by Borderland
“No wonder you thought maybe you had the blood,” Wicker says at last.
“Or a curse,” Gray mumbles, without looking at her.
“Is that why you didn’t tell me?”
Gray nods. Wicker thinks of all the stories of cursed beasts wandering the Borderlands, were-wolves and were-panthers and demons and dust-devils, and is not surprised that her friend kept her Change a secret. The bigots of Elftown used to say that the cursed beasts of the Borders were the result of human and elvin coupling, that any halfie could turn into one.
Wicker is uncharacteristically quiet a long time. Then she says, “You know, Gray, turning into a were-pussycat isn’t exactly the most horrible thing I’ve ever heard of.”
Gray turns to her and begins to laugh. There are worlds of relief in the human girl’s eyes.
“So let’s go find out what you really are,” Wicker says. She rises and offers Gray her hand.
The elvin mage is not an impressive sight. She is blind in one eye and is allergic to cats. She sneezes and sneezes as she sits holding Gray’s hand, studying her face with her good eye.
“No, you haven’t got the blood,” she says. She stands to dismiss them, drapes a garish polyester shawl about her shoulders.
“Wait a minute,” Wicker says. “That’s all? For all that money?”
“What do you want, a song-and-dance routine?” the old elf sniffs. “What more do you want to know?”
“Who her parents are. Why she turns into a cat. How do we make it stop?"
“You didn’t pay me that much,” the old woman grumbles. But she takes Gray’s hand again. There is a burnt, magicky smell, and the old woman sighs.
“All rather boring really. She is the child of a human businessman and his wife. The business is cloth. The curse was placed by a true blood, of course; an enemy of the father’s. Who, I cannot say.” She sneezes again. “You haven’t got the money for that kind of spell search. It wasn’t a very competent spell, however. It is a spell for a Changeling; it doesn’t specify Changing into what. It should have been more specific. A pussycat.. . Hmmpf. The spell became effective when the child came to the Borderlands; it will stop when she leaves again. It is that simple. Now go and leave an old woman in peace; this is really not very interesting at all.”
Wicker opens her mouth again, but Gray stops her. “Wicker, let’s go,” she says quietly. The excitement, tension that had animated her as they’d approached the old mage’s shop perched in the hillside above a narrow Elftown street, is gone. She sags like a tire that has lost all its air.
Elf children are playing a game with sticks and hoops and will-o-the-wisps on the street. The air is bright and crisp, clouds like fat sheep race across the sky, and Wicker feels her heart lighten with the beauty of the towers and spires of Bordertown laid out in the valley below them. Beside her Gray walks with her head bowed, her shoulders hunched, oblivious to the beautiful day. They take a long, winding road with many steps down to Trader’s Heaven.
“I don’t get it, kid,” Wicker says. “You know the truth now. You're not a bastard, you have perfectly fine, respectable parents. Your mother didn’t mess around like everyone said. You can go back to Stratton-on-whateveritwas and everything will be fine. You did what you came to the Borderlands to do.”
“Ummm.”
“And once you leave you don’t have to be Were-Pussy anymore. You can have a normal life. Doesn’t that make you happy?”
“Ummm.”
“Stop saying ‘ummm’ and tell me what’s wrong.”
Gray stops in front of a trader’s stall and fingers long, embroidered scarves of elvin-red silk.
“I thought maybe ... I was magic. That I was different. I am different. I never fit in in Stratton-on-the-Pike before, I’m not going to fit in now. Only now I don’t even have an excuse."
Wicker is looking at her like she almost understands, but not quite. “But you don’t have to be different now.
You don’t have to go through the Change anymore or be a cat ever again.”
“But”—now Gray flushes with embarrassment—“but I kind of liked being a cat. . .. It’s the only magic I’ve ever had. . .
Wicker is thoughtful. “I suppose ... I suppose you could just stay in Bordertown then. Nothing would change.”
“Except Sammy knows, and—”
“And Farrel Din is never going to let me play in his club ever again, I know. What a mess those punks make of it! Oh gods.” She flushes, too, a bright red stain across her pale elvin skin. “Well, we were the hottest act in Bordertown, if only for a night, kid. That’s something to be proud of.”
