, because cruel is a human word. It’s not that they long to see Christopher and Abigail suffer. It’s that there are rules, rules that even they have to follow, and these two have come into their space and broken them, and they do not know how or why.

  To understand, you have to look at the rules themselves, and ask yourself one very important question.

  What makes a name True?

  For most, it is in the gifting, the parent or maker looking at a being and giving them something without asking for anything in return. There is power in that, when it is done honestly. And most do not question this, even as they earn nicknames and accolades and move further and further away from that moment of naming.

  But for some, they look at that name and tear at it, pulling it apart like they are looking for the seams. For some, the name itself betrays something about a nature they do not wish to have. Something given freely, but not without cost, the name a summary and a symbol of everything in their life that was misunderstood at their beginning.

  Christopher was given a name that meant princess, and found himself longing to be a prince instead. So he reached deep into himself and delved for a name that felt right, a name that fit, like a shirt finally sitting on shoulders that had always felt too thin, or a chest that had always taken up a little too much space.

  Names have power, and so do words. To take an old name and declare it dead is to kill a past that was never really yours. It wasn’t something anyone did on purpose, but Christopher has always been the curious sort. When he first stumbled into the outer circles of the Fair Folk’s business, he wondered what that would mean for him, freshly named as if freshly born, bearing a name that is less a gift and more a reward for surviving. Survival he wears in the bruises on his knuckles and pressed into his ribs. He is curious an
d he is brave, brave to the point of foolishness, like any proper prince from once upon a time.

  So, he takes a chance, and introduces himself as Christopher.

  Things freely given leave paths connecting us all. Whether out of kindness or out of tricks, they leave openings, openings that can be exploited. To know someone’s True Name is to know someone’s true beginnings, after all. As if you were there at the moment of their naming, and so there to dictate their future too. But if that name has died, if that story has changed genres at the request of its hero… well. How does knowing someone’s new and truest name give you power over them, when it took such strength and power to claim it? When the whole point of it is to be Known?

  Christopher went into the woods and dug a hole and cast an old name into it, returned it to the earth even as he forged himself a new path. Abigail climbed the tallest of mountains and tossed her old name to the winds, let it be torn apart around her even as she donned her new mantle.

  The renaming is not new. No, humans have been doing that as long as they’ve existed, no matter what the history books say. The Fae have always delighted in it, come to consider those humans who claimed their own gender or decided to do away with the concept of it entirely to be closer to Fair than the rest. No, the renaming is not new. What is new is the deliberate way Christopher wears his journey, Abigail her triumph. What’s new is the openness.

  Humans have been finding new ways to break the old rules since the first one stumbled into a ring, slipped their way through the dirt, and found themselves under the hill. That, more than anything else, is what makes them human. The curiosity, the drive to change.

  Darling and Sweetheart have never seen it laid so bare before them, this phenomenon of humanness. The anger comes from an itch, an itch to understand without the knowledge of how to ask.

  Perhaps they would have learned on their own, in time. But that is not what happens. What happens is that Christopher and Abigail walk in a few days later, a new friend with a new name beside them.

  “Hello,” says Christopher, who orders for all three. “Instead of paying today, I thought we could trade.”

  Darling leans over the counter, close enough that Christopher can see the years in their pupils, like the rings of a tree. “What would you like to offer as trade?”

  “I can tell you how we did it,” says Christopher, because his kindness is a human’s kindness, and his curiosity is the kind that breaks things but also takes the time to learn how to put them back together again.

  They sit down around cups of coffee with luck mixed in, and Christopher and Abigail and Javier take turns talking about burials and Sweetheart and Darling hold hands as they listen, and when the humans leave and the shop is empty Darling turns to Sweetheart with a light in their eyes that brings to mind the revel they met at, how those bright eyes shone across a crowd and Sweetheart knew she would spend her whole existence following those particular stars, if Darling let her.

  The shop closes for a day. That is all they need.

  There is a cafe where the sun is always warm but never too bright, where the ice cubes don’t melt and the tea is never bitter. There is a hole underneath its floorboards, where certain things are buried. The owners wear nametags and love to call each other endearments, names like darling and sweetheart, but more than anything they love to call each other by their names, Arbutus and Orion, always said like it’s the first time they’ve ever gotten to address each other out loud.

  It’s said if you go there you will fall in love just by being near them, because some emotions are just too big for anyone to keep inside their own skin.

  Abigail and Javier still visit often, and they are never asked to pay — although they often do anyway, with stories more often than any coin. And of course, Christopher has become a fixture of the place. Arbutus always greets him by name when he walks through the door, and Orion thanks him by it, too, when they hand him his order.

  He says their names like they’re old friends, and Orion thinks they understand why the Fair Folk have always been so fascinated by humans, as if stealing them away like that will help to figure them out.

  “To think,” Arbutus says with a smile. “All they had to do was ask.”

  Humans and Fae share a certain cleverness. The only difference is that Fae hint at it while humans delight in showing it. Arbutus cannot begrudge them this. After all, so many of them do so with a smile.

