Terri Windling - [Bordertown 02] - Borderland
Page 22
“He’s fine,” Lena said. “Drink your medicine.”
I drank it, and then I went to sleep. Then the good-wife came and looked at my head, and made me tell her whether I could see things or not, and said I had a mild concussion and I’d be fine if I just rested. I was going to wait until they were all out of the room and then get up and find out what was going on, but instead I fell asleep again.
I woke up in the middle of the night. Lena was there, dressed up like she’d just come in from a party. She was wearing my favorite scent, the one that smells like the red flowers that come up from the south sometimes, the real expensive ones that won’t grow in Borderland.
“Mumma,” I said, “what’s going on?”
She answered me in her most grown-up voice, the one I usually hear only when she’s addressing the Council or I’ve really loused up my schoolwork. “I’m afraid there’s been some political trouble, and you got caught in the middle of it. Nobody blames you. It’s not your fault.”
That got me mad. “If you think rescuing somebody from a place he doesn’t want to go back to is—is just political trouble, then you’ve got the stone heart! Did it ever occur to you to wonder how people feel? Or is all you think about your precious politics?”
“That’s enough,” she said in a voice so controlled it scared me. “Or we’re both going to start crying, and I’d rather not do that. Is that what he told you? That you were rescuing him?”
I didn’t like the way she said that. As if she felt sorry for me. “Well, of course!” I almost shouted. “What did you think I was doing?”
“Scullion knocked you on the head and brought you home. He thought you were kissing the elf Lord.” “Scullion! Scullion did that to me? I thought he was supposed to protect me!”
“He is,” said my mother dryly. “I hate to bring politics into this, but had you thought about what would happen to the peace of Bordertown if a human girl ran off with a Lord defecting from beyond the Border? It was bad enough you Challenging the Lady in a crowded club with half Soho watching . . . but we’re all right there, because nobody at the Dancing Ferret is likely to know you by sight. For all they know, with that hair, you could have been some elf punk. You certainly weren’t dressed like the hill!”
I felt like I was choking. “So you had Scullion bop me on the head to prevent scandal! Was that to protect my good name, or yours and Randal’s?”
“It was Scullion’s idea. He says he recognized the Challenge song you were singing. He’s half-elvin, he knows these things.”
“And have you considered”—I tried to sound as calm and cold as Lena—“what’s going to happen to Silvan without my protection?”
“Nothing’s going to happen to Silvan,” she said bitterly. I was amazed at the anger in her voice. “God, maybe Randal was right about this. I’m not sure I can do it. Charis ... It wasn’t true, any of it.”
“What do you mean, it wasn’t true? Are you trying to make me believe it didn’t happen, now?”
“Shush. Just listen to me. The Lady came down from Elfland to make trouble. She doesn’t like the independence of the Bordertown elves. She and the elves in our Council have been feuding for years. She thinks they’re too close to us humans—even Windreed, to her, is ‘too friendly.’ 1 hate to sound like some Ho Street bigot, but it was a masterly piece of elvin trickery: she looked around for some way to make trouble, to cut a rift between the two communities. They found it in you. I don’t know . . . the elves have an unerring instinct for the vulnerable, for what and who will hurt the most. Sometimes I think life is just a giant story for them, an exciting game to win.
“The plan all along was for you to run off with Silvan. Then the lady would raise the hue and cry, claiming quite rightly that a Bordertown human had desecrated elvin rituals, that you had tricked Silvan into thinking you were elvin . . . they knew, you see, about your hair. They must have heard about you before the M-Bassy Ball, somehow, and decided to try it there. And they nearly brought it off, too. If Scullion hadn’t brought you home before you were recognized with Silvan, it would all be out in the open now. Of course we would have stood up for you, but it would be your word against theirs. And that was what they wanted, a fight between the two communities.”
I didn’t say anything.
“It would have hurt you very much,” my mother went on, “much more than finding out this way, my darling, believe me.”
My jaw was clenched so tight it ached. “No,” I said. “I don’t believe you. You’re lying. Somebody’s lying. Silvan needed me. She was going to m-marry him and make him live under the ground for the rest of his life or something. Maybe she was going to do all that stuff you say—maybe she made him go along with it—but he wasn’t going to hurt me, he needed my help! You don’t understand anything. I danced the Challenge and I won, and everything was going to be all right until you came along and spoiled it! You think I didn’t know what I was doing—you never think I know what I’m doing!”
I was shouting by now; I guess I was hysterical or something. Anyway, Lena’s voice cut through it like ice. “Do you think he didn’t know what he was doing? He has magic, and he has beauty, and you didn’t stand a chance. She wasn’t going to marry him, no matter what he told you. Silvan is the Lady’s brother.”
I felt like the bed was melting away under me, and I was falling without moving. “Her—brother?”
“Do you think I don’t know what I’m doing?” Lena said. “Do you think I haven’t checked all my sources thoroughly, just because I can’t tell you where I got all the information? Scullion has a lot of friends, and there are some elves on the Council—”
“All right,” I said tightly, just to shut her up, to stop her from being so right, right, right all the time. “I believe you.”
“Thank you,” my mother said softly. “Charis ... if it helps at all ... we heard about the Challenge, about what you did. You were very brave, and very strong. We want you to know we’re very, very proud of you.” “No,” I said, holding on to my pillow for dear life, because if she didn’t get out of there soon I was going to throw it at her. “No, it doesn’t help. Not one stinking litde bit.”
So then she left, and I cried until I was too sick to cry anymore.
So none of it was true. Maybe if I tell myself this over and over again I’ll get used to it and it’ll stop hurting.
Nobody needed me. 1 didn’t help anybody. They made up a story they thought I’d fall for, and let me live in storyland for a while. That was real nice of them. And HE WAS LAUGHING AT ME ALL THE TIME HE WAS LAUGHING AT ME ALL THE TIME
Shit. I hate crying. I really do. Maybe I’ll do some research on elvin customs and find out whether there really is a Lord and Lady, how he gets chosen and whether you can win somebody free of Elfland in a Dance Challenge, or is it all a crock of shit that sounds like what we think the elves are like and they’re really up there smoking cigarettes and doing weird stuff with our cheese and light bulbs and laughing at us all the time . . .
Only now 1 hate elves so much I never want to see any again; I don’t even want to think about them. I’d better get over this or I’m going to wind up like those assholes from the World who think elves are going to steal their babies. Maybe I’d better go live in the World after all, where I don’t have to worry about elves, or the Council, or anything.
I also hate my parents—not who they are, but what they are. If I hadn’t been their daughter, this wouldn’t have happened to me. It wasn’t just anybody’s kid the elves wanted to make a fool of. I can’t hate Scullion, because I haven’t been out of the house, so I haven’t seen him.
I certainly am going to be a busy girl, working so hard learning not to hate everybody. I won’t have time for going dancing or stuff like that.
IV.
The Lord and Lady are gone, and no one’s created a scandal. It looks as though the peace of Bordertown is secure. Yaay for our side.
Today a scruffy elvin punk came to the door with a parcel fo
r me. It’s a wooden box, carved in elf style with a pattern of leaves and waves. When you open it, there’s a mirror set inside the lid. And in the box is a familiar silver ring on a green ribbon, and a lock of elvin silver hair.