Welcome to Bordertown (7 page)

“What they want with fresh fish at a midnight garden party I do not know,” she said in her funny singsong voice, “but you clean ’em up fast and you clean ’em up neat, and I’ll pay you in kind.”

She set up Trish and Gurgi down by the water and left them to their task. Gurgi didn’t say much; he just seemed happy to be with her, happy to help. She found herself pouring out her heart to him as they cleaned and gutted the weird-looking Mad River
fish. All the hopes, all the disappointments … the things she’d given up, and the things she’d loved …

“I was class valedictorian! I was on the honor roll! I got the best SAT scores Milltown High had ever had!”

“Oh, wise and noble princess,” said Gurgi encouragingly.

“I’m not a princess. I guess I thought I was, but I’m not. I’m just an assistant pig-keeper, Gurgi.”

“No, no! Noble princess must fill her head with dreamings and schemings.”

“But I did that. And look where it got me. Even in Milltown, we don’t have fish scales all over our hands.”

“Noble princess is on a great quest for things—um, for thinking and blinking!”

She looked around her. “This isn’t turning out to be much of an adventure. Maybe I’d better just go home and see if I can get my old job back. At least at Denny’s we don’t have to clean our own fish.”

“Noble princess is full of yearnings and learnings.”

“Maybe it was my essay.” It was such a relief to say it all out loud to someone, even if it was only Gurgi. “Maybe Harvard hated my essay. Or maybe they want all their applicants to already know French and classical music. Maybe refilling the ketchup bottles doesn’t count as an extracurricular activity. Or babysitting your baby brother. Oh, Gurgi …” she sighed sadly. Maybe she shouldn’t have started thinking about it, after all.

When he touched her hand with his pale, skinny one, she only flinched for a second from the dry, inhuman touch. “Dreamings and schemings,” he whispered in his funny little voice. “Yearnings and learnings. Almost as good as crunchings and munchings!”

Trish smiled a watery smile. “I dunno about that. Right now I’m pretty hungry. And look, it’s getting late. The sun will be setting soon. Let’s collect our pay and go get ourselves a really good dinner!”

“Yes, yes! Noble princess collects, and Gurgi eats!”

“Or better yet, I’ll bring you with me to this party I’m going to, at the Chimera. There might be food there. Maybe I should bring some fish.…”

Paid for their labor with fish and coin, they set out together, the two companions. Some wharf rats laughed and pointed at them, but nobody came near. The sun was setting low over the river behind them, making beautiful colors in the sky above.

As they passed through the Old City Wall into Soho, the shadows deepened. It wasn’t that cold, but Gurgi started shivering. Trish stopped and reached into her backpack. She didn’t really want to put her only sweatshirt on the hairy creature—he smelled kind of like a wet dog—but what else could she do?

When she turned around again, he was gone.

*   *   *

I fall asleep, lulled by the harps, and when I wake, someone is sitting beside me. For a moment, seeing only a dark shape against the sun, I think that it might be Trish—but no, it’s a wild-looking girl, maybe ten or twelve, rubbing Rosco’s hairy belly. He’s lolling on his back, looking just about as foolish as an old black hound can look.

“Hey, that’s my dog,” I say. I don’t know why, since this is obvious.

“No,” the kid tells me, frowning, “you’re his boy.”

“Same difference.”

“No, it isn’t.”

The girl has crazy brown hair, pointy ears, and dusky skin with a silvery sheen. She is feeding biscuits to my idiot hound, and I hope that they don’t make him sick.

“He doesn’t like smelling like cherries,” she informs me.

“He doesn’t?” I answer, humoring the kid.

She rises, brushes the crumbs from her jeans, then turns her
serious little face to me. “He says to ask Ms. Wu for the one that smells like apples. He says to tell you that he’ll like that better.” Then she gives me a crooked, gap-toothed smile. “And don’t worry. You’ll find it.”

“Apple-scented salve?” I ask, confused.

“Whatever you’re looking for. I have to go now. My mama is waiting. Goodbye, Steadfast.” She pats Rosco one last time.

“His name is Rosco.”

“No, it isn’t,” she says, and then she takes off across the grass.

*   *   *

Gurgi had disappeared into the darkness—and the darkness of Riverside was no place to be looking for monsters. Trish took her package of fish up to Carmine Street. It was the only thing she could think of to do. She stopped at a gallery to ask the way.

“Are you doing the Smell Installation?” asked the ridiculously tall elf pinning uninflated balloons to the ceiling on tiptoe. “Because whatever they told you, that’s not till next week.”

