Terri Windling Read online

  BORDERLAND

  CREATED BY TERRI WINDLING & MARK ALLAN ARNOLD

  with

  Steven R. Boyett Bellamy Bach Charles de Lint Ellen Kushner

  CONTENTS

  INTRODUCTION, Farrel Din 7

  PRODIGY, Steven R. Boyett 9

  GRAY, Bellamy Bach 114

  STICK, Charles de Lint 172

  CHARIS, Ellen Kushner 222

  Introduction

  Blow bugle, blow, set the wild echoes flying.

  Blow, bugle; answer, echoes, dying, dying, dying.

  Alfred, Lord Tennyson “The Horns of Elfland”

  Once upon a time (isn’t that the way humans always start a story?) there was magic in the world, or so your bards and storytellers of old have always claimed: elvin lords in dark forests and sumptuous halls beneath the hills, dragons curled in mountain caverns sleeping upon hoarded gold, Nereids in woodland streams, mermen in the cold, gray sea.

  Then there was none.

  The tales differ as to why this happened (and I am not at liberty to confirm or deny them). Some say it was industrialization and the use of iron that drove the elvin folk away, some say the spread of Christianity; some say they “flitted” to a more hospitable world; some say magic did not die but merely lay sleeping with

  King Arthur in Avalon, waiting for a new age to begin. Whatever the cause, magic vanished—mysteriously and completely.

  Then one day it came back again. We came back again.

  And that’s when the shit really hit the fan.

  Now, as every schoolchild knows, Elfland has reappeared and lies just beyond the Border that separates it from the World. Between the two lands is the Borderlands, and at the edge of the Borderlands sits that infamous city Bordertown, where elves trade with humans and control passage through the single gate that leads from world to world.

  Humans, of course, are not allowed into Elfland, just as we’ve not exactly been welcome with open arms into your world. Yet here on the Border, where our magic and your technology work equally sporadically and un-predictably, elves and humans mingle in an uneasy truce. You have to be crazy to live here, crazier still to travel in the open Borderlands, where magic runs amok. But if you’re willing to chance it (and many do, seeking easy money or the artistic muse or magic or thrills or out of sheer perversity), then come along. Here is one story of the past—when everything Changed—and three stories of the present, now that Bordertown has grown out of and beyond the ruins of the old city, with a culture quite unlike anything else this side of the Border or beyond. And the future? Who can say? In a world where the horns of Elfland blow clearly, anything is possible. . . .

  Farrel Din Bordertown

  PRODIGY

  Steven R. Boyett

  —Six years after the return

  He sat perched atop the highest point on Monaghie Drive, playing his guitar and watching the sound form shapes in the air. When his music was light and airy, the shapes were coruscating spear points that darted playfully, sometimes meshing in groups to form brief grids that sparkled in the clear air above the valley. When his music was moody, the shapes were nebulous things that coalesced in angry-looking cloud patterns of dark browns and brick reds. Today his music was intricate and involved, a collection of disparate threads woven upon his six-string Martin to form a tapestry before him. The bright, prismatic spear points made interlocking, ever-shifting patterns that grew out of the air and melded back into it. The spear points continually leapt into being, grew more vibrant with his playing, dimmed, and disappeared. They reminded him of playful dolphins enacting geometrical games, leaping from somewhere into the air, then diving back into wherever it was they came from.

  Usually he was alone up here. With the automobile

  gone the way of the dinosaur, people tended not to venture up mountain roads as casually as they had in bygone days. And hardly anyone lived in the houses in the hills, because there were no grocery stores for them to raid up here, no drugstores to loot for medicinal supplies, no way to obtain trade goods. There were rabbits and deer, but an awful lot of people were ignorant of how to live off the land. Besides all that, things tended to get weird up here. The people who lived in the hills before had been rich, he reflected, watching his fingers play along the neck of the guitar as if they had a mind of their own—and rich people sure as hell didn’t know anything about living off the land. When the fragile social structures that tenuously supported them had dissolved, the nouveau riche had been among the first to become extinct.

