The Poison Eaters and Other Stories (15 page)

Sandlin ran his hand over his short beard.

"You see,” Justin said, his voice rising. “She could be anywhere, in danger. Novels are always putting characters in peril because it's exciting. Characters die."

"Your problem isn't with books, it's with girls,” Sandlin said.

"What?” Justin demanded.

"Girls,” said Sandlin. “You don't know why they do the things they do. Who does? I'm sure they feel the same about us. Hell, I'm sure they feel the same way about each other."

"But the books,” said Justin.

"Fiction. I used to own a bookstore before I inherited a lot of money from my great aunt. The money went to a cat first, but when the cat died, I was loaded. Decided I'd shut my store down, sleep all day and do whatever I wanted. This is it."

"But . . . but what about what you said about books being alive? Needing our protection?"

Sandlin waved his hand vaguely. “Look, I love spending time with characters from books. I love the strange friendships that spring up, the romances. I don't want to lose any of them. Did you know that Naruto has become close to Edmond Dantes and a floating skull with glowing red eyes? I couldn't make that up if I tried! But it's still
fiction
. Even if it's happening in my basement. It's not real."

Justin looked at him in disbelief. “But books
feel
real. Surely they must seem more real to you than anyone. They can hurt you. They can break your heart."

"It wasn't a book,” said Sandlin, “that broke your heart."

800—Literature & Rhetoric

Justin went home and slept for the rest of the day and night. When he woke up too early to do much else, he opened a familiar paperback and re-read it. Then he went to a cafe and bought two cups of coffee to bring to class.

"Oh wow,” said Sarah. “Double latte with a sprinkle of cinammon. I think I just drooled on myself."

"You still have to win it,” he said. “You made up the rules. Now be made miserable by them."

She made a fist. “You sure you don't want to pick some game you're good at?"

Her earrings swung and glittered. Justin wondered if she wore them to tournaments to distract her opponents. He wondered if it worked.

He wished he could raise an eyebrow, but he tried to give her the look that might accompany one.

"Your funeral,” said Sarah.

Rock. Paper. Scissors. Scissors cut paper. Justin won. He gave her the coffee anyway.

"I didn't think you'd throw scissors again,” she said. “Since I pointed out that you threw it the first two times."

” Exactly.”
See
, he thought,
I don't have a problem figuring out girls
.

Just one girl.

And possibly himself.

900—Geography & History

Later that week, Justin attended the midnight party at Sandlin's house. He walked through the front door, disturbing as much dust as he could, before heading down the stairs. He arrived fashionably late. Characters were making toasts.

"
Salut!
” a group shouted together.

"To absent friends, lost loves, old gods, and the—” started another before Justin walked out of earshot.

He touched the heavy scissors in his pocket. His plan had changed.

Linda sat on a stool in black robes embroidered with the Hogwarts emblem and talked earnestly to a frog in a crown. Imps, nearby, appeared to be sticking a lit match between the stitches on the sole of a boot belonging to a chain-smoking blond man with a thick British accent.

"Linda,” said Justin, “I have to talk to you."

Linda turned and something like panic crossed her face. She stood. “Justin?"

"Don't bother thanking me for bringing you to Sandlin,” he said. “I won't bother saying I'm sorry. You were right. I'm glad I moved, glad I started library school. But what you did—"

"I'd always wanted to,” she said. “Put myself in a book. It wasn't you. It would have happened eventually."

"Look, what I came to say was that you have responsibilities in the real world. Your parents haven't heard from you in forever. What you're doing isn't safe. You have to come back."

"No,” she said firmly. “I'm not ready yet. Not now, when I can visit any book I want. I'll come out when I'm ready."

"You should have stayed and fought with me,” said Justin. “It wasn't fair."

” I could have put
you
in a book.” She tilted her head. “I still could."

He took an involuntary step back and she laughed.

"You don't deserve it, though,” she said. “You don't love books the way that I do."

He opened his mouth to protest and then closed it. It was true. He didn't know how she loved books, only that he loved them differently.

