New York Fantastic

by Paula Guran

  I take a deep breath. “Keep your socks on. I was thinking how to put it. Okay, my answer is both yes and no. I do want to find out about my birth mom, but I don’t want you to tell me. Even if you know, it’s none of your business. I want to find out for myself. Does that answer your question?”

  She nods briskly. “It does. Your turn.”

  She’s not going to give me much time to come up with one, I can tell that. She wants to win. She wants to get me all torqued so I can’t think, so I won’t ask her the one question she won’t answer, so I won’t even see it staring me right in the face, the one thing she really, really can’t answer, if the books I’ve read aren’t all totally bogus.

  “What’s your name?” I ask.

  I mean, it’s obvious, isn’t it? Like, how dumb does she think I am? Pretty dumb, I guess, from the look on her face.

  “Guess,” she says, making a quick recovery.

  “Wrong fairy tale,” I say, pushing it. “Come on. Tell me, or you lose.”

  “Do you know what you’re asking?”

  “Yes.”

  There’s a long silence—a long silence, like no bird is ever going sing again, or squirrel chatter or wind blow. The green girl puts her fingers in her mouth and starts to bite her nails. I’m feeling pretty good. I know and she knows that I’ve won no matter what she says. If she tells me her name, I have total power over her, and if she doesn’t, she loses the game. I know what I’d choose if I was in her place, but I guess she must really, really hate losing.

  Watching her sweat, I think of several things to say, most of them kind of mean. She’d say them, if she was me. I don’t.

  It’s not like I’m Mother Teresa or anything—I’ve been mean plenty of times, and sometimes I wasn’t even sorry later. But she might lose her temper and turn me into a pigeon after all.

  Besides, she looks so human all of a sudden, chewing her nails and all stressed out like she’s the one facing seven months of picking up fairy laundry. Before, when she was winning, she looked maybe twenty, right? Gorgeous, tough, scary, in total control. Now she looks a lot younger and not tough at all.

  So maybe if she loses, she’s threatened with seven months of doing what I tell her. Maybe I don’t realize what I’m asking. Maybe there’s more at stake here than I know. A tiny whimpering behind my right ear tells me that Bugle is pretty upset. Suddenly, I don’t feel so great. I don’t care any more about beating the Queen of the Fairies at some stupid game.

  I just want this to be over.

  “Listen,” I say, and the green girl looks up at me. Her wide, mossy eyes are all blurred with tears. I take a deep breath.

  “Let’s stop playing,” I say.

  “We can’t stop,” she says miserably. “It has begun, it must be finished. Those are the rules.”

  “Okay. We’ll finish it. It’s a draw. You don’t have to answer my question. Nobody wins. Nobody loses. We just go back to the beginning.”

  “What beginning? When Gnaw-bone was chasing you? If I help you, you have to pay.”

  I think about this for a little while. She lets me. “Okay,” I say. “How about this. You’re in a tough spot, right? I take back question, you’re off the hook, like you got me off the hook with Gnaw-bone. We’re even.”

  She takes her fingers out of her mouth. She gnaws on her lip. She looks up into the sky, and around at the trees. She tugs on her dreads. She smiles. She starts to laugh. It’s not teasing laugh or a mean laugh, but pure happiness, like a little kid in the snow.

  “Wow,” she says, and her voice is warm and soft as fleece. “You’re right. Awesome.”

  “Cool,” I say. Can I go home now?”

  “In a minute.” She puts her head to one side, and grins at me. I’m grinning back—I can’t help it. Suddenly, I feel all mellow and safe and comfortable, like I’m lying on a rock in the sun and telling stories to Elf.

  “Yeah,” she says, like she’s reading my mind. “I’ve heard you. You tell good stories. You should write them down. Now, about those wishes. They’re human stuff—not really my business. As you pointed out. Besides, you’ve already got all those things. You remember what you need to know; you see clearly; you’re majorly kind-hearted. But you deserve a present.” She tapped her browny-green cheek with one slender finger. “I know. Ready?”

  “Okay,” I say. “Um. What is it?”

  “It’s a surprise,” she says. “But you’ll like it. You’ll see.”