  His music changed as he mused, and he noticed that the shapes in the air reflected the change. The spear points of light had darkened and grown fuzzier, out of focus. He pursed his lips. It did no good to reflect on the past; better to concentrate on the music. His callused fingers picked up the tempo, and the spear points danced brightly.

  Behind him someone said, in a bending Georgian accent, “Hey, he’s all right, man.”

  He smiled and struck a loud chord. The lightshafts swelled and dimmed. He added a single, bell-like harmonic for good measure and chuckled when a lone arc of rainbow light chased after the others like a bug on water, following them into . . . wherever.

  He stood and brushed dirt off the seat of his faded and frayed blue jeans. Below, the valley looked like the world’s largest housing development. Years ago someone had described it to him as a hundred towns connected by 7-Elevens. Behind him he heard:

  “Richie! What are you doing up here?”

  “Came to watch the sunset, man.”

  A horse-like blurt. “You never stopped to watch a sunset in your life,”

  He pulled a stiff-bristled hairbrush from his back pocket and slid a green elastic band from the handle. Three fingers and thumb spreading it wide, he brushed his hair with the other hand, gathered it into a fist, and twisted the band on. A ponytail was a lot more practical up here, where the wind from beyond the Borderlands spilled over the hilltops and whipped at you.

  After a long pause the second voice—Richie’s—said, “I came up here to hunt fuckin’ rabbits. I got a slingshot, you know? A good one.” There was a quick snapping sound of taut surgical tubing released. “ ’Cuz I’ll throw up if I eat one more can of Spam.”

  “Did you find any?” asked the first voice.

  “Rabbits? Shit, naw. I haven’t seen so much as a dog ’round here.” A snort. “Hell, I’d probably eat me a dog if I could find one. All them rich people’s poodles running ’round here in the woods with their pink toenails, afraid of all them coyotes.”

  He smiled, still not looking back. Instead he returned the hairbrush to his pocket and glanced at the guitar case at his feet, edged with light brown dust along the nearer curve. Time to put it away, he decided. Too many people. He didn’t like being watched, not up here. As he bent to open the case, he heard:

  “How’s the burn?”

  “Shit. Fucker itches, man! I nearly scratched half my damn head off last night. I woke up with skin under my nails.” And again, in a completely different tone:

  “Shit.”

  He put in the Martin and shut the case, then turned

  around.

  There were four of them. Two boys watched from halfway up the knoll, standing near the thorny bushes. One wore jeans so new the stiffness hadn’t worn out yet, and a faded old Van Halen T-shirt. Hair as long as his own, but it probably hadn’t been near a pair of scissors in years. A Fritos bag lay blown against a bush by his left foot. He stood almost in front of the other boy, revealing only an impression of black hair and pale skin.

  The other two stood at the bottom of the knoll, near the road. It was they who had been talking. The one on the left was a short, slim, gaunt-faced young man with a dirty bandage around the top of his head. Gauze covered the area aroun
d his right ear. Richie, then. The left leg of his faded orange cords was torn away at the knee; the right knee had a hole in it. The pants were held up by a belt with the graven image of Marilyn Monroe on the stainless-steel buckle. He also wore a pair of brand-new Adidas tennis shoes and no shirt.

  The other was older, late twenties, early thirties, with closely cropped red hair. He wore a plain white T-shirt and black jogging shorts, from which emerged a long pair of copper-haired, well-muscled, lightly tanned legs ending in sandaled feet. A small, black nylon daypack rested by them.

  “Hey,” said Richie in his light Georgian accent, a hand going to his head to scratch at gauze. “I never seen nothing like that before. You’re all right, man. I mean, this is the first time I’ve ever been up here, and. .. He shrugged.

  “We enjoyed it very much,” said the redhead.

  “Yeah. Hey, you know any Lynyrd Skynyrd?” Richie asked hopefully.

  He shook his head, and the young man looked disappointed. The scratching finger lowered to wipe against a corduroy-ribbed hip, then the thumb hooked above Marilyn Monroe’s head..

  The redhead nodded at him from below, turned to his friend, and said, “Hey, why don’t we . .. ?” He glanced at Scooter, frowned, looked away again. “It takes two hours to get to the bottom of the canyon. Why don’t you walk on down with me? You don’t want to be out after dark. I have some burn cream at home; we could put some on that. Give you a fresh bandage while we’re at it.”

