by Ari Marmell
“You lose half a foot and change,” Pete said, looking at me—down at me—suspiciously. “And your face is a little off. Your cheeks are narrower, and your nose is more hooked.”
I nodded. “They tell me I got ‘royal features,’ whatever the hell that means. Say it makes me resemble my cousin.”
“You coulda warned me, Mick.”
Honestly, I’d forgotten all about it, but what I said was, “How much fun would that be? C’mon, let’s get walking.”
The hole in the soil that we’d come from just vanished soon as we took our first steps. It didn’t even fill in, exactly, so much as simply stop being a hole. Just another patch of earth, until someone came along who knew enough to try and open it.
You never wanna run roughshod over toadstools and growths of that sort in the Otherworld; you never know who might own ’em, or be linked to ’em, or occasionally even live in ’em. It was easy enough for me to march through the grass, since I could feel where it was okay to step and where it wasn’t, but poor Pete had to keep a watch on his feet. It got even harder when we reached the thicker grasses, and I took his hand to help guide him around some of the less obvious hazards such as burrows, tree roots, and holly bushes, and—as we passed the copses and mini-orchards—ghillie dhu or huldra dens. I saw him glance up once, eying the lush, red apples, but he set his jaw and looked away before I had to remind him.
It was when he directed his attention back downward that he spotted one of Elphame’s other little peculiarities.
“Uh, Mick? You don’t have a shadow…”
I smiled. “Neither do you.”
He actually spun, tripping over his feet, as though to catch it before it escaped. “What? Where…?”
“Living things—well, animals and people—don’t cast shadows here, Pete. You never noticed before?”
“I guess not,” he admitted. “I usually do my best to avoid anyone else while I’m here, and I’m usually trying to pick my way through all this without your help. Suppose I just never looked at my own shadow. Or, uh, my lack of my own.”
“Huh. Not real observant, Pete. Good thing you haven’t made detective yet.” I snickered again at his glare.
“So is it like this everywhere?” he asked me.
“Nah. Different regions of the Otherworld have different traits, same as your world. Geography and weather, sure, but also little details like this. So locally, yeah, no shadows. Elsewhere…” I shrugged. Then, “I should say, locally depending on whose lands you’re in.” I pointed.
He followed my gesture, over and up. Far ahead, beyond and to the right of the city that was my destination, the sky went grim. Shiner-dark clouds bubbled and swirled, filthy bathwater draining from a tub, casting that corner of the sky in a sickly yellow-grey. The terrain grew flat, as the land slid into and drowned beneath an ugly marsh—a swampy “echo” of the lands around Lake Michigan.
“It’s different there, I take it?”
“Very,” I said. “And trust me, you don’t wanna find out firsthand.”
“So whose lands are those?”
“Unseelie.”
We kept walking. Right about the time we reached an actual road—well, a broad trail, mostly well-trampled dirt—Pete stopped. “This’ll do.” He tilted his head toward a distant wood of ash trees, a lot less dense (and less dark) than the one where we’d appeared. Big enough to run around in, easy enough to spot from a distance, and not likely to have too many of the wilder Fae living in it. It was a good pick; I wondered if he’d used it before.
“Okay,” I said. “I’ll be back in three days.” We shook hands. “Be careful, Pete.”
“Always am.” He shrugged his pack into a more comfortable position and headed away. I stood and fretted for a few minutes; if the place sounds like just an exaggeration of the natural world to you, take a minute to picture the exaggerated predators, then add a bunch of unfriendly, uncivilized Fae to the mix, and stir. But Pete could take care of himself, and he’d done this a buncha times before, so eventually I tore myself away and started down the road.
It wasn’t all that far to go—as I said, a few miles or so—but nevertheless, I was glad when I came across the tracks, rails of battered brass stretching off into the distance behind me, and on into the city in front. I decided to wait, see if I could bum a lift off a passing train; and if not, well, I was still close enough to walk to civilization before dark.
I came up lucky. It wasn’t even a full hour, and I’d only been forced into one annoying conversation with a passing rube on his way to the big city—a coblynau, or what you might know better as a knocker or a kobold—before I heard the roar of the oncoming wheels.