  She stands up and I stand up. Bugle takes off from my shoulder and goes and sits in the greeny-brown dreads like a butterfly clip. Then the Queen of the New York Fairies leans forward and kisses me on the forehead. It doesn’t feel like a kiss—more like a very light breeze has just hit me between the eyes. Then she lays her finger across my lips, and then she’s gone.

  “So there you are!” It was Elf, red in the face, out of breath, with her hair coming out of the clip, and a tear in her jacket. “I’ve been looking all over. I was scared out of my mind! It was like you just disappeared into thin air!”

  “I got lost,” I said. “Anyway, it’s okay now. Sit down. You look like hell.”

  “Thanks, friend.” She sat on the bench. “So, what happened?”

  I wanted to tell her, I really did. I mean, she’s my best friend and everything, and I always tell her everything. But the Queen of the Fairies. I ask you. And I could feel the kiss nestling below my bangs like a little, warm sun and the Queen’s finger cool across my lips. So all I did was look at my hands. They were all dirty and scratched from climbing up the cliff. I’d broken a fingernail.

  “Are you okay?” Elf asked anxiously. “That guy didn’t catch you or anything, did he? Jeez, I wish we’d never gone down there.”

  She was getting really upset. I said, “I’m fine, Elf. He didn’t catch me, and everything’s okay.”

  “You sure?”

  I looked right at her, you know how you do when you want to be sure someone hears you? And I said, “I’m sure.” And I was.

  “Okay,” she said slowly. “Good. I was worried.” She looked at her watch. “It’s not like it was that long, but it seemed like forever.”

  “Yeah,” I agreed, with feeling. “I’m really thirsty.”

  So that’s about it, really. We went to a coffee shop on Columbus Ave. and had blueberry pie and coffee and talked. For the first time, I told her about being adopted, and wanting to look for my birth mother, and she was really great about it after being mad because I hadn’t told her before. I said she was a good friend and she got teary. And then I went home.

  So what’s the moral of this story? My life didn’t get better overnight, if that’s what you’re wondering. I still need to lose a few pounds, I still need glasses, and the cool kids still hate me. But Elf sits with me at lunch now, and a couple other kids turned out to be into fantasy and like that, so I’m not a total outcast any more. And I’m writing down my stories. Elf thinks they’re good, but she’s my best friend. Maybe some day I’ll get up the nerve to show them to my English teacher. Oh, and I’ve talked to my mom about finding my birth mother, and she says maybe I should wait until I’m out of high school. Which is okay with me, because, to tell you the truth, I don’t need to find her right now—I just want to know I can.

  And the Green Queen’s gift? It’s really weird. Suddenly, I see fairies everywhere.

  There was this girl the other day—blonde, skinny, wearing a white leotard and her jeans unzipped and folded back, so she looked kind of like a flower in a calyx of blue leaves.

  Freak, right? Nope. Fairy. So was an old black guy all dressed in royal blue, with butterflies sewn on his blue beret and painted on his blue suede shoes. And this Asian guy with black hair down to his butt and a big fur coat. And this Upper East Side lady with big blond hair and green bug-eyes. She had a fuzzy little dog on a rhinestone leash, and you won’t believe this, but the dog was a fairy, too.

  And remember the trees—the sidewalk ones? I know all about them now. No, I won’t te
ll you, stupid. It’s a secret. If you really want to know, you’ll have to go find the Queen of Grand Central Park and make her an offer. Or play a game with her.

  Don’t forget to say hi to Gnaw-bone for me.

  But if you want to meet fairies, Central Park is not the only place to find them in New York.

  THE LAND OF HEART’S DESIRE

  HOLLY BLACK

  If you want to meet real-life members of the Sidhe—real faeries—go to the café Moon in a Cup, in Manhattan. Faeries congregate there in large numbers. You can tell them by the slight point of their ears—a feature they’re too arrogant to conceal by glamour—and by their inhuman grace. You will also find that the café caters to their odd palate by offering nettle and foxglove teas, ragwort pastries. Please note too that foxglove is poisonous to mortals and shouldn’t be tasted by you.

