Welcome to Bordertown Read Online Free PDF

name, or the hopes that bring a hart to the well.”
    “I’m sorry,” he said hastily. “We can skip this one if you want.”
    “Like skipping stones over a lake? But words are not stones, mortal man. Once spoken, they cannot be sunk below waves.”
    “Really”—he tried to catch her eyes, as he had when they were making love—“I said I was sorry.”
    She turned away from him huffily. “I should have heeded my mother. She said mortals all were thus. I thought you were different.”
    “But I am!” He was actually on his knees. “I
am
different. I’m not like all the rest—”
    He was almost weeping with frustration. Because it was true. He was. Always. Everywhere. Different. He was the Indian kid who loved Tolkien and C. S. Lewis. He was the American kid who loved his mom’s spicy
bhelpuri.
He was the dutiful son who studied the wrong subject. He was the serious scholar who studied imaginary beings. He was different as could be. Trying to defend himself to an elf was just about the last straw in a lifetime, a haystack, of them.
    “Different, are you?” she said coldly. “Then different you shall be.” She raised her hands, began to speak, and stopped. “But wait, my night traveler. I have not wearied of you yet. You and your questions. Clearly we both have much to learn. And your skin is like a river that runs deep and swift after a storm in themountain. So I give you this choice: whether you shall be different by day or different by night. Choose one, that I may enjoy you the other.”
    “Day or—?” he choked, but she said, “So be it. Roam freely in the day, rude as you will, in a form that rudeness allows—but at night, you are mine: all your pleasures, and your questions, and your beauty, all for me.”
    “Wait,” protested Anush, “I know this story! It’s kind of the Beastly Bride, and kind of Thomas the Rhymer—with a little Stith Thompson folklore motif number tw— Ouch! Wait a minute, what are you d—”
    And that was the last thing he was able to say for a while.
    *   *   *
     
    Trish went to The Wheat Sheaf that night. The place was crowded with all kinds of people—elf, human, even halfies. The other girls at Carterhaugh had told her to steer clear of elves, that they were clannish and mean and ran with dangerous gangs, but everyone here seemed to get along all right. She sat quietly in a corner with a glass of ginger beer and waited for the music to start.
Osheen
somebody, the Harvard guy had said. A harper. A minstrel. Like in the books.
    He didn’t look like the books. He was just a guy with scruffy hippie hair and jeans. But when he lifted the harp and played, the room went still.
    I will give my love an apple
    Without e’er a core
    I will give my love a house
    Without e’er a door
    I will build my love a palace
    Wherein she may be
    And she may unlock it
    Without e’er a key
     
    Trish let herself live in the music. She was a lady now, sitting in her high hall, her greyhound at her feet while the minstrel played for her and her court.
    How can there be an apple
    Without e’er a core
    How can there be a house
    Without—
     
    There was a soft rustling as everyone turned to stare at the striking couple who had just come in: a glorious lady with hair like moonlight and a dress as gold as the sun, and at her side, a dark prince—
    Anush. The Harvard guy. Dressed now in a skintight shirt that showed off his well-made chest. He had his arm around the lady and was nuzzling her neck in that stupid, boys-in-the-halls-between-classes way, paying no attention to anyone or anything around them.
    Trish looked away. Bad enough that they’d just made her miss the last verse of the Riddle Song, which ended with a flourish and applause. Now she’d never know the answers.
    Ossian Feldenkranz stood up, setting the harp aside, and shook out his arms. “And now,” he announced, “I’d like to invite up to the stage a buddy of mine, a
landsman
from the old country—and a great