It rumbled around the bend, slowing and shrieking its whistle as it came up on the road, and any of you woulda known it instantly for what it was. It had no smokestack, since we obviously need to use methods other’n steam engines, but otherwise the shape was familiar. The engine was a huge monstrosity of brass, the wheels and couplings of bronze, the cowcatcher a golden filigree clearly meant for ostentation, not any actual use. (And this wasn’t even a real expensive engine. I’ve seen ’em constructed entirely of gold and silver, hauling cars of ivory.) The cars on this one were just plain wood, with brass trimming and fittings, trundling along after the engine. Clack-clack, clack-clack, it passed me, blasting winds strong enough, even as it slowed, to whip my coat around and almost knock me staggering. I tensed in concentration, collecting shreds of ambient luck—here, in Elphame, I could do it quick without pulling my wand—and then reached out and snagged the railing as the last car lumbered by. Smooth as you please, I swung up and around, cleared the brass safety chain, and settled down cross-legged on the wooden platform. It was just large enough to get comfortable, and if I didn’t actually open the door and slip inside the car, the conductors might not even notice me.
I leaned back against the frame, watching the scenery whip by, snickering at the enraged squeals as some of the smaller denizens of the wild leapt clear of the oncoming juggernaut. And gradually, I also began to hear—and very, very faintly, to smell—the labors of the workers below, even through the careful seals meant to separate them from the passengers. And even though I hadn’t seen ’em in years, I could easily imagine the cramped, dim, sour lower decks, of the engine and of every car; the scores and scores of hired brounies and indentured goblins hunched over their benches, hauling on their “oars”: thick wooden shafts attached to the rolling wheels. And all to the steady, pounding beat, piped to them from the drummer stationed behind the engineer.
As I said, methods other’n steam engines. A few of the fancier engines actually ran on magic, but those were a lot more expensive, and in a culture where major fees are paid in favors and boons, everyone’s a miser.
I closed my eyes, pondering on that culture, listening to the roar and the whistle of the train. And the Otherworld Chicago drew closer.
* * *
Which is, I figure, as convenient a segue as any to something you probably oughta know about us—the Fae in general, I mean—before I get any further.
Some of you are already wondering, why a train? If we don’t use steam power, why model the engine after a locomotive? It ain’t exactly the most efficiently designed vehicle for manual power, y’know?
And the answer is, we built it that way because you did. The thing about us is, we’re mimics. It’s instinctive, part of who—what—we are. Even though a few of the Fae races actually predate you mugs, we reflect you. We can’t help ourselves.
Individually, it don’t mean much; it’s why I’m pretty keen at blending in with you, but that’s about it. Culturally, though? Heh.
You’ve read the faerie tales; you’re expecting a city of castles with towering minarets and flapping banners, knights on horseback, arching halls with drinking and dancing before the throne, and all that, ain’t you?
Horsefeathers. Yeah, some of our cities kinda looked like that, back in the Dark Ages, and maybe—maybe—a couple of the
oldest ones in Europe still do. (I ain’t been back to the Old World since before the American Revolution, so I can’t say for sure.) But everywhere else? Nah. Mimics. All tribal and covered in woad in pre-Roman Ireland, gathered in city-states and temples atop mountains in Ancient Greece, and today…
Today every city of ours is as different from each other as every city of yours. Today, we’re “modern.” Hip to the new age, or at least to the age of a couple years ago. Today, there’s a reason I friggin’ hate shuffling Sideways, especially here in goddamn Chicago.
I hopped off the train at another slow curve, once we were inside the city proper; no reason to wait for the station and risk being spotted. The street under my Oxfords was paved in bricks—bricks of a thousand different sizes, shapes, and colors, carefully fitted together in peculiar patterns to form a (more or less) smooth surface for wheels and feet. Most were cracked, or singed, or blackened, because here, every brick that cobbled every road came from a home or building that had been destroyed, torn down, or abandoned throughout your Chicago’s history. Streets paved by fragments of the past, people’s most painful moments scuffed and dirtied beneath our feet.
