New York Fantastic

by Paula Guran

  “I will so,” he said.

  The selkie bared strong white teeth. “But no just now: I’ve work to do, and you, an Irish fay to see. Shall we say before midsummer? Ask for Iain. Everybody kens me here on the docks. Oh, and dinna fash yourself over yon mortal. The woman’ll no harm him—if he keeps a civil tongue in his head.”

  “Oh, he’s civil enough,” the Pooka had answered, somewhat sourly. “He’s the gentleman of the world, he is. The creature.”

  Which was why, as much as the Pooka resented Liam O’Casey, he could not dislike him, and why, after six months in Liam’s company, he was far from home, iron-sick and mangy and too feeble to shift his shape, burdened with an unpaid blood debt and no prospect of paying it.

  The Pooka had a nose as sharp as a kelpie’s teeth, but lower New York was a maze of bewildering and distracting smells. The streets reeked of dung and garbage, of dogs marking their territory and the sweat of horses pulling heavy drays. The Pooka was startled out of what remained of his fur when a scrawny, half-wild sow squealed at him. Prudently, the Pooka whined and wagged his tail submissively. The sow snorted at him and trotted on.

  Bowing to a pig! If the iron-sickness did not finish him, surely shame would do the job. The Pooka thought he’d like to kill Liam for bringing him here. But not until he’d saved his miserable life.

  Liam had been hungry and thirsty when he got off the Washington at dawn. By noon, he was tired and footsore as well, and as bewildered as he’d ever been in his life. Listlessly, he watched Madra sniff the door of Maeve McDonough’s Saloon, which looked no different to him than the fifty other such establishments he’d sniffed along the way, except for a sign in the window offering a free lunch. Liam read the fare on offer—cold meat, pickles, onions—and sent up a short and heartfelt prayer to the Virgin that their journey might end here. He sent a second prayer of thanks when Madra pricked his ears, raised his tail, and trotted down the filthy steps and into the dark room beyond.

  Upon inquiry at the wooden counter, Liam learned that the free lunch came at the cost of two five-cent beers, which he was happy to pay, even though the beer was poor, sour stuff and the meat more gristle than fat. While he ate, a woman, well supplied with dark hair and bold eyes and an expanse of rosy-brown skin above the neck of her flowered gown, cuddled up, giving him an excellent view of her breasts and a noseful of her musky scent.

  “Like what you see, boyo? I can arrange for a closer look.”

  Head swimming, he was on the point of agreeing when another woman’s voice spoke, tuneful and sweet as a silver bell. The whore hissed, showing teeth a thought too long and pointed for beauty, and slid back into the crowd of drinkers.

  Startled, Liam looked up into the face of the tall, redheaded woman on the other side of the bar. She’d a faded-green woolen shawl tied across her bosom and a look about her he was coming to recognize after six months in the Pooka’s company: a luminous look, as though her skin were fairer, her hair more lustrous, her eyes more lambent, her whole person altogether more light-filled than an ordinary woman’s. It was not a look he’d expected to see in the new world.

  “Welcome to Five Points,” said the woman. “There’s a fine dog you have.”

  Liam looked down to see Madra sitting by his leg, panting cryptically. “Oh, he’s not mine,” he said. “Not in the way of ownership. Our paths lie together for a while, that’s all it is.”

  The woman’s smile broadened. Liam noted, with relief, that her teeth were remarkable only in being uncommonly white and even. “A good answer, young man. You may call me Maeve McDonough. I am the proprietress of this place. You are welcome to drink here. Should you be looking for a place to lay your head this night, I’ve beds above, twenty cents a night or four dollars a month, to be paid up front, if you please.”

  Liam laid the silver coins in Maeve’s hand with a bow that made her laugh like a stream over rocks, then recklessly ordered another beer and carried it toward a knot of Irishmen who looked as though they’d been in New York a week or two longer than he.

  The Pooka yawned nervously and licked at a sore on his flank. It seemed to him that it, like everything else in this forsaken place, tasted of iron. How many nails were in this building? How many iron bands around the barrels of beer? He could sense a stove, too, and most of the customers, unless he was much mistaken, were armed with steel knives. Some even carried pistols. It was almost unbearable.

