The Year's Best Dark Fantasy and Horror (85 page)

“But it is real?”

“Define real.”

“You know what I mean.”

“Man, how would I know what
you
mean? My real’s not necessarily the same as your real. Don’t look at me like that. I’m not just being cute. The thing is, we all live in the world that we see and expect. They don’t always match up—you understand what I’m saying?”

I shake my head.

“Let me put it this way,” he says. “You look out that door and you’re seeing New Mexico go by.”

“So?”

“So what if I told you I see Alaska? Or India? Or the heart of Moscow?”

“I’d think you were either yanking my chain—or you’re crazy.”

“Sure, that’s the easy way to look at it. But what if I’m
really
seeing a landscape you don’t?”

“That’s impossible.”

He nods. “Right. And if you keep your mind closed like that you’ll never get to Bordertown. I mean, think about it. Is Bordertown, or even the Perilous Realm, any more probable?”

“I guess not . . . ”

I look out the door, trying to see something other than mesas and badlands. Mountains in the distance.

“I can’t see it,” I say. “I just see New Mexico.”

“Did I say it wasn’t New Mexico?”

“But—”

“I was making a point.”

“Okay,” I say. “I get it. And I’ve been trying to open my mind. But I’m just not seeing any differently than I ever did.”

“I think you’ve been doing pretty good. You can see me, can’t you?”

“What’s that supposed to mean?”

“Come on, Joey. You’re a smart guy. You’re walking around under the blessings of a dozen or so Green Men. You were married to a Green Man’s daughter. You’ve been whittling acorns and tossing them out of trains from one side of the country to the other. Did you seriously not expect to call something to you?”

All I can do is stare at him. I never told him any of that stuff.

“Let me show you something,” he says.

He stands up and what I thought was a bedroll is actually a pile of leaves. His eyes, I can see now that he’s moved out of the shadows, are a mix of gold and green. His face is ruddy and round, with deep laugh lines. He comes to where I’m sitting by the door and waits expectantly until I stand up beside him. He puts his hands in the pockets of his greatcoat and pulls out two fistfuls of carved acorns. Smiling at me, he lets them fall from his hands to the track bed that’s speeding by below.

“Where did you—how . . . ?”

I don’t have the words to finish my questions. All I can do is stare at his hands.

“I think I liked the earlier ones better,” he says. “You seem to have put more intent into them. Now you’re kind of doing it by rote, but it doesn’t really matter. They still fulfilled the boundaries of your ritual.”

“I . . . ”

“Don’t talk,” he says. “Listen. Look at those beautiful mountains.”

We stand in the doorway watching the landscape continue to go by.

“You know it’s not going to be any easier in Bordertown, right?” he says after a few moments. “Being there’s not going to make things better, or help you to forget—unless you drink some of that Mad River water and then you’re only going find out why they call it that.”

“If I can get that far then I can—”

He points out the door.

“Pay attention here,” he says. “Listen to the wind. Look at that mesa. Smell the clean air out there. Isn’t it so much better than the diesel fumes and the metal and wood and grease of this boxcar?”

“I guess.”

“Sure it is. Now here’s where you get off.”

I start to turn to him, but his hands are on my back and he pushes me out the boxcar door.

My years of drinking left me one positive thing. I know how you don’t get hurt as badly from a fall if you can be totally relaxed before impact. Tuck in your head and roll with the slope. You get banged up a bit, but if you pick a gentle grade, or when the train’s starting to slow down before a station, you can get through it without injuries. Usually. It’s like a Zen thing. You clear your mind, shake all the tension off before you make your jump.

I don’t get that chance here. Rudy’s push sends me flailing into the air. I know I’m going to hit hard and badly.

Except the air seems to catch me. I’m floating. Bright sunshine all around me, the train wailing by.

And then it’s dark. When I touch the ground, I land like a leaf. There isn’t even an impact. I feel gravel under me and I roll over to see a night sky above. It’s filled with constellations I don’t recognize.

The train, Rudy, New Mexico—they’re all gone.

When I sit up, I see I’m in a train yard. I don’t know where, but I can guess. In one direction I can see a fence, beyond it blocks of dark buildings. In the other direction it looks like a dump, cars and trash piled high.