  Loose hair—too short to band into the ponytail, long enough to get in the way—blew across his eyes in a gust of wind.

  Richie was scratching at his bandage again. “Yeah,” he said. “Yeah, all right. I ain’t gonna get no rabbits

  anyway.”

  The redhead picked up his pack and slid one lanky arm through the strap. He looked up at him again, nodded a farewell, and turned to lead Richie down into the valley.

  Richie looked back before they left. “Hey, you take care, man,” he called, and repeated: “I never seen nothing like that.”

  He smiled slightly and turned away. The sun was lowering and shadows were lengthening. Ringed by hills, the valley was blued below him. The horizon was banded with cinnamons and Halloween oranges, bright colors filtering the light so that the clouds were touched with golds and siennas. We need rain, he thought. Half the hills around the valley are burning.

  Fire had become a major problem in the city as well; with the dry season, low humidity, and widespread vandalism, arson was rampant—and there was no fire department to put them out. The whole city was bound to pull a San Francisco Fire number one day. He didn’t want to be there when it happened.

  He sighed. Well, time to descend into the Valley of the Shadow before it got dark. Roxanne ought to be home by the time he got there.

  He picked up his guitar case by the handle and straightened to find that the two boys who had also been watching him play had stepped closer.

  He stared at the one he hadn’t seen clearly before.

  The boy—if he could be called a boy—was tall. His skin was pale as rice paper. He looked frail, but that look was probably misleading. His hands were slim, with long fingers matching the toes of his bare feet. His large eyes were black balls in a face smooth and white as porcelain. His hair was dyed crow black, cut to nubs on one side, gradually lengthening across his head until, on the other side, it touched his shoulder. He wore pale blue Guess jeans and a black leather vest.

  He didn’t look real.

  The other boy said, “ 'Scuse me,” and Scooter looked away.

  This close, the boy’s hair was dirty, and he looked as if he had probably forgotten what a bath felt like.

  He wondered if they were going to try and take his guitar. Maybe they thought it was magic. “What can I do for you?” he asked.

  The kid glanced at his friend, then looked back almost shyly. “I heard you playing,” he said. “You’re Tony Frazier, ain’tcha? You used to play lead with Stormtrooper.” He played imaginary riffs on an air guitar. “Man, I used to listen to you all the time. You guys were hot.” His grin was broken-toothed. His teeth had a light patina of green, darker near the gums. “I had all your—”

  “You’re confusing me with someone else,” he interrupted, conscious of the black stare of the boy’s companion. “My name’s Scooter.”

  The kid frowned. “Scooter?”

  He nodded.

  “You sure?”

  He glanced at those black eyes, that nearly albino skin, and made himself look away. “Positive.” He hefted his guitar case and began working his way down the rise toward his bicycle, picking his way carefully among the loose stones and dirt. They watched him pass. He didn’t look back as he leaned his guitar case against the tree to which his bike had been secured and fished a key from his pocket. The lock was a titanium U-bolt; he unlocked it and picked up his guitar.

  Behind and above him he heard the boy say: “He’s lying. I got his picture on albums. I’ll show it to you. He’s even wearing the same earrings.”

  He set the guitar case atop the book rack and against the long sissy bar he’d attached to the Schwinn ten-speed. He secured it with the U-lock and swung his foot over the frame. The front of the banana seat pressed against his butt. He glanced up.

  The one who had questioned him was sneering down in open contempt; he disregarded the look.

  The black eyes of the other were intent on him, white face inscrutable. He felt something appraising in that look, though, that made him want to flinch away. He did not associate much with those who came from beyond the Border, few though they were. They gave him the creeps.

  Scooter stood up on the pedals, eased himself onto the hard seat, and pedaled a few times. The winding road was steep, and heading down was never easy. He looked back once, but the two figures were no longer there.

