Welcome to Bordertown: New Stories and Poems of the Borderlands
Holly Black
Language: English
Pages: 544
ISBN: 0375867058
Format: PDF / Kindle (mobi) / ePub
Bordertown: a city on the border between our human world and the elfin realm. Runaway teens come from both sides of the border to find adventure, to find themselves. Elves play in rock bands and race down the street on spell-powered motorbikes. Human kids recreate themselves in the squats and clubs and artists' studios of Soho. Terri Windling's original Bordertown series was the forerunner of today's urban fantasy, introducing authors that included Charles de Lint, Will Shetterly, Emma Bull, and Ellen Kushner. In this volume of all-new work (