“Yeah.”
“. . . .and how do we follow up that act?”
“Yeah.”
They walk through the columned arcade of Heaven between exotic elvin goods and the more practical merchandise imported up from the World, ignoring sales pitches and come-ons from bored shopboys. The sun is warm outside the eastern door, and they sink down onto the steps, luxuriating in the unseasonable heat, passing a bag of fried potato skins back and forth with greasy fingers.
To the north, the green glitter of the Border shimmers in the Hills, beyond the gray suburbs and the pearly towers of Dragon’s Tooth mansions. Wicker looks up at it thoughtfully; Gray stares at the Border wistfully.
“You can still go to the Elflands,” she blurts out finally, bitterly. “You can still go.”
“Not alone,” Wicker says, surprised. “I wouldn’t dare! Besides, that was just talk . . . we’d never really have gone ... I didn’t really mean to . .Her words die under Gray’s withering gaze. Maybe Gray really had meant to. God.
She had dreamed of Elfland all her life, was proud of her blood, never dyed her hair human-colored like I he other girls in the crummy section of Elftown where she’d grown up, “gave herself airs” perhaps, as her parents always said, “like an elvin princess.” She loved living at the edge of the Border, so close to the promise of magic. Real magic. But to actually go there . . .
Who knew what lay behond the Border? Who knew what would become of a girl born and bred in Border-town? It had taken all her courage to leave her family’s crowded house for the flat in Fare-you-well Park. Yet Gray had had the guts to come all the way from Stratton-on-whatsit. And she was such a skinny little thing, not an ounce of the true blood in her. . . .
Wicker makes up her mind in the sudden way she has, already planning what to take and what to discard, already moving herself mentally out of Fare-you-well Park for good.
“But you’ll have to come too, of course,” she says to her dumbfounded friend. “No way I’m doing this alone. 1 may be crazy, but I’m not that crazy.” She’ll have to get Gray some clothes, teach her some elvin manners. “On bother, such a lot to do. . .
“I can’t go across the Border,” Gray is saying irritably, like she is talking to an idiot child. “You know that. I haven’t got the blood. They won’t let me through.”
“Well of course you can’t,” Wicker says, distracted, thinking of the terrific farewell party they’ll throw down in the old city—at the Wheat Sheaf, damn Farrel Din anyway—before they go. “We’ll have to cross the Border when you’re a cat, of course.”
Wicker is staring at her openmouthed.
“Now what’s the matter? I thought you wanted to go?”
“I do! I do! I never thought of that! Do you think we really can? Do you think it will work? Do you really
want to?”
By the gods, the girl is practically babbling. Now Wicker talks to Gray as if she’s the idiot child, puts an arm around her shoulder, and steers her down the hill toward Soho.
“Well of course we can. We can do anything. We’re the hottest team in Bordertown after all. Only . . .”
“Only what?”
“Only don’t tell your boyfriend, okay?”
But of course she tells him. She can’t just leave without saying good-bye to Sammy.
He is sitting on the roof of the Lightworks, lookin
g down on the crumbling roofs of the old city. Gray sits beside him, the wind blowing through her short hair and chaffing her cheeks. He has a book in his hands, three knives in his pockets, a flask of Brigot beside him. She’s going to miss him. Even if he is a bigot and a bully.
She doesn’t know what to say. They are silent a long time.
They are facing north, looking out over the city. In the distance is the rise of Elftown to the west, Dragon’s Tooth Hill across the Mad River to the east. Beyond them the Elflands shimmer in the morning sun.
He looks up at her as she stands. She still doesn’t know what to say. She takes one of his cold hands in hers, turns it over, kisses the palm, and places it back on his lap again. His eyes are dark and wide.
“Take care of yourself, kid,” he says as she turns to go—or at least she thinks he’s said it. He’s just sitting there, unmoving, staring off at the far hills over the Border.
STICK
Charles de Lint
Then to the Maypole hast away For ’tis now our holiday.