“N-no,” Trish stammered, “I’m looking for—”

“Oh,” said the elf. “End of the street. Bright pink. Big house. Can’t miss it.”

She raised her hand to knock, but just as her knuckles grazed the wood, the bronze head of the doorknob shouted,
“It’s oooopen!”

She jumped about a foot in the air. The door opened inward, and she stepped inside.

“Cheerio, m’dearie-o!” It was a halfie with scraggly teeth and even scragglier hair that fell long and yellow from under his battered top hat. Behind him, the high-ceilinged room teemed with people of all shapes and styles.

“Um,” said Trish, clutching her bag. “Is Cam here?”

“Everyone’s here. We
do
just let in anyone, you know. Oh, fish!” The halfie took the bag. “How thoughtful! Spider will be pleased.
He loves to feed the multitudes. Now, who brought the loaves?”

“Tara!” Cam edged around him to hug her. “You made it! Tara, this is Billy Buttons. He doesn’t live here, he just acts like he does. Billy, Tara.”

The halfie bowed, and declaimed:

Ignoring him, Cam pulled Trish deeper into the room and up to a girl with long brown hair and a pointy little chin—a mortal, like her. Good. Trish had nothing against halfies, but she didn’t want to be the only human here.

“Tara, this is my girlfriend, Seal.”

Seal looked nice. Trish had had a couple of girlfriends in high school. She hadn’t gotten around to writing to them from Bordertown yet. Jenny, who had also read
The Lord of the Rings
, and Sue, who worked at Denny’s with her and was very funny. They both thought she was crazy to go away to college. Jenny was working at the nursing home, and Sue was staying at Denny’s, waiting for her boyfriend to propose so she could quit. Or they had been, thirteen years ago. They were both probably moms by now. All grown up. Thinking about it made her head feel all buzzy again.

“Seal works backstage at the Changeling Theater, like me.”

“Hi, Seal!” Trish said brightly. “It’s nice to meet you!”

Cam put her arm around Seal, and Seal leaned her brown head on Cam’s cute embroidered vest.

Oh. Oh, no.

Was
that
the kind of party this was? Did they think—did they think she … Trish looked wildly around the room. Because she lived at Carterhaugh, did they …?

But Billy Buttons was right. Anyone, everyone, was here. Guys and girls were necking and flirting, and so were guys and guys, doing stuff she thought should embarrass them in public, but apparently not. Cam and Seal were as proper as PTA ladies, by contrast.

“There’s apple wine,” Cam said happily. “Hector says it’s from over the Border, but he’s just trying to impress Poplar—”

“Which is pretty hilarious,” said Seal, “considering she’s actually Trueblood.”

“Shhh!” Cam mock-shushed her. “She thinks she’s passing!”

“Milords and Ladies of the Royal Court!” A guy with a spiky mustache, in a tuxedo and a white bow tie, had jumped up on a chair.

“Oh, good!” said Cam. “Lord Buckley’s here.”

“Is he going to do the Gettysburg Address again?”

He was:

“Four big hits and seven licks ago, our before daddies swung forth upon this sweet groovy land a swingin’, stompin’, jumpin’, blowin’, wailin’ new nation, hip to the cool groove of liberty.…”

Trish had never heard anything like it. She laughed so hard she could barely understand the words. Not everyone was laughing; some were swaying and snapping their fingers, as if Lord Buckley were playing jazz music—and in a way he was. But it felt so good to be somewhere that people jumped up on chairs and did crazy things. It felt good to have people who were glad to see her.

“Where’s the apple wine?” she asked, and Cam said, “Right this way!”

*   *   *

Anush picked himself up off the sidewalk.

His T-shirt smelled of wet dog. His loose trousers fit around his waist, just barely, and they ended right below his knees. He’d have to go home—but where was home? His elfin lover had silks waiting for him, and an invitation to a party with all the Lords of Elfland. She also, unfortunately, had the keys to his own Plum Street apartment in the pocket of his jeans, hanging in her cupboard.

He made a few furtive steps down the street. Okay, fine. He was himself again. Barefoot, but okay. Down the street there were shops with lights on, colored lights, art installations. Clothes piled into boxes and racks outside one, just a tantalizing few feet away. Did he dare?

“Take one, Leave one,” declared a hand-lettered cardboard sign, right on the box. Above it: “If you don’t want these, who does?” and “In with the Old, out with the New!”