Tells you something about us, don’t it?
I stood on a corner and took a good, hard look around, reacquainting myself with our shadow of your city. Trees grew everywhere, even in the center of town—again, mostly oak, ash, and hawthorn, with sporadic fruit trees to liven the place up. A few of the trees stood wild, but most actually formed parts of the various structures. In one neighborhood, a thick tree might form the central support of a house otherwise built normally of lumber and brick. Over there, an abnormally large ash—impossibly large, for your world, just kinda unusual here—actually was a small apartment building, with doors built into the trunk at various heights, and a few extra rooms tacked on to the larger branches. But those were the cheap homes, often surrounded by slumping tenements that woulda been right at home in your world.
No Fae lived there, of course. We didn’t need to, and wouldn’t lower ourselves. But others…
All these were just the outliers, though, the fringes, the “bad” parts of town. Closer to the heart, where the rich and the powerful lived—and this being the seat of the Seelie Court in the region, that meant just about everyone—that was where the town showed its true shape.
Mounds of grassy earth, hillocks and knolls, sat in neat rows along the sides of the brick-paved streets, filling the air with the scent of growing things—and, on occasion, dying ones. Because that’s who the aes sidhe are, remember, what makes us comfortable: “the People of the Mounds.” In each stood doors, some wood, a few stone, mostly glass in this “modern” era, leading into the tunnels beneath. A few of the fancier ones had revolving doors, or extra doors, or doors surrounded by great marble pillars—holding up overhangs of stone or more earth—and manned by doormen in formal, Victorian-age coats.
But those mounds were just the lower floors. From their crowns rose the rest of our great structures. Again, the shorter ones, including most of the government buildings, were granite or marble, combining the worst of classical ostentation with the most banal facades of your contemporary municipal institutions. But some were true skyscrapers, rising scores of stories toward the sunless sky; and these were made mostly of glass, magically reinforced to bear the weight, or supported by impossibly tall and narrow trees that formed the corner pillars of the monoliths. They gleamed against the sky, glowing and reflecting in the diffuse daylight, columns of static, artificial fire.
All the look of today, with all the efficiency of yesterday. We could teach you a thing or two about wasted effort, yeah?
Fae of all sorts strode the sidewalks, beneath the shadows of the great edifices: my people, the aes sidhe; impossibly handsome and repulsively sleazy gancanagh, dreaming of their next prize dame, or the beautiful and equally nasty leanan sidhe, making equally nasty plans for unsuspecting men; squat and knotted coblynau, miners and construction workers on their way home from work; equally squat but not quite so ugly dvergr craftsmen, beards singed with magic and fire; and a dozen more besides. Men and women, young and old (or at least young-looking and old-looking), all dressed in suits and coats or skirts and blouses same as you’d see in your Chicago, but accessorized with the sporadic leather jerkin, bronze vambraces—even, on occasion, a full-on cuirass or breastplate.
Pretty much everyone was packing, too, for ceremony and style if not actual use. Rapiers, broadswords, and daggers were common, for tradition’s sake; semi-autos and revolvers and Tommy guns for more practical use. Of course, their guts were magic, rather’n gunpowder and slides and springs. Most were forged of mystically reinforced bronze, brass, or, on occasion, silver. (Steel don’t hurt us, but we can’t exactly make the stuff easily, can we?) A lot of folks carried wands, too. In a few cases, the gats were also wands. Rumor has it the dvergr who first created that combination is so rich now, he occasionally hires down-and-out kings to chauffeur him around, just to say he can.
Traffic clattered and clumped down the roads between those sidewalks: horse-drawn carriages, usually black, with silver trim, and white-wall rubber tires. We don’t have flivvers here yet; the dvergar are still trying to figure out how to hammer the magic into the right shapes and sizes to make ’em work, without ’em costing more’n their worth. So for now, coaches. Some of the “horses” pulling ’em might even have just been normal animals, too.