  It was unbearable, and the Pooka was beginning to realize that there was nowhere in this city where he might escape from the pain that gnawed at his bones. Hemmed in by mortals, surrounded by iron, with more mortals and iron outside on the street, the Pooka was ready to bite everyone around him and keep on biting until he died or the pain went away, whatever came first.

  A cool hand touched his head. A fresh scent, as of spring fields after a rain, soothed his hot nose and cleared the red mists from his brain. The Pooka looked up into the amused green eyes of a Sidhe woman.

  “I am called Maeve,” she said. “Follow me.”

  The room Maeve led the Pooka to was, if anything, darker and hotter than the saloon itself. Stacked beer barrels lined the walls, and a complex apparatus of glass and tin on a table smelled strongly of raw spirits.

  “A Pooka,” Maeve said, setting down her lantern. “I’ve not seen your like before on this side of the wide ocean. A word for you, my heart. The city’s no place for a creature of the bogs and wilds.”

  “Yet here I am,” the Pooka said irritably. “On the point of paying with my life for the privilege, too.”

  “Well, perhaps it needn’t be as costly as that.” Maeve regarded him gravely. “What is your life worth, Pooka?”

  “I haven’t much to give you,” the Pooka said. “Would you accept my everlasting gratitude?”

  Maeve laughed. “What a joy it is to have a trickster to bargain with, even one half dead. I’d save you for the pure pleasure of your company, but that would be bad business. Come, give me a dozen hairs from your tail, that I may call upon you at my need.”

  “Good will is good business, lady. Three hairs will buy you my respect and affection as well as my service.”

  “Seven hairs I’ll take, and no less. Unless you’re willing to give the mortal over to my hands, to do with as I will.”

  The Pooka hesitated. “Much as it galls me to admit it, there’s a small matter of a blood debt beween us.” He sighed heavily. “Seven times I’ll come to you, then. You drive a hard bargain, missus.”

  “Sure, and it’s a hard city for the Fair Folk to live in.” Then Maeve went to a shelf and brought back a charm, which she wove into the thick fur of the Pooka’s ruff.

  The charm bit like flies and nettles. The Pooka whined and scratched at his neck.

  “It won’t help you if you get rid of it,” Maeve said mildly. “It’s tear it off and die, or endure it and live. It becomes less irksome with time.”

  “I’ll endure it,” said the Pooka.

  Out in the saloon, Liam was learning a number of facts.

  Item: Work, although possible to come by, was not as plentiful in New York as poor men eager to do it.

  Item: What work there was stretched from dawn to dusk, taxed a man’s back more than his mind, and paid barely enough to keep body and soul together.

  Item: Not all the poor men looking for work in New York were mortal.

  Among Liam’s new drinking companions were a midget in a bottle-green coat, sporting a pair of coppery sideburns to rival Prince Albert’s, a boyo in threadbare moleskin with black curls hanging down around his ears, and a shortish man with curly golden hair and a clay pipe between his teeth.

  Mindful of his purse, Liam refused a bet on a race between a horse and a pig and an opportunity to invest his savings in a sure moneymaking business. But when the golden-haired man pressed him for his name and county, Liam bethought him that his purse was not the only thing in danger here.

  He made a dive for his knapsack and withdrew his tin whistle. “Anyb
ody for a tune?”

  The midget brightened. “D’ye know ‘Whiskey Before Breakfast’?”

  “Do I not?” said Liam, and began to play. If he hadn’t been tipsy and perhaps a little more than tipsy, it’s likely he’d have made a pig’s ear of it, with his heart thundering in his breast and the spit dry in his mouth. As it was, “Whiskey Before Breakfast” came pouring out of his tin whistle as clear and clean as a May morning in Ballynoe, with all the birds singing.

  The midget tapped his tiny, beautifully shod feet. The boyo hooked his elbows over the shelf nailed along the wall and sighed. The small man laid down his clay pipe and clapped time. “Whiskey Before Breakfast” rippled out over the room, until the whole saloon was listening to the bright notes skip through the rafters and ring against the stone bottles ranged behind the bar.

  After playing the air three times through, Liam dropped the tin whistle from his lips and opened his eyes.

  “Another,” the midget said hoarsely.