  —posted in messageboard www.realfairies.com/forums by stoneneil

  Lords of fairie sometimes walk among us. Even in places stinking of cold iron, up broken concrete steps, in tiny apartments where girls sleep three to a bedroom. Faeries, after all, delight in corrup

  tion, in borders, in crossing over and then crossing back again.

  When Rath Roiben Rye, Lord of the Unseelie Court and Several Other Places, comes to see Kaye, she drags her mattress into the middle of the living room so that they can talk until dawn without waking anyone. Kaye isn’t human either, but she was raised human. Sometimes, to Roiben, she seems more human than the city around her.

  In the mornings, her roommates Ruth and Val (if she’s not staying with her boyfriend) and Corny (who sleeps in their walk-in closet, although he calls it “the second bedroom”) step over them. Val grinds coffee and brews it in a French press with lots of cinnamon. She shaved her head a year ago and her rust-colored hair is finally long enough that it’s starting to curl.

  Kaye laughs and drinks out of chipped mugs and lets her long green pixie fingers trace patterns on Roiben’s skin. In those moments, with the smell of her in his throat, stronger than all the iron of the world, he feels as raw and trembling as something newly born.

  One day in midsummer, Roiben took on a mortal guise and went to Moon in a Cup in the hope that Kaye’s shift might soon be over. He thought they would walk through Riverside Park and look at the reflection of lights on the water. Or eat nuts rimed with salt. Or whatsoever else she wanted. He needed those memories of her to sustain him when he returned to his own kingdoms.

  But walking in just after sunset, black coat flapping around his ankles like crow wings, he could see she wasn’t there. The coffee shop was full of mortals, more full than usual. Behind the counter, Corny ran back and forth, banging mugs in a cloud of espresso steam.

  The coffee shop had been furnished with things Kaye and her human friends had found by the side of the road or at cheap tag sales. Lots of ratty paint-stained little wooden tables that she’d decoupaged with post cards, sheets of music, and pages from old encyclopedias. Lots of chairs painted gold. The walls were hung with amateur paintings, framed in scrap metal.

  Even the cups were mismatched. Delicate bone china cups sitting on saucers beside mugs with slogans for businesses long closed.

  As Roiben walked to the back of the shop, several of the patrons gave him appraising glances. In the reflection of the shining copper coffee urn, he looked as he always did. His white hair was pulled back. His eyes were the color of the silver spoons.

  He wondered if he should alter his guise.

  “Where is she?” Roiben asked.

  “Imperious, aren’t we?” Corny shouted over the roar of the machine. “Well, whatever magical booty call the king of the faeries is after will have to wait. I have no idea where Kaye’s at. All I know is that she should be here.”

  Roiben tried to control the sharp flush of annoyance that made his hand twitch for a blade.

  “I’m sorry,” Corny said, rubbing his hand over his face. “That was uncool. Val said she’d come help but she’s not here and Luis, who’s supposed to be my boyfriend, is off with some study partner for hours and hours and my scheme to get some more business has backfired in a big way. And then you come in here and you’re so—you’re always so—”

  “May I get myself some nettle tea to bide with?” Roiben interrupted, frowning. “I know where you keep it. I will attend to myself.”

  “You can’t,” Corny said, waving him around the back of the bar. “I mean, you could have, but they drank it all, and I don’t know how to make more.”

  Behind the bar was a mess. Roiben bent to pick up the cracked remains of a cup and frowned. “What’s going on here? Since when have mortals formed a taste for—”

  “Excuse me,” said a girl with long wine-colored hair. “Are you human?”

  He froze, suddenly conscious of the jagged edges of what he held. “I’m supposing I misheard you.” He set the porcelain fragment down discreetly on the counter.

  “You’re one of them, aren’t you? I knew it!” A huge smile split her face and she looked back eagerly toward a table of grinning humans. “Can you grant wishes?”

  Roiben looked at Corny, busy frothing milk. “Cornelius,” he said softly. “Um.”

  Corny glanced over. “If, for once, you just act like my best friend’s boyfriend and take her order, I promise to be nicer to you. Nice to you, even.”

  Roiben touched a key on the register. “I’ll do it if you promise to be more afraid of me.”