—from “Staines Morris,” English traditional
Stick paused by his vintage Harley at the sound of a scuffle. Squinting, he looked for its source. The crumbling blocks of Soho surrounded him. Half-gutted buildings and rubble-strewn lots bordered either side of the street. There could be a hundred pairs of eyes watching him—from the ruined buildings, from the rusted hulks of long abandoned cars—or there could be no one. There were those who claimed that ghosts haunted this part of Soho, and maybe they did, but it wasn’t ghosts that Stick was hearing just now.
Some Bloods out Pack-bashing. Maybe some of the Pack out elf-bashing. But it was most likely some Rats—human or elfin, it didn’t matter which—who’d snagged themselves a runaway and were having a bit of what they thought was fun.
Runaways gravitated to Bordertown from the outside world, particularly to Soho, and most particularly to this quarter, where there were no landlords and no rent. Just the scavengers. The Rats. But they could be the worst of all.
Putting his bike back on its kickstand, Stick pocketed the elfin spell-box that fueled it. Lubin growled softly from her basket strapped to the back of the bike—a quizzical sound.
“Come on,” Stick told the ferret. He started across the street without looking to see if she followed.
Lubin slithered from the basket and crossed the road at Stick’s heels. She was a cross between a polecat and a ferret, larger than either, with sharp pointed features and the lean build of the weasel family. When Stick paused in the doorway of the building from which the sounds of the scuffle were coming, she flowed over the toes of his boots and into its foyer, off to one side. Her hiss was the assailants’ first hint that they were no longer alone.
They were three Bloods, beating up on a small unrecognizable figure that was curled up into a ball of tattered clothes at their feet. Their silver hair was dyed with streaks of orange and black; their elfin faces, when they looked up from their victim to see Stick standing in the doorway, were pale, skin stretched thin over high-boned features, silver eyes gleaming with malicious humor. They were dressed all of a kind—three assembly line Bloods in red leather jackets, frayed jeans, T-shirts and motorcycle boots.
“Take a walk, hero,” one of them said.
Stick reached up over his left shoulder and pulled out a sectional staff from its sheath on his back. With a sharp flick of his wrist, the three two-foot sections snapped into a solid staff, six feet long.
“I don’t think so,” he said.
“He don’t think so,” the first of the Bloods mocked.
“This here’s our meat,” a second said, giving their victim another kick. He reached inside his jacket, his hand reappearing with a switchblade. Grinning, he thumbed the button to spring it open.
Knives appeared in the hands of the other two—one from a wrist sheath. Stick didn’t bother to talk. While they postured with their blades, he became a sudden blur of motion. The staff spun in his hands, leaving broken wrists and airborne switchblades in its wake. A moment later, the Bloods were clutching mangled wrists to their chests. Stick wasn’t even winded.
He made a short feint with the staff and all three Bloods jumped as though they’d been struck again. When he stepped toward their victim, they backed away.
“You’re dead,” one of them said flatly. “You hear me, you shit-faced—”
Stick took a quick step toward them and they fled. Shaking his head, he turned to look at where Lubin was snuffling around their prize.
It was a girl, and definitely a runaway, if the ragged clothes were anything to go by. Considering current Soho fashion, that wasn’t exactly a telling point. But her being here . . . that was another story. She had fine pale features and spiked hair a mauve she was never born with.
Stick crouched down beside her, one hand grasping his staff and using it for balance. “You okay?” he asked.
Her eyelids flickered, then her silver eyes were looking into his.
“Aw, shit,” Stick said.
No wonder those Bloods’d had a hard-on for her. If there was one thing they hated more than the Pack, it was a halfling. She wasn’t really something he had time for either.
“Can you stand?" he asked.
A delicate hand reached out to touch his. Pale lashes fluttered ingenuously. She started to speak, but then her eyes winked shut and her head drooped against the pile of rags where she’d been cornered by the Bloods.
“Shit!” Stick muttered again. Breaking down his staff, he returned it to its sheath. Lubin growled and he gave her a baleful look. “Easy for you to side with her,” he said as he gathered the frail halfie in his arms. “She’s probably related to you as well as the Bloods.”