He could see why the stuff was in boxes outside the shop. Who in their right mind would want a pair of bright green slacks with little blue whales printed on them? Or a T-shirt featuring a giant white cartoon kitten saying “Hello!”? The pants would fit him, though. And at the bottom of the box he found a Star Trek T-shirt that wasn’t too bad.

Farewell, Harvard. He laid his old, doggy-smelling shirt on top of the pile. Anush Gupta was an honorable man.

Two kids with instrument cases went past him. Then one turned back. “Ooooh! Is that Hello Kitty? I can’t believe that’s in the swap box!”

“Dude, cool threads!”

“Are you going to the Chimera?”

No
, he started to say,
I’m going to Dragon’s Tooth Hill with the elf babe of my dreams to do anthropological research.

But then he realized he wasn’t. Not tonight.

Tonight he didn’t want to be the observer, standing to the side trying to get others to reveal something. Tonight he wanted to stop trying. Tonight he wanted to be among his own kind.

*   *   *

I’ve lost track of how long I’ve been here now. They say that time is funny here on the Border, even when there
aren’t
big thirteen-year gaps, and maybe that’s the reason my days are blurring into each other, suspended in a kind of timeless limbo. Still no Trish. No leads. No fresh ideas. If I wasn’t so
cussedly
stubborn
(Uncle Bud’s words), I’d admit defeat, turn tail, and leave. Bordertown is too big. Thirteen years is too long. My folks need me too much back home.

But Uncle Bud is right: I
am
cussedly stubborn, and I’m not ready to give up just yet. This town is a puzzle I’ve not yet cracked, an engine whose pieces I’m still learning to fit together. I keep my spirits up by setting myself little daily challenges: to memorize the street map of Soho, for instance, or to learn to tell time by the crazy Mock Avenue Clock, or to figure out how spellboxes run (and, okay, I’m still working on that last one).

One challenge involves The Dancing Ferret. I stop there every evening on my way home—I seem to have grown addicted to a Border brew called Piskies Peri, which The Ferret keeps on tap—and I’m determined to make that snooty elfin waitress smile at me, just once. I use my very best manners: I call her “ma’am,” and I always overtip. She just looks down her nose, flicks back her green hair, and walks off like the Queen of Elfland.

Tonight, a small breakthrough. She plunks down my glass of peri soon after I walk in, without first coming over to ask me what I’ll have. She scowls as she does it, but I give myself two points all the same. I’m a regular now.

It’s quiet at this hour. I like to come well before the first act of the evening begins, sitting in the corner writing postcards home while Rosco snoozes at my feet. The band for tonight, Monkeyshines or something like that, has already set up their gear, their spellboxes, and their special effects. They’re running an illusion spell that’s meant to turn these dark, dusty, shabby rooms into some kind of enchanted sylvan glade, complete with trees rustling in the wind and birds twittering in the foliage overhead. And, yes, it’s weird to use words like “illusion spell” and “sylvan glade” out loud. The uncles would laugh me right out of the house if I came home and actually talked like that, but here that’s how everyone speaks and what they are called. Like I said, we’re not in Kansas anymore.

So I’m sitting writing my uncle Harry on the back of a hand-drawn postcard of Elfhaeme Gate when one of those damn birds tweeting overhead keels over and plops into my drink. I fish it out. It appears to be made of a strange elfin metal, light and pliable, with some kind of a motor inside that is whirring and groaning and ticking faintly.

“Oh, crap,” says the Queen of Elfland, swooping by and plucking the creature from my hands. “They’ve been falling from the ceiling all damn day.” She glares at me like it’s personally my fault as she moves to put the bird into her pocket.

“Wait a minute, can I see that?” I ask. “I’m curious about how they work.”

The waitress snorts (and even her snorts are haughty) as she tosses the bird onto the table. “They
don’t
work. They just fall down dead.” She whacks it once more for emphasis. “This, sir, is an
ex
-parrot.”

For a moment I’m so startled by the Monty Python reference that I just sit there like the village idiot as she shrugs and stalks
(regally) away. Then I’m turning the bird over in my hands, eager to determine what makes it, well, tick. A latch is concealed in the creature’s belly, which opens to expose a mechanism that is almost clocklike in design—but not like any clock I’ve ever seen. A wickedly clever arrangement of gears and levers is run by an ordinary little motor, attached to a kind of battery. On second look, the “battery” is a lump of wadded-up paper in battery shape. There are words on the paper in a tiny, tiny hand—some kind of spell, perhaps. Or poetry. Or both.