Of course, there’s only a few thousand of us throughout the entirety of “our” Chicago, so you’d expect traffic to be pretty sparse, even in a city smaller’n yours. And you’d be wrong. Because there are others here, others who walk the streets and sidewalks, others who live in those cheap tenements and the flimsiest of treehouses.
Humans. There’s more humans here than Fae. Men, women, children, who got lost and stumbled into the wrong cave, or arch of ivy, or toadstool ring, and wound up here. Who made ill-thought bargains, or tried to imprison one of us, without thinking through the consequences. Who caught the fancy of a Lord or Lady of the Courts, one who don’t take “No” for an answer. Who were swapped for changelings and grew up here, never knowing anything else.
Doesn’t matter how they got here, really. What matters is they never got the warning I gave Pete. If you’re human, once you eat the food of Elphame, or drink of our waters or our wine, or accept a gift from the Fae of the Courts, you’re sunk. It’s drug and dream all mashed together. Time goes by, and you don’t notice, ’cause you don’t age. (Least most of you mugs don’t. Kids sometimes grow up before they go all stagnant.) Long as you keep eating and drinking, it’s all euphoria and bliss—and ignorance and obedience. At night you dance and sing, and sometimes make all kindsa whoopee, for your Lords’ and Ladies’ amusement; during the day, you fetch and carry and tote and labor at their whim. And you never know, because you’re too busy being happy.
The happiest slaves in two worlds.
And yeah, I had my own share, before I left the Court. I don’t now—I wouldn’t now, even if I came back; I’ve gotten to know you people too well—but I don’t hate myself for doing it back then, even though you probably think I should.
It’s just who we are.
Welcome to the Chicago Otherworld, the closest I’ve come to “home” in over a hundred years.
I couldn’t fucking wait to leave.
CHAPTER EIGHT
“Whaddaya mean, two months?!”
I was shouting, more because it seemed the kinda situation where I was expected to shout than because I was actually all that shocked, but you’d never have known it. I was standing at one of the receptionists’ desks, a big oak monstrosity in the main chamber of City Hall, and the volume around me made Pete’s precinct look—or sound, more accurately—like a church in silent prayer. Fae of every kind I’d seen on the street, and a dozen more I hadn’t, rushed past me in every sort of hurry, yelling and calling and grousing at people who weren’t doing whatever the yeller/caller/grouser thought they should be. D
ull-eyed humans meandered by, carrying boxes of files; pixies more civilized than the ones I’d seen out in the fields (you could tell ’cause these wore clothes) zipped along their way, delivering various urgent messages; aes sidhe in trench coats and spriggans in police uniforms dragged goblins, boggarts, and clurichauns to or from interrogation rooms. Some were to be imprisoned or indentured to pay for whatever damages they’d done, others questioned in hopes of learning whatever their Unseelie masters were scheming. Police station, courtroom (and Court), and political offices, all rolled together into a marble-and granite-walled building right in the heart of the city.
It sounded as though someone put together a friggin’ war, then forgot to do anything with it.
The short woman behind the desk, a smartly dressed leprechaun with gold-rimmed glasses and holly-berry hair, wasn’t at all impressed by my raised voice, either. “Indeed, Judge Sien Bheara’s schedule has no openings until late May. And I fear Chief Laurelline is even busier. If you’d care to make an appointment…?”
“Not really, no.”
Honestly, I hadn’t expected much better, not when trying to see the King or Queen of… Huh.
Okay, quick rundown for those of you who don’t know your Fae mythology. The ancient Europeans divvied us up into “trooping Fae” who gathered and traveled in groups, and “solitary Fae” who, uh, didn’t. It’s the trooping Fae who formed the cities and societies that you find in the Otherworld today.
And most of those civilized (hah!) Fae are split into two factions. The Seelie Court are the ones that most mortals tend to think of these days. We’re the ones with the intricate laws of honor and behavior, the ones bound by pact and tradition and our word, should we choose to give it. Not all of us are nice—some are downright evil—but as a group, we don’t wish humans any particular harm, and a number of Seelie Fae can be helpful and friendly if approached right. (Read: bribed with the traditional offerings.)