The Poison Eaters and Other Stories

by Holly Black

Page 24

 

  "Don't worry,” Justin said. “It's just fiction. "

  He typed a few words and printed out the page. Then he carefully taped Linda's name in place so that the sentence read:

  "Linda doesn't just know how to put things in books. She knows how to get things out again, including herself. Hopefully someday she will. "

  Folding the paper in half, he tucked it between the pages. When he left, he didn't take the book with him.

  GOING IRONSIDE

  La lala la. that's part of the song. I don't remember it all right now, but it's okay. Cally remembers the rest. So we can go back to the hill soonsoonsoon. La la. When our bellies are big as moons. Then Bucan Jack will play his fiddle and there'll be nettle wine and the Queen will ask me to tell this story a hundred hundred times.

  But right now, the wall is cold against my back and I can feel the bricks shredding the gold lame off my skirt. La lala la. The rain is cold too. Making my mascara run. I jam my hands in the pockets of my jacket, feeling the grit and the nasty tissues at the bottom.

  I do a little dance, but nobody sees.

  When we first came Ironside, we tried to make money out of leaves, but we didn't know what money looked like and we did it wrong. The lady at the counter started yelling, “This is Monopoly money!” Her getting red in the face just made us laugh. We thought we were so smart. We stole everything right under people's noses. Plastic skirts and dolls and lipsticks. Piles of magazines and apples with a bitter, chemical taste.

  Food was the hardest. The milk tasted like iron and even the bread was bad. But now we eat caramel corn and licorice and Jolly Ranchers until we're sick.

  Cally should be back soon and I'm glad, ‘cause my muscles are starting to cramp all over and I already scraped the half a bag I had tucked in my shoe.

  We thought we were so smart. We thought it would be easy. Just go Ironside and come back with babies. Not steal ‘em either. Our babies. Elf babies. Find a boy. Roll around in the grass. Dash back. What a prank! We're no selkies. No one can grab our skins and keep us.

  It might still work. Cally says we should give it three more months. Three's a lucky number, so I said okay. Anyway, I can't go alone. She's got the second part of the song.

  I'm rubbing my arms now. They hurt. Rubbing the insides of my elbows, rubbing the bruises, singing to my veins. Soon. Soonsoonsoon.

  It's easy to find boys Ironside. A touch of glamour covers your ears and eyes and all the other parts of you that might give you away. They buy you pizza and take you to parties and clubs, bring you watery drinks and drugs, and screw you in locking bathroom stalls. It was hard at first, but that's what we wanted, right? I want my elf baby, don't I?

  I have a joint in my purse. I know it won't help the aches, but I light it anyway. I drag deep, fill myself up with thick smoke. Wait for Cally, I tell myself. When we go back to the hill, I'm going to bring my lighter with me. The pretty pink hologram one. Won't Bucan Jack laugh to see it! He'll love it so much that he'll make up a song just for me.

  When I first got here, it was hard to breathe. All the chemicals and the iron, you can feel it, smell it. Molten and roiling. It sticks to your skin and makes you so heavy that you have to lie down. Magic's hard, Ironside, even trifling stuff, and the longer you're here, the more you forget. Even the leaf trick doesn't work anymore. But other things are a lot better. Like when I take a breath, all I smell is the marijuana smoke, the tar of the asphalt, spoiled food, and me, reeking of vomit. I need a bath soon.

  Everything is soon, but nothing is nownownow.

  I want a baby with crow black eyes and lips like plums. I want Cally to come back with my five bags of brown stuff—good stuff—so I can stop shivering and cramping out here in the rain. I want to go dancing, not at a club, but out there—in a lawn or park, someplace green, just me and Cally.

  And Cally, if you come back now, I promise I'll make the bags last this time. I will. I'll space it out. Just enough to stop the aches. Just enough for three more months. We'll do it your way. I'm willing. More than willing. Just bring me back my dope.

  The insides of my arms are little pursed mouths and the needle in my bag is a snake, rolling and flapping against the sides of my handbag, rattling, making me want to shoot up water just to fake my arms out. And the single fang is iron, making black burns where it touches, but it is a good burn. I need that burn.

  Do you remember the time we put knots in the horses’ manes before the last rade? Or how about the madcap chase when we stole that grindylow's cap? It was you, me, and Jack that time. Do you remember? Lala la la la la.

  I do another little dance, but this one is more like a shuffle. I don't care if nobody sees. I don't care.

  You aren't back yet, Cally, but I won't worry. You could easily be stretched out, languid and sated, in the back of a car. Thick-necked Tom beside you, his gold-ringed fingers picking your pockets while that shrew-guy, I forget his name, drives. I hope not, Cally. Be careful. I need it. Put it in the one thing they won't want you to open. Put it in your mouth.

  I watch the rain-soaked headlights come towards me and fly past. Which one is you? I do a little turn on my toe and slip but don't fall. Not yet. I wonder if anyone will stop and ask me if I need a date? A fix? A ride?

  Oh Cally, I'm thinking about Jack again, him standing on his head or teasing you. Does he wonder where we got to? Does he miss us? Oh, sure, he heard us talk, but did he think we'd really do it? Did he think we were smart, crazy smart, sharp as nails, as tacks, as the needle in my bag?

  Didja? Didja think it, Jack? Did you think we could do it, go between, go Ironside and get ourselves elf babies? But then maybe you don't miss us at all, do you? Time's different here. You don't even know we're gone. A hundred hundred years will pass for you in one sleepy day without me.

  The Land of Heart's Desire

  If you want to meet real-life members of the Sidhe—real faeries—go to the cafe, 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 cafe 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 Faerie 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 corruption, 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 coffeeshop 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—"