  Orion nods, and kisses their lover, and says her name like a promise of forever (which it is).

  If you find The Cafe Under the Hill, let yourself walk in and approach the counter. The new cashier will greet you with a wave, will recommend anything as long as it’s got carrot or luck in it, and he won’t eat the pennies, but if you want, you can tip him with a story.

  As long as it has a happy ending. He’s rather fond of those.

  This story was first published in Vulture Bones (2018).

  Ziggy Schutz (she/her/he/him) is a queer and disabled author writing out of the Pacific Northwest. She finds herself drawn to fantastical stories and hopeful endings, and is always searching for the moments between, where he can catch his breath. She can be found on Twitter @ziggytschutz.

  Content notes can be found at the end of the book.

  (don’t you) love a singer

  by TS Porter

  Reality bucked and twisted. The Sweet Crescendo’s deck dropped out from beneath Kait’s feet and then rose up to smack her tumbling into a wall, which fell away from her arms as she fell toward it. Another twist, and she was thrown back into a heap on the heaving deck. The entire left side of her body ached from the bad landing. There were screams, and the crashes of cargo crates splitting as space and time conspired to tear the ship apart.

  This was how it happened. This was how it ended, just another interstellar freighter lost in subspace with all hands. The lead chanter was down — dead or just injured, Kait couldn’t tell. There was blood, the scent of it in the air and the red splash of it in an uneven arc across a twisting wall. Or was that the floor?

  Kait briefly caught sight of Maya, her mouth open in a panicked scream. She reached for her but space twisted again, violently, and Maya was gone. Kait couldn’t see Danicai anywhere.

  Another gravitational wave, and the entire ship squealed under the pressure. The terrible sound arrived in Kait’s ears uneven, shifted red and blue. One of the pilots’ safety harnesses failed, and they were thrown out of the high bird’s nest to fall in uneven fits and jerks toward the bucking deck.

  This was how they died. This was why Kait’s renny had tried her entire youth to steer her away from spaceships and singers. The lead chanter was down, and their second wasn’t taking up the job. Kait could not stand, could not stomp to keep time, but she managed to brace herself in the crack between two cargo crates. She breathed deep, filling her lungs from the bottom of her boots up to the back of her throat, and slammed her right fist against the twisting floor. The ringing sound carried out through the ship. Two, three, four, and she opened her mouth.

  “Weigh heigh, and up she rises!” Kait belted out, with all the force she could project. It was one of the oldest of shanties, from back when the ships it was sung on were wooden and sailed across oceans of water.

  “Weigh heigh, and up she rises,” a few other voices answered. A few more stomping feet or pounding hands joined her in keeping the beat. They were all off-rhythm, with spacetime twisting around them.

  “Weigh heigh, and up she rises!”

  “Early in the morning!” More voices, gathering, strengthening.

  Kait could do this. She might be a new hand, one of the most junior singers aboard with only six months under her belt, but the way her renny told the story she’d been born singing. Renny sang around the house, and Kait couldn’t remember a time when she didn’t have a tune on her tongue, when she wasn’t adding her own verses to the classic songs.

  She’d always loved to watch the ships come in. Sailing crews had seemed larger tha
n life to her. Whenever they could, Kait and Maya would go down to the shipyards and watch the singers disembark from their spaceships, exulting in full-throated song. They were barrel-chested, their voices bigger and stronger than other people’s, their friendships tighter. They laughed and sang and held each other close, and it made Kait’s chest hurt with want to watch them.

  “Don’t you go and love a singer,” Renny would warn her when e caught her at it — her beautiful renny with er often-broken heart. E didn’t follow er own advice. The lovers e brought home, now and then, were singers more often than not. Some of them could be persuaded to teach Kait new shanties, new harmonies. They taught her breathing exercises to expand her lung capacity, and how to sing at volume without harming her voice, and she’d practiced endlessly.

  It wasn’t the singers Kait loved — she’d figured out early that she was ace, and never wanted anything to do with romance — it was the singing. She’d been born full of song, and she wasn’t letting the Sweet Crescendo go. Not without a fight.

  “Drunken Sailor” were the typical words to this shanty, but those irreverent lyrics wouldn’t be right. Kait couldn’t gently poke fun at anyone, not when she didn’t know who on the crew was injured, or even if Maya and Danicai were alive or dead.

  Maya had been her best friend since their school days. They understood each other like no one else ever had, and could have entire conversations in duet, much to the annoyance and confusion of their classmates. When Kait had proposed that they hire on to a freighter company, she did it in song, and Maya had taken her hand and harmonized with an argument she’d been composing to convince Kait of the very same thing. They’d never considered going without each other.

  She’d been so scared when Danicai had joined her in orbit around Maya, loving her in ways Kait didn’t. She’d trusted Maya not to leave her, but she’d been afraid that Danicai would try to steal all of Maya’s love and attention from her. Instead Danicai had taken them as the unit they were and twined both voice and life around them to gently and sweetly strengthen Maya and Kait’s endless duet into a tercet. Kait had gained another friend as dear to her as the breath in her lungs.