She turned away from him and he let her go. He stayed for the rest of the party and after all the characters were back in their books, he took
Harry Potter
off the shelf.

"Found the girl?” Sandlin asked.

Justin nodded and took the scissors out of his pocket.

"What are you going to do?” Sandlin sounded nervous.

Justin turned on the old computer. “I'm going to change the story. Just a little. No one will notice.” He flipped to a page where Linda's name appeared and carefully cut her out. Sandlin winced.

"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.

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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.

[Back to Table of Contents]

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—"

"Excuse me,” said a girl with long wine-colored hair. “Are you human?"

He froze, suddenly conscious of the jagged edges of what he held. “I'm supposing I misheard you.” He set the porcelain fragment down discreetly on the counter.

"You're one of them, aren't you? I knew it!” A huge smile split her face and she looked back eagerly toward a table of grinning humans. “Can you grant wishes?"

Roiben looked at Corny, busy frothing milk. “Cornelius,” he said softly. “Um."

Corny glanced over. “If, for once, you just act like my best friend's boyfriend and take her order, I promise to be nicer to you. Nice to you, even."

Roiben touched a key on the register. “I'll do it if you promise to be more afraid of me."

"I envy what I fear and hate what I envy,” Corny said, slamming an iced latte on the counter. “More afraid equals more of a jerk."

"What is it you'd like?” Roiben asked the girl. “Other than wishes."

"Soy mocha,” said the girl. “But please, there's so much I want to know."

Roiben squinted at the scrawled menu on the chalkboard. “Payment, if you please."

She counted out some bills and he took them, looking helplessly at the register. He hit a few buttons and, to his relief, the drawer opened. He gave her careful change.

"Please tell me that you didn't pay her in leaves and acorns,” Corny said. “Kaye keeps doing that and it's really not helping business."

"I knew it!” said the girl.

"I conjured nothing,” Roiben said. “And you are not helping."

Corny squirted out Hershey's syrup into the bottom of a mug. “Yeah, remember what I said about my idea to get Moon in a Cup more business?"

Roiben crossed his arms over his chest. “I do."

"I might have posted online that this place has a high incidence of supernatural visitation."

Roiben narrowed his eyes and tilted his head. “You claimed Kaye's coffee shop is haunted?"

The girl picked up her mocha from the counter. “He said that faeries came here. Real faeries. The kind that dance in mushroom circles and—"

"Oh, did he?” Roiben asked, a snarl in his voice. “That's what he said?"

Corny didn't want to be jealous of the rest of them.

He didn't want to spend his time wondering how long it would be before Luis got tired of him. Luis, who was going places while Corny helped Kaye open Moon in a Cup because he had literally nothing else to do.

Kaye ran the place like a pixie. It had odd hours—sometimes opening at four in the afternoon, sometimes opening at dawn. The service was equally strange when Kaye was behind the counter. A cappuccino would be ordered and chai tea would be delivered. People's change often turned to leaves and ash. Slowly—for survival—things evolved so that Moon in a Cup belonged to all of them. Val and Ruth worked when they weren't at school. Corny set up the wireless.

And Luis, who lived in the dorms of NYU and was busy with a double major and flirting with a future in medicine, would come and type out his long papers at one of the tables to make the place look more full.

But it wouldn't survive like that for long, Corny knew. Everything was too precarious. Everyone else had too much going on. So he made the decision to run the ad. And for a week straight, the coffee shop had been full of people. They could barely make the drinks in time. So none of the others could be mad at him. They had no right to be mad at him.

He had to stay busy. It was the only way to keep the horrible gnawing dread at bay.

Roiben listened to Corny stammer through an explanation of what he had done and why without really hearing it.

Then he made himself tea and sat at one of the salvaged tables that decorated the coffeehouse. Its surface was ringed with marks from the tens of dozens of watery cups that had rested there and any weight made the whole thing rock alarmingly. He took a sip of the foxglove tea—brewed by his own hand to be strong and bitter.

Val had come in during Corny's explanation, blanched, and started sweeping the floor. Now she and Corny whispered together behind the counter, Val shaking her head.