I get up and start walking across the tracks to the fence. I was planning to climb over but then I see someone’s already cut a hole in it that I can squeeze through. On the other side I find out why the buildings are dark. The city’s been abandoned—or at least this part of it is. I can see lights in the far distance so I start to walk through the deserted streets.

I’m almost to the lighted area when I hear the sound of wheels clattering. I see a white kid on a skateboard, rolling back and forth on a little patch of asphalt that must’ve been a parking space back before everybody left this area and nature made its come back. As I get closer I don’t see anything unusual about him. No elf ears. No big wings sprouting out of his back. He’s maybe sixteen with a rat’s nest of hair, baggy pants, a Green Day
Dookie
T-shirt and a pair of Nike Air Max. He stops goofing around with his skateboard when he sees me and waits for me to approach.

“Hey,” I say. “Think you could direct me to a hostel or a flophouse?”

He laughs. “Just get here?”

“Yeah.”

He waves his hand to take in the empty buildings that surround us.

“Take your pick,” he says.

“I was hoping to clean up and get something to eat.”

He pushes back his hoodie and gives me an interested look.

“You got any money?” he asks.

“Not much.”

“Worldly money?” When he realizes I don’t know what he means, he adds, “You know, from the World. Where you came from. The reason I ask is it’s not worth as much here. You got any coffee or chocolate?”

I nod. There’s probably a half-pound of French Roast and a handful of chocolate and granola bars in my knapsack.

“Then you’re cool.” He steps on his board and it jumps into his hand. “Buy me a meal and I’ll show you the ropes.”

“What’s your name?”

He was starting to turn, but he looks back at me.

“That can be a loaded question here,” he says. “Usually you wait until someone offers it to you. And,” he goes on before I can say anything, “be careful handing out your own. Just give up something like a nickname.”

“And that would be because?”

“Magic’s unpredictable here, but that doesn’t mean it’s not potent in the right hands. Names are power. If someone has your full true name, they can make you do stuff that maybe you don’t want to.”

“Are you serious?”

“But if you need a tag, you can call me River.”

Full true names are power? I don’t really buy it. But to be safe, I just give him the shortened version of Joseph.

“I’m Joey,” I tell him.

He smiles. “Baby kangaroo.”

“What?”

“Nothing. Come on. Let’s get you something to eat. Me, I’ll have a sandwich and a beer.”

“Yeah, right,” I say. “How old are you?”

He laughs. “You think anyone gives a shit about that? You’re in Bordertown now. We’ve got our own rules and how old you are isn’t part of any of them.”

“I guess I’ve got a lot to learn.”

“You have no idea,” the kid tells me. “No idea at all.”

He’s right. I don’t. Bordertown’s shabbier than I expected, rundown and wearing at the edges, but it’s also got that makeshift cool that you’ll always find in a certain part of any city. The place where the stores, restaurants and clubs are all just a little hipper.

Most people look as human as you’d find anywhere, though they’ve got a more individual and varied fashion sense that seems vaguely out-of-date. I was expecting something like a FaerieCon with everybody dressed up in their faerie gear. But it’s more like a mash-up of a punk rock concert with a hippie festival.

But the elves. I get a real pang in my heart when I see my first honest-to-goodness one. Tall, slender and pale, with the high pointed ears and the silvery hair. I just think about how much Juliana would have loved to see one. To be here.

They don’t call themselves elves, or faerie, River informs me. They’re True Bloods, which I’ve got to admit, sounds a bit too White Supremacist for my tastes. I didn’t imagine Bordertown to be racist, but apparently there’s a real hierarchy here starting with high born and low born elves, through to halflings with humans at the bottom. Which would make a guy with my skin color at the bottom of the bottom.

River shrugs. “You can get all in a twist about it, or you can just let it go. So long as you stay out of the way of the True Bloods, and don’t piss off one of the gangs, no one’s going to care.”

Says the white kid.

He never asks me why I’ve come and I don’t volunteer the information. I do tell him I’m interested in the Realm—which is what they call Faerieland here—and he just laughs.