  Liam gave them “The Witch of the Glen” and “The Lady’s Pantaloons” and “I Buried My Wife and Danced on Top of Her,” which jig had them dancing as they roared out the words. And then he segued, without thinking about it, into an air he’d made before he’d decided to make his fortune in America.

  When he was done, the boyo embraced him, dripping salt tears on the top of his head.

  “All hail the fluter!” the midget shouted, and lifted his tankard.

  “The fluter!” the others echoed.

  A tankard appeared at his hand. When he’d drained it, another took its place. Liam wet his mouth and played again.

  By and by, Liam felt a nudge at his knee and looked down to see Madra, looking, if possible, more miserable than he’d looked before, with a great mat of twigs and mud tangled in the fur at his neck and a wild look in his piss-yellow eyes.

  Liam tucked the whistle away and knelt. “Is it well with you, Madra, my dear?”

  “It is not so,” said Madra, irritably. “How do you think it makes me feel, responsible for you as I am, to see you hobnobbing with leprechauns and cluricans and gancanagh and other such scrapings from the depths of the faerie barrel? And me no more fit to protect you than a day-old puppy?”

  Liam laughed. “Is that what they are? Well, they seem to like my music well enough. They’ll not harm me, I’m thinking, as long as I play for them.”

  “Very likely,” said Madra dryly.

  Liam felt a hand upon his shoulder and looked up to see Maeve McDonough herself smiling down at him.

  “My thanks, sir, for the entertainment. You’ve put a thirst on my customers the like of which I’ve not seen since I came to these shores. I’ve sold enough drink this night to pay for your dinner—yes, and your dog’s, too, if he’s a stomach for a bit of meat. Come eat it in the back room, away from this moither, and then you’d best take yourself off to bed before they suck you dry entirely.”

  Left to himself, Liam might have taken the dinner and forgone the bed, so flown was he on beer and praise and his own dancing music. But he’d Madra to think of, and Madra looked to be on his last legs. So Liam followed Maeve into the back room, where he absorbed a bowl of quite reasonable stew, as well as Madra’s portion, which the poor beast was far too ill to eat.

  Indeed, the Pooka could not have been worse. The charm Maeve had given him to counteract the iron-sickness bit into his neck like a wolf. His muscles trembled, his vision blurred, and he’d a mighty thirst on him that water did nothing to assuage. In all the long years of his existence, he’d never suffered so—not even when he’d stumbled into a steel trap set for poachers, which he’d been saved from by a stale-drunk horse trainer named Liam O’Casey.

  By the time Liam had eaten, the Pooka was too weak and sore even to stand. Clucking, Liam scooped him up in his arms and carried him bodily up the rickety stairs.

  The state of Maeve’s saloon had given Liam a tolerably accurate notion of the accommodations she had to offer.

  It was a dismal enough apartment, low ceilinged and airless, with a door at each end. The side walls were lined with wooden shelves upon which Maeve’s boarders were stacked four high and two deep. Liam found an unclaimed space on the lowest shelf, near the far door and right over the piss pot, and tucked Madra into it. He fit himself as best he could around the dog’s burning, shivering body and fell asleep.

  Thanks to the excitement of the day and the number of five-cent beers he’d downed, Liam slept heavily. He woke once when his fellow boarders retired, drunk and stumbling on the rickety ladders to the upper sleeping shelves. He woke once again when someone trod on his hand climbing down to use the piss pot. The third time he woke, it was to the piteous whines of a dog in agony.

  Liam opened his eyes to see a dozen tiny, glowing creatures. Their gauzy wings whirred as they hovered about Madra, pulling at his ears and whiskers and the small hairs about his eyes. Liam shooed them away like bees, and like bees they turned upon him and pinched at his face with sharp little fingers. Owning himself defeated, Liam gathered Madra in his arms and bore him carefully down the stairs to the saloon. And there the pair of them spent the balance of the night, curled on a floor only a little fouler than the sleeping shelf above.

  In the gray dawn, the Pooka woke to the toe of a boot in his ribs and Maeve’s face looking down at him. “The top of the morning to you, trickster,” she said. “And how are you finding yourself this lovely spring day?”