  “I envy what I fear and hate what I envy,” Corny said, slamming an iced latte on the counter. “More afraid equals more of a jerk.”

  “What is it you’d like?” Roiben asked the girl. “Other than wishes.”

  “Soy mocha,” said the girl. “But please, there’s so much I want to know.”

  Roiben squinted at the scrawled menu on the chalkboard. “Payment, if you please.”

  She counted out some bills and he took them, looking helplessly at the register. He hit a few buttons and, to his relief, the drawer opened. He gave her careful change.

  “Please tell me that you didn’t pay her in leaves and acorns,” Corny said. “Kaye keeps doing that and it’s really not helping business.”

  “I knew it!” said the girl.

  “I conjured nothing,” Roiben said. “And you are not helping.”

  Corny squirted out Hershey’s syrup into the bottom of a mug. “Yeah, remember what I said about my idea to get Moon in a Cup more business?”

  Roiben crossed his arms over his chest. “I do.”

  “I might have posted online that this place has a high incidence of supernatural visitation.”

  Roiben narrowed his eyes and tilted his head. “You claimed Kaye’s coffee shop is haunted?”

  The girl picked up her mocha from the counter. “He said that faeries came here. Real faeries. The kind that dance in mushroom circles and—”

  “Oh, did he?” Roiben asked, a snarl in his voice. “That’s what he said?”

  Corny didn’t want to be jealous of the rest of them.

  He didn’t want to spend his time wondering how long it would be before Luis got tired of him. Luis, who was going places while Corny helped Kaye open Moon in a Cup because he had literally nothing else to do.

  Kaye ran the place like a pixie. It had odd hours—sometimes opening at four in the afternoon, sometimes opening at dawn.

  The service was equally strange when Kaye was behind the counter. A cappuccino would be ordered and chai tea would be delivered. People’s change often turned to leaves and ash.

  Slowly—for survival—things evolved so that Moon in a Cup belonged to all of them. Val and Ruth worked when they weren’t at school. Corny set up the wireless.

  And Luis, who lived in the dorms of NYU and was busy with a double major and flirting with a future in medicine, would come and type out his long papers at one of the tables to make the place look more full.

  But it wouldn’t survive like that for long, Corny knew.

  Everything was too precarious. Everyo
ne else had too much going on. So he made the decision to run the ad. And for a week straight, the coffee shop had been full of people. They could barely make the drinks in time. So none of the others could be mad at him. They had no right to be mad at him.

  He had to stay busy. It was the only way to keep the horrible gnawing dread at bay.

  Roiben listened to Corny stammer through an explanation of what he had done and why without really hearing it.

  Then he made himself tea and sat at one of the salvaged tables that decorated the coffeehouse. Its surface was ringed with marks from the tens of dozens of watery cups that had rested there and any weight made the whole thing rock alarmingly. He took a sip of the foxglove tea—brewed by his own hand to be strong and bitter.

  Val had come in during Corny’s explanation, blanched, and started sweeping the floor. Now she and Corny whispered together behind the counter, Val shaking her head.

  Faeries had, for many years, relied on discretion. Roiben knew the only thing keeping Corny from torment at the hands of the faeries who must have seen his markedly indiscreet advertisement was the implied protection of the King of the Unseelie Court. Roiben knew it and resented it.

  It would be an easy thing to withdraw his protection. Easy and perhaps just.

  As he considered that, a woman’s voice behind him rose, infuriating him further. “Well, you see, my family has always been close to the faeries. My great great great great grandmother was even stolen away to live with them.”

  Roiben wondered why mortals so wanted to be associated with suffering that they told foolish tales. Why not tell a story where one’s grandmother died fat, old, and beloved by her dozen children?

  “Really?” the woman’s friend was saying. “Like Robert Kirk on the faerie hill?”

  “Exactly,” said the woman. “Except that Great Grandma Clarabelle wasn’t sleeping outdoors and she was right here in New York State. She got taken out of her own bed! Clarabelle had just given birth to a stillborn baby and the priest came too late to baptize her. No iron over the doors.”

  It happened like that sometimes, he had to concede.