Lubin made querulous noises in the back of her throat as she followed him back to the bike.
“Yeah, yeah, I’m taking her already.”
As though relieved of a worry, the ferret made a swift ascent onto the Harley’s seat and slipped into her basket. Stick reinserted his spell-box, balanced his prize on the defunct gas tank in front of him, and kicked the bike into life. He smiled. The bike’s deep-throated roar always gave him a good feeling. Putting it into gear, he twisted the throttle and the bike lunged forward. The girl’s body was only a vague weight cradled against his chest. The top of her head came to the level of his nose.
For some reason, he thought she smelled like apple blossoms.
She woke out of an unpleasant dream to a confused sense of dislocation. Dream shards were superimposed on unfamiliar surroundings. Grinning Blood faces, shattered like the pieces of a mirror, warred with a plainly furnished room and a long-haired woman who was sitting on the edge of the bed where she lay. She closed her eyes tightly, opened them again. This time only the room and the woman were there.
“Feeling a little rough around the edges?” the woman asked. “Try some of this.”
Sitting up, she took the tea. “Where am I? The last thing I remember . . . there was this man.. .
“Stick.”
“That’s his name?”
The woman nodded.
“Is he . .Your man, she thought. “Is he around?” “Stick’s not much for company.”
“Oh. I just wanted to thank him.”
The woman smiled. “Stick’s great for making enemies, but not too good at making friends. He sticks—” she smiled “—to himself mostly.”
“But he helped me. . .
“I didn’t say he wasn’t a good man. I don’t think anyone really knows what to make of him. But he’s got a thing for runaways. He picks them up when they’re in trouble—and usually dumps them off with me.”
“I’ve heard his name.. .
“Anyone who lives long enough in Bordertown eventually runs into him. He’s like Farrel Din—he’s just always been around.” The woman watched her drink her tea in silence for a few moments, then asked: “Have you got a name?”
“Manda. Amanda Woodsdatter.”
“Any relation to Maggi
e?”
“I’m her little sister.”
The woman smiled. “Well, my name’s Mary and this place you’ve been dumped is the home of the Horn Dance.”
“No kidding? Those guys that ride around with the antlers on their bikes?”
“That’s one way of describing us, I suppose.”
“Jeez, I . .
Looking at Mary, Manda’s first thought had been that she’d ended up in some old hippie commune. There were still a few of them scattered here and there through Bordertown and in the Borderlands. Mary’s long blonde hair—like one of the ancient folk singers Manda had seen pictures of—and her basic Whole Earth Mother wardrobe of a flowered ankle-length dress, feather earrings and the strands of multicolored beaded necklaces around her neck, didn’t exactly jibe with what Manda knew of the Horn Dance.
In ragged punk clothing, festooned with patches and colored ribbons, their bikes sporting stag’s antlers in front of their handlebars, the Horn Dance could be seen cruising anywhere from the banks of the Mad River to Fare-you-well Park. They were also a band, playing music along the lines of Eldritch Steel—a group that her sister had played with that had mixed traditional songs with the hard-edged sound of punk, and only lasted the one night. Unlike Eldritch Steel, though, the Horn Dance was entirely made up of humans. Which was probably the reason they were still around. Eldritch Steel’s first and only gig had been in Farrel Din’s Dancing Ferret and sparked a brawl between the Pack and the Blood that had left the club in shambles. Farrel Din, needless to say, hadn’t been pleased. The band broke up, lead singer Wicker disappearing, while the rest of the group had gone their separate ways.
“What are you thinking of?” Mary asked.
Manda blinked, then grinned sheepishly. “Mostly that you don’t look as punky as I thought you guys were.” “I’m the exception,” Mary said. “Wait’ll you meet Teaser, or Oss.”
“Yeah, well . .Manda looked around the room until she spotted her clothes on a chair by the door. She wasn’t so sure that she’d be meeting anyone. There were things to do, places to go, people to meet. Yeah. Right.