Faeries had, for many years, relied on discretion. Roiben knew the only thing keeping Corny from torment at the hands of the faeries who must have seen his markedly indiscreet advertisement was the implied protection of the King of the Unseelie Court. Roiben knew it and resented it.

It would be an easy thing to withdraw his protection. Easy and perhaps just.

As he considered that, a woman's voice behind him rose, infuriating him further. “Well, you see, my family has always been close to the faeries. My great great great great grandmother was even stolen away to live with them."

Roiben wondered why mortals so wanted to be associated with suffering that they told foolish tales. Why not tell a story where one's grandmother died fat, old and beloved by her dozen children?

"Really?” the woman's friend was saying. “Like Robert Kirk on the faerie hill?"

"Exactly,” said the woman. “Except that Great Grandma Clarabelle wasn't sleeping outdoors and she was right here in New York State. She got taken out of her own bed! Clarabelle had just given birth to a stillborn baby and the priest came too late to baptize her. No iron over the doors."

It happened like that sometimes, he had to concede.

"
Oh
,” her friend said, shaking her head. “Yes, we've forgotten about iron and salt and all the other protections."

Clara
. For a moment, thoughts of Corny and his betrayal went out of Roiben's head completely. He knew that name. And although there have been dozens upon dozens of Claras who have come into the world, in that moment, he knew the women were telling a true story. A story he knew. It shamed him that he had dismissed them so easily for being foolish. Even fools tell the truth. Historically, the truth belongs especially to fools.

"Excuse me,” Roiben said, turning in his chair. “I couldn't help overhearing."

"Do you believe in faeries?” she asked him, seeming pleased.

"I'm afraid I must,” he said, finally. “May I ask you something about Clara?"

"My great great aunt,” the woman said, smiling. “I'm named after her. I'm Clarabella. Well, it's really my middle name, but I still—"

"A pleasure to make your acquaintance,” he said, extending his hand to shake hers. “Do you happen to know when your Clara went missing?"

"Some time in the eighteenth century, I guess,” she said. Her voice slowed as she got to the end of the sentence, as though she'd become wary. Her smile dimmed. “Is something the matter?"

"And did she have two children?” he asked recklessly. “A boy named Robert and a girl named Mary?"

"How could you have known that?” Clarabella said, her voice rising.

"I didn't know it,” Roiben said. “That is the reason I asked."

"But you—you shouldn't have been able to—"

Everyone in the coffeeshop was staring at them now. Roiben perceived a goblin by the door, snickering as he licked chocolate icing from his fingers.

Her friend put a hand on Clarabella's arm. “He's one of the fair folk,” she said, hushed. “Be careful. He might want to steal you, too."

Roiben laughed, suddenly, but his throat felt full of thorns.

It is eternal summer in the Seelie Court, as changeless as faeries themselves. Trees hang eternally heavy with golden fruit and flowering vines climb walls to flood bark-shingled roofs with an endless rain of petals.

Roiben recalled being a child there, growing up in indolent pleasure and carelessness. He and his sister Ethine lived far from the faeries who'd sired them and thought no more of them than they thought of the sunless sky or of the patterns that the pale fishes in the stream made with their mad darting.

They had games to amuse themselves with. They dissected grasshoppers, they pulled the wings from moths and sewed them to the backs of toads to see if they could make the toads fly. And when they tired of those games they had a nurse called Clara with which to play.

She had mud brown hair and eyes as green as wet pools. In her more lucid moments, she hated her faerie charges. She must have known that she had been stolen away from home, from her own family and children, to care for beings she considered little better than soulless devils. When Ethine and Roiben would clamour for her lap, she thrust them away. When they teased her for her evening prayers, she described how their skin would crackle and smoke, as they roasted in hell after the final judgment day.

She could be kind, too. She taught them songs and chased them through meadows until they shrieked with laughter. They played fox and geese with acorns and holes dug by their fingers in the dirt. They played charades and forfeits. They played graces with hoops and sticks woven from willow trees. And after, Clara washed their dirty cheeks with her handkerchief, dipped in the water of the stream, and made up beds for them in the moss.