The Year's Best Dark Fantasy and Horror (80 page)

“You’d be surprised,” he says. “We come in all shapes and sizes.” He offers me his hand. “I’m Tom Hill. If you change your mind, I’m in booth forty-eight.”

I take his hand. “I’m Joey Green,” I say, then I laugh. “Maybe I
would
fit in.”

“What’s the story behind your surname?” he asks.

“As in what does it mean?”

He nods.

I shrug. “It just means one of my ancestors liked the sound of it. We never used surnames until the government forced us, so people just made up whatever they felt like calling themselves.”

“I still think this is an auspicious meeting,” he says.

I’m not sure what the word means so I just give him another shrug.

“Thanks again for your help,” he adds. “Think about dropping by later.”

“Sure,” I tell him, because it’s easier than coming up with excuses.

I don’t realize I’m going to take him up on it until later in the day when this part of the job’s all done. Uncle Herbert comes over to where I’m sitting with the rest of the crew, listening to them talk.

“You ready to go, Joey?” he asks.

I shake my head. “One of the guys in the show asked me to stick around so I thought I might.”

He checks me out with a look that would do Tía Luba proud, then he just nods.

“I’ll see you later, then,” he says.

I like the fact that he trusts me enough to not feel like he’s got to give me any advice.

“You got your eye on one of those girls?” Luther asks.

I don’t bother answering.

Luther laughs. “See if she’s got a friend for me,” he says as he heads off with Uncle Herbert and the others.

I have second thoughts when I go back into the hotel. What do I really think is going to happen here? Hill’s probably going to just give me a blank look when I show up at his booth.

I hesitate in the doorway of the Market. The place is transformed. It looks more like some old-fashioned market set up in a forest glade than a dealers’ room in a hotel. Somebody comes up and starts to tell me that the room’s closed, but I tell him I’m part of the set-up crew.

“I’m supposed to meet Tom Hill,” I add.

The man nods. “Do you know where his booth is?”

“Number forty-eight.”

But when I get to the booth, he’s not there. There’s only a pretty girl about my age in a silky green dress with flowers and leaves sewn onto it. Her long red-gold hair hangs in a braid halfway to her waist and she’d got the little points on the tips of her ears that everybody here seems to have. I walked by a booth that was selling them on my way to Hill’s. The girl has a closed book on her lap—a big old book with a tooled leather binding—and she’s playing with a beaded bracelet of some kind. The only thing that seems out of place are the cat’s-eye sunglasses she’s wearing.

I stand at the booth, unsure again, so I check out what’s for sale. Hill specializes in tooled leather masks. His work’s incredible. I’ve got a cousin who does this kind of thing with boots, so I know how much artistry and skill is involved. Most of the masks are intricate collections of leaves with eyeholes. Some are simple, little more than leafy Zorro masks. Others are so complicated I can’t imagine how many hours it took to complete them.

I look at the price tag on one of them. If people are buying these, he’s making a good profit.

I’m about to turn away when the girl suddenly lifts her head. She looks in my direction but her gaze doesn’t quite find me.

“Is someone there?” she asks.

I feel like telling her that she’ll see a lot better without the shades on but all I say is, “I’m looking for Tom Hill.”

“He’s my dad. He just stepped out for a couple of minutes to talk to the rest of his hedge, but he should be back soon.”

“His what?”

She laughs and it sounds like delicate bells.

“Are you new to the con?” she asks.

“Pretty much.

“Do you know what a Green Man is?”

I nod, but she doesn’t go on, so I add, “Yeah, your dad was explaining them to me.”

“Well, a hedge is what they call a line of Green Men. I think they’re working out a welcome for one of the Guests of Honor.”

“Okay.”

She laughs again and I find myself wishing I had a recording of it so that I could play it whenever I wanted.

“Why don’t you come into the booth?” she says. “You can keep me company while you wait for him. I promise I don’t bite.”

“You should be careful about who you talk to. I could be anybody.”

“But that’s one of the cool things about life,” she says.

“What? That strangers can be dangerous?”

“No, silly. That we can be anybody we choose.”

“It doesn’t really work that way in my world,” I tell her.

“Now you really have to come sit with me and tell me all about this world of yours.”

Why not? I think. Maybe I can get her to laugh some more for me.