  * * *

  The descent into the valley was rarely a picnic. The curves were tight and the road was steep; Scooter’s bike could reach forty-five miles per hour without judicious application of the handbrakes. Making things worse was the fact that road maintenance was a thing of the past, and most of the hill roads were strewn with gravel, rocks, and branches. Braking too late could cause an accident; braking too soon might cause him to lose control of the bike entirely.

  The guitar on the back was not exactly an asset. -

  Scooter rode the brake most of the way down, artfully dodging rubble and swerving to avoid the occasional eternally parked car rusting away on the side of the road.

  Doing thirty-five per around a steep intersection, Monaghie and Crescent, he was startled almost to the point of laying it down when something large and white jumped from the brush and darted across the road, moving nearly too fast to follow. He glimpsed four long legs and a horselike head, large, wild, black eyes, and a long, streaming tail.

  Scooter jerked the handlebars, felt the rear wheel skid, leaned to his left, straightened, righted the handlebars, and shot a frightened glance back.

  Along Crescent the grade was steeper but the curves less tight—this side of the hill, anyway; he refused to venture over the other side. Scooter let go the brake, but did not straighten up and ride without holding the handlebars until he was on the final, sloping straightaway that ran for almost a mile to Derrida Boulevard. A vandalized, graffiti-laden (arco pumps anything) gas station stood next to the long-abandoned Tiny Naylors on his right. Scooter permitted himself a nostalgic sigh for the many bouts of late-night sobering up that had occurred here.

  Riding on inertia, hunching forward again to reduce the wind drag, Scooter leaned into the left turn as he hurtled onto Derrida.

  Few people were out at this time of day. It seemed to Scooter that the city only came awake after sunset, that it possessed by night a kind of life not present during the daytime. The whole feeling changed, somehow, after dark.

  Scooter found himself thinking of vampires.

  Yeah, there was something in that—something hungry, something edgy, about t
he city at night. Yet he liked it for its vitality.

  City at night?

  He pedaled west along Derrida watching the angry orange light fade, and sang a Doors song like a drunk redneck.

  The empty streets filled out his voice like studio equipment he had once paid a lot of money for.

  Near Coldwater he saw a man in a gray sweat suit. Jogging, the man held a heavy chain leading to the spiked collar of a Doberman.

  Scooter stared at the jogging man as he neared. A Walkman, he thought mournfully, my kingdom for a Walkman! Oh, to listen to Adrien Belew wailing on his fretless Fender again.

  Scooter wheeled by the man and his dog.

  The Doberman barked and bolted for him. Scooter swerved reflexively and pedaled faster. The jogging man yanked on the chain as the slack ran out and the Doberman was restrained—barely.

  “Pixie!” he said sharply. “No! Back off!”

  Scooter waved and pedaled on.

  Pixie?

  * * *

  Home was a renovated bookstore in an arcade of abandoned shops near the comer of Derrida and Woodland. It had once been a mystery-novel/teahouse called Scene of the Crime. It had large plate-glass windows, and Scooter and Roxanne had taken down the old white draperies and put up heavy black ones to block the inside light at night. The outside was painted a sun-faded gray. The building was cinder block, retained heat well at night, easy to lock up—it had been well burglar-proofed by the original owner—and had the advantage of having a large stockroom where Roxanne kept her printing press and the huge, wheeled safe they had liberated from the Ralph’s grocery store four blocks away. The safe had got away from them on the downslope and they had run like hell to get ahead of it and slow it down before a bump in the sidewalk could send it over. It weighed half a ton, and Scooter had vowed that if it fell down, it stayed down.

  Home also had the distinct advantage of being stocked with tens of thousands of mystery novels, all alphabetically arranged on shelves that lined the walls. Roxanne had insisted that all the books stay, so he had insisted she come up with a way to keep the “new” hardbacks— six years old now—that occupied tables in the middle of the store, out of the way. After all, he and Roxanne needed room to live in. He had come home next day to find new bookcases in the second room, the tearoom, and Roxanne busily stuffing them with hardbacks— alphabetically, of course. They used the main bookstore space, with its red-velvet, floral-print wallpaper, red plush carpeting, and varnished maple bar at the cashier’s counter, as a living and working space. The light was good here during the day and Roxanne could do her printing. The other half of the store had been a