  The Pooka levered himself to his feet. His body was sore but no longer wracked with pain, and the burning glede upon his neck had cooled a degree or perhaps more. He yawned hugely and shook himself from ears to tail. “I’m alive,” he said. “Which comes as a pleasant surprise. As to the rest, I wish I were back in Erin, deep in a nice bog, and a rainy night descending.”

  “And so do I, trickster. So do I.” For a moment, Maeve allowed her true face to show through the glamour, gaunt and fierce as a mewed hawk. “Now wake your mortal, trickster. I’ve the floor to sweep and the charms to make for any iron-sick Folk who chance to wash up at my door the day.”

  So the Pooka nudged Liam O’Casey with his nose and gave him to know it was time to be up and about.

  Liam awoke with a foul mouth, a griping in his belly, and an aching head. Dunking his head in a barrel of stale water did something to resign him to a new day. A five-cent beer and a slice of soda bread hot from the oven did more. Thus fortified, Liam O’Casey set out into the April morning in search of employment.

  Madra came with him.

  Left to his own devices, Liam might have stopped to pass the time of day with someone, preferably a mortal like himself, who might give him advice a mortal could use. As it was, he could only follow Madra, trying not to get knocked down by a heavily laden cart or trip over a feral pig or run into a pushcart or one of the hundreds of gray-faced men on their way to work. He was hot and out of breath when Madra stopped in front of a big square clapboard warehouse.

  Liam looked up at the sign: GREEN’S FINE FURNITURE. EST. 1840. EBENEZER GREEN, PROP.

  “No doubt it’s slipped your mind that I’m a horseman, Madra, not a carpenter.”

  Madra heaved a sigh. “There’s a stable behind, you great idiot—I can smell it. Go on in now; it can’t hurt to ask.”

  Liam brushed down his jacket, straightened his cap, and walked into the warehouse. The place was busy as an ant’s nest, with an army of roughly dressed men running about with raw lumber and finished furniture, while a burly man in a loud silk waistcoat over his shirtsleeves and a porkpie hat shouted orders. Presuming this to be Ebenezer Green, Liam approached and greeted him in his best English.

  Mr. Green turned a pig-eyed glare on him. “Speak American, Paddy, or git out. Better yet, do both. This is a Know-Nothing shop. We don’t do business with Micks and such-like trash.”

  The man’s voice was flat and loud, his accent unfamiliar. His tone and look, however, were as clear as the finest glass goblet.

  “I’ll be bidding you good day,
then,” Liam said. “Mr. Know-Nothing, sir.” Then he turned on his heel and marched out.

  “It seems a strange thing to be bragging of,” he said as he and Madra left Green’s Fine Furniture behind them.

  “He certainly knows nothing about horses,” Madra said. “Did you see his nags? Like harrows they were, draped in moth-eaten hides. You’re well out of there.”

  The next stable Madra found was attached to a hauling company near the docks. It was run by Cornelius Vanderhoof, who, like all Dutchmen, didn’t care which language a man spoke as long as he was willing to take a dollar in payment for ten hours of work.

  “I’ve no need of a stableman,” he told Liam kindly enough. “I have two horse boys, and that’s all I need.”

  “All boys are good for is to feed and water and muck out,” Liam said. “I’d care for them like children, I would.”

  Mr. Vanderhoof shook his head. “Come back in May. I might have work for you, if you can handle a team.”

  And so it went all the weary day. One livery stable proprietor had just hired someone. Another offered Liam fifty cents to shovel muck. Another shook his head before Liam even opened his mouth.

  “It’s April,” he said. “Nobody will be hiring until summer. You’re Irish, right? Why not carry bricks or dig foundations like the rest of your countrymen?”

  “I’m a horse trainer,” Liam said, hating the pleading note in his voice.

  “I don’t care if you’re the king of County Down,” the livery man said. “Ostlers are a dime a dozen in these parts. You want to work with horses, take a train west.”

  As they emerged from the livery stable, Madra broke the heavy silence. “It’s getting on toward dusk. Shall we be heading home?”

  Liam looked at the heavy carts piled high with crates and boxes lumbering over the rutted streets, at the ragged, gray-faced men plodding homeward in the fading light, at the street children, dirty and barefoot, lingering by pushcarts in hopes of a dropped apple or an unwatched cabbage. His ears rang with the rumble of wheels, the squeak of unoiled axles, the shouting and swearing and laughter.