As I come around the table to where she’s sitting, the bracelet she’s been playing with drops from her hand.

“Crap,” she says. “Would you get that for me?”

She doesn’t even look at where it fell.

Why don’t you get it yourself, princess? I want to say, but then I suddenly realize something and I feel like a heel.

“You can’t see, can you?” I say.

“Well, I can see light and dark shapes to some degree, but I’m pretty much legally blind.”

She just says it like a fact with no hint of bitterness or self-pity.

I don’t know what to say so I settle for, “Bummer.”

“Yeah, I miss colors most of all, especially with all the costumes here at FaerieCon.”

“So you weren’t always blind.”

She shakes her head. “I like to say that I strayed into Faerieland and it was such an intense experience that I went blind—you know, like the stories say some people go mad when they come back.”

“Faerieland,” I repeat.

“Work with me,” she says.

“Okay. You lost your sight going into Faerieland. Got it.”

“And so,” she goes on, “the only way I can get my sight back is if I return there. Or maybe I can find my way to Bordertown and some faerie mage can cure me.”

“Bordertown?” I repeat. “The only border towns I know are places like Nogales and I don’t think you’re going to find any faeries there.”

“No, I mean the capital ‘B’ Bordertown that sits between Faerieland and our world.”

“Right.”

“I thought you were working with me,” she says.

I grin, but she can’t see it.

“Well, let me know if you need someone to take you there,” I say.

That earns me another hit of that intoxicating laugh of hers.

“Are you volunteering?” she asks.

“Isn’t that how it works in faerie tales? You’re supposed to help people out as you wander around trying to make your fortune.”

“Is that what you’re doing?”

“No, I’m just trying to save up enough to buy myself a pick-up.”

I sit on her extra chair and lean down to pick up the bracelet for her.

“Here,” I say.

She takes my hand in one of her own and plucks the bracelet out with the other. Then she lifts her free hand toward my face.

“May I?” she asks.

It’s like butterfly wings on my skin as explores the contours of my face.

“You’ve got a strong nose,” she says.

“Yeah, that’s why they called me Big Nose back on the rez when I was growing up.”

I don’t add that they stopped because I went after whoever used the nickname. If you don’t nip something like that in the bud, you’re stuck with it for life. Just ask Six-Toes George, Uncle Herbert’s brother.

“You’re Native American?” she asks.

I nod, then add, “Yeah,” because I’m not sure how much she can see with her limited sight. “I belong to the desert tribes. Kikimi on my mother’s side and my dad was a Yaqui.”

“Not exactly faerie tale country.”

“Not so much.”

“So what brings you to FaerieCon?”

“I’m with the crew that set up the booths,” I tell her. “I ran into your dad this afternoon. He said I should come by so we could talk some more.”

I figure that’ll be the end of any interest she might have in me. Girls like her don’t hang out with the behind-the-scenes joes who are supposed to stay invisible. But she only smiles.

“I should warn you,” she says, “when Dad says ‘talk’ he usually means he talks and everybody else listens.”

“He seemed okay to me.”

“Oh, he’s awesome. He’s just not a good listener. The good thing is that he’s full of all sorts of interesting information so he’s rarely boring.”

“That’s not a problem,” I tell her. “I’m more of a listener myself anyway.”

“Really? You’ve got such a compelling voice.”

Is she flirting with me? Time to shut that down. The last thing I need is to have some nice middle-class white girl flirting with me, even if her dad does think he’s a tree.

“I just find things work out better when I don’t talk too much,” I tell her. “I can have a big mouth and it gets me into trouble. Or at least it did back when I was still drinking.”

That should do it.

“How old are you?” she asks.

“Seventeen.”

With the sunglasses on, it’s hard to tell what she’s thinking.

“Me, too,” she says. “But I’m thinking I’ve still had a way easier life than you did.”

“I don’t think of it like that,” I tell her. “Growing up the way I did—that’s just the way it is down in Kikimi County. I could beat myself up about it, but I’d rather look at it as learning experiences that shaped who I am today. I’ll be the first to admit I’ve messed up a lot, but I’m getting better at doing the right thing.”

Speaking of which, I add to myself.

“I should go,” I tell her.

