She takes her fingers out of her mouth. She gnaws on her lip. She looks up into the sky, and around at the trees. She tugs on her dreads. She smiles. She starts to laugh. It’s not teasing laugh or a mean laugh, but pure happiness, like a little kid in the snow.
“Wow,” she says, and her voice is warm and soft as fleece. “You’re right. Awesome.”
“Cool,” I say. Can I go home now?”
“In a minute.” She puts her head to one side, and grins at me. I’m grinning back—I can’t help it. Suddenly, I feel all mellow and safe and comfortable, like I’m lying on a rock in the sun and telling stories to Elf.
“Yeah,” she says, like she’s reading my mind. “I’ve heard you. You tell good stories. You should write them down. Now, about those wishes. They’re human stuff—not really my business. As you pointed out. Besides, you’ve already got all those things. You remember what you need to know; you see clearly; you’re majorly kind-hearted. But you deserve a present.” She tapped her browny-green cheek with one slender finger. “I know. Ready?”
“Okay,” I say. “Um. What is it?”
“It’s a surprise,” she says. “But you’ll like it. You’ll see.”
She stands up and I stand up. Bugle takes off from my shoulder and goes and sits in the greeny-brown dreads like a butterfly clip. Then the Queen of the New York Fairies leans forward and kisses me on the forehead. It doesn’t feel like a kiss—more like a very light breeze has just hit me between the eyes. Then she lays her finger across my lips, and then she’s gone.
“So there you are!” It was Elf, red in the face, out of breath, with her hair coming out of the clip, and a tear in her jacket. “I’ve been looking all over. I was scared out of my mind! It was like you just disappeared into thin air!”
“I got lost,” I said. “Anyway, it’s okay now. Sit down. You look like hell.”
“Thanks, friend.” She sat on the bench. “So, what happened?”
I wanted to tell her, I really did. I mean, she’s my best friend and everything, and I always tell her everything. But the Queen of the Fairies. I ask you. And I could feel the kiss nestling below my bangs like a little, warm sun and the Queen’s finger cool across my lips. So all I did was look at my hands. They were all dirty and scratched from climbing up the cliff. I’d broken a fingernail.
“Are you okay?” Elf asked anxiously. “That guy didn’t catch you or anything, did he? Jeez, I wish we’d never gone down there.”
She was getting really upset. I said, “I’m fine, Elf. He didn’t catch me, and everything’s okay.”
“You sure?”
I looked right at her, you know how you do when you want to be sure someone hears you? And I said, “I’m sure.” And I was.
“Okay,” she said slowly. “Good. I was worried.” She looked at her watch. “It’s not like it was that long, but it seemed like forever.”
“Yeah,” I agreed, with feeling. “I’m really thirsty.”
So that’s about it, really. We went to a coffee shop on Columbus Ave. and had blueberry pie and coffee and talked. For the first time, I told her about being adopted, and wanting to look for my birth mother, and she was really great about it after being mad because I hadn’t told her before. I said she was a good friend and she got teary. And then I went home.
So what’s the moral of this story? My life didn’t get better overnight, if that’s what you’re wondering. I still need to lose a few pounds, I still need glasses, and the cool kids still hate me. But Elf sits with me at lunch now, and a couple other kids turned out to be into fantasy and like that, so I’m not a total outcast any more. And I’m writing down my stories. Elf thinks they’re good, but she’s my best friend. Maybe some day I’ll get up the nerve to show them to my English teacher. Oh, and I’ve talked to my mom about finding my birth mother, and she says maybe I should wait until I’m out of high school. Which is okay with me, because, to tell you the truth, I don’t need to find her right now—I just want to know I can.
And the Green Queen’s gift? It’s really weird. Suddenly, I see fairies everywhere.
There was this girl the other day—blonde, skinny, wearing a white leotard and her jeans unzipped and folded back, so she looked kind of like a flower in a calyx of blue leaves.
Freak, right? Nope. Fairy. So was an old black guy all dressed in royal blue, with butterflies sewn on his blue beret and painted on his blue suede shoes. And this Asian guy with black hair down to his butt and a big fur coat. And this Upper East Side lady with big blond hair and green bug-eyes. She had a fuzzy little dog on a rhinestone leash, and you won’t believe this, but the dog was a fairy, too.
And remember the trees—the sidewalk ones? I know all about them now. No, I won’t tell you, stupid. It’s a secret. If you really want to know, you’ll have to go find the Queen of Grand Central Park and make her an offer. Or play a game with her.
Don’t forget to say hi to Gnaw-bone for me.
But if you want to meet fairies, Central Park is not the only place to find them in New York.
THE LAND OF HEART’S DESIRE
HOLLY BLACK
If you want to meet real-life members of the Sidhe—real faeries—go to the café 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 café 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 fairie 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 corrup
tion, 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.