“No kidding?” he says. “You and every other newbie. But forget about ever getting over there. I mean, seriously. Forget about it. You might be thinking, ‘Hey, I made it to Bordertown, which is like a miracle all by itself. Getting into the Realm is just one more impossible thing I’m going to do.’ But it’s never going to happen. And if you try, you’ll just bring a world of hurt down on yourself.”

He doesn’t know about the world of hurt I carry around inside myself every day, but I just nod in agreement.

River hangs around with me until about mid-morning, which is about when he realizes that the flow of free food and drinks has dried up.

“I’ve got to motor,” he says the third time he’s unsuccessfully tried to get me to buy him something. “I’ll catch you around.”

“Thanks for the tour,” I tell him.

He waves a hand, then disappears into the crowd, skateboard under his arm.

I spend the rest of the day getting the lay of the land, staying out of the areas River warned me about. I still get a kick out of seeing the True Bloods, though I can’t pretend that what they stand for doesn’t irritate me. You have to have been on my side of the race issue to really get it, I suppose. It’s just not something I can ignore.

As the sun goes down, I sit on a low wall by the Mad River whittling an acorn and considering what I’ve been told about the water flowing by below. I know the river has its source in the Realm. I’ve been told that drinking it, or even swimming in it, messes you up worse than any bad drug trip and there’s no coming down from it. I haven’t decided how much of it I believe but I’m not ready to try that route yet. Sneaking onto one of the boats that plies its trade between here and the Realm is an option that I’m liking better and better after everything else I’ve seen.

I had a good look at Elfhaeme Gate earlier in the afternoon. The damn thing’s huge and there’s no way I’m getting through it—not with how well it’s guarded. I also scouted the Nevernever—the Borderlands between the Realm and Bordertown. When I stepped out into them I thought I was having an acid flashback. Seriously. The landscape seemed to change underfoot whenever I turned in a new direction. Pastoral woodlands became a wasteland more barren than anything in my home turf, which in turn became wheat fields, arctic tundra, redwoods, you name it. It felt like it was going to snow, then it was sunny, then it rained.

It gave me vertigo but I trudged on until I finally saw the shimmering curtain that divides the Realm from the World. I stared at it for a long time. It was beautiful, but it made the vertigo so bad that I could barely stay upright. Trying to make my way through that shimmer was going to be a last resort. Especially when these boats seem like such an easy option.

The problem is, none of them appear to be going anywhere right now. The barges are all empty with no place to hide. I have to wait until they start to load them in the morning.

With that decided, I stick the finished acorn in my pocket. I close up my jackknife, shoulder my knapsack and head back into the part of Soho where I first met River. I’ll get some shut-eye in one of the abandoned buildings. Have an early breakfast. Maybe find a place where I can grab a shower or at least wash up.

Walking down Ho Street feels like Mardi Gras in New Orleans. There are kids everywhere, music spilling out of the clubs, everyone having a good time. I get lots of friendly nods and invitations to join in on the fun, but I just smile, or say no thanks, and walk on. Fun’s not a word that’s in my vocabulary any more. It’s been seven months, but it still feels like yesterday when I was sitting in the ICU holding Juliana’s hand as she drifted away.

I’m not alone in keeping my distance. I see kids in the shadows, skulking in the mouths of alleys, or in the doorways of businesses that are closed for the night. They shrink back when they see me looking at them. Street kids. Some of them are younger than River. One pair of girls I’m sure can’t be more than twelve or thirteen. I don’t know their stories but I’m guessing that actually being here in Bordertown turned out to be a whole lot different from what they thought it would be—and maybe not so different from whatever they were trying to escape in the World.

I turn off the party street and find a quieter avenue that’s heading in the same direction. The buzz from Ho Street still reaches me here so I almost don’t hear the whimper in the alley as I pass its mouth. It’s followed by the sound of rough laughter. I pause, and take a few steps back to peer down its length.

The light’s not good, but I can make out three guys clustered around a body on the ground. They’re taking turns kicking it. I reach into my pocket and pull out my jackknife. Then I step into the alley.

As I get closer I see it’s a dog that they’re tormenting. It’s a mid-sized animal, shorthaired with a long face, big shoulders and trim hips. There’s blood on its yellow fur. It keeps trying to crawl away but whenever it does, one of the guys gives it another kick.