I don’t know what it is about this girl and her father that have me yakking away like girls on the rez.

“Don’t,” she says as I stand up.

I hesitate. I know I shouldn’t stay but I can’t help feeling flattered by her interest. I can’t remember the last time that happened. Maybe never, unless I was paying for the drinks.

“What’s your name?” she asks.

“Joey.”

“I’m Juliana.”

She puts out her hand and I automatically shake. As soon as her fingers close around mine, she pulls me back down onto the chair.

“I’m enjoying your company,” she says. “Because of my disability, people can feel a little awkward around me. It’s easier for them to just give me a friendly hello, then go off to carry on with whatever else they’re doing. They don’t actually want to sit with me.”

“That’s got to be hard.”

She shrugs. “It’s what it is. But it can make me feel a little lonely sometimes.” She pauses before she adds, “You don’t seem to focus on it at all.”

“I guess I can stay awhile longer.”

She beams. Then she lifts the book from her lap.

“If you don’t want to talk,” she says, “maybe you could read to me.”

“I’m not that good a reader.”

“Oh, I’m sorry. I didn’t mean to—”

“I can read,” I tell her. “I’m just slow at it.”

“Then maybe you could tell me a story.”

“You mean like a Kikimi faerie tale?”

“Do you know any?”

“Not really.” Though right now I wish I did. “All I know are Jimmy Littlecreek stories.”

“Who’s Jimmy Littlecreek?”

“He was kind of a legend back on the rez—always getting into these complicated situations and then making even more of a mess of things than they already were. But at the same time he had these desert rat smarts that always made things work out in the end. Back home, everybody knows a story or two about him.”

“He sounds like a trickster.”

“I guess he is. Sort of a little cousin to Coyote.”

“I’d love to hear one.”

So I tell her about how he and Bobby Morago stole a train in Linden and drove it backwards all the way from the mountains down to Santo del Vado Viejo just so they could have a date with a couple of Mexican girls they’d met the previous weekend. It’s a good choice, because I get the reward of her laughter over and over again. Truth is, I stretch it into an even taller tale just to keep her laughing.

I’m just finishing up when her dad shows up. He stands there smiling as I tell the end of the story.

“Sorry I didn’t get back sooner,” he says. “Green Man business always seems to take longer than I think it will.”

“That’s okay. Juliana’s been keeping me entertained.”

She laughs. “It’s more like the other way around.”

Tom’s still smiling, but I can see he’s studying me. Probably regretting that he asked me to come around to his booth. But then he surprises me.

“I was wondering if you could do me a favor,” he says.

“What do you need?”

“My friend Sam drove the van you helped me unload this afternoon but I just found him in the bar and he’s had far too much to drink. Now I’m stuck with having to get both the van and my station wagon home. What makes it more complicated is that I also have drive out to the airport to pick up Juliana’s mother. Her plane’s coming in around nine and it’s already eight.”

I nod to show I’m listening, but I don’t know where he’s going with this.

“So I was wondering,” he says, “if you’d mind dropping Sam off at his place and then taking Juliana home. She hates the drive out to the airport at night.”

“Hate it,” she puts in.

You don’t know anything about me, but you’re going to entrust your daughter to my care? But then I remember the way he was studying me a moment ago. He had that look in his eyes that Tía Luba gets when she’s taking somebody’s measure. Maybe he’s got her gift for reading character. If that’s the case he knows he can trust me.

“I can do that,” I tell him.

“Yay,” Juliana says.

“I really appreciate it,” Tom says. “I’ll go round up Sam and meet you in the parking lot.”

After he leaves, I help Juliana gather her things. She slips her hand into the crook of my arm. I don’t think I’ve ever walked arm-in-arm with a girl before. Back on the rez I wouldn’t be caught dead doing this. But I like it. At least I like it with this girl.

We get to the station wagon around the same time that Tom and Sam do. Tom’s half-carrying his friend. I remember how that feels. It looks even less pretty.

Sam’s geared up like a male version of that girl Luther was lusting after earlier today. He’s wearing a mix of pointed ears and wings with some tooled-leather clothes and boots. The jacket has odd little clockwork accessories sewn onto the shoulders and lapels and he’s wearing a top hat that has something that looks like a combination of a monocle and a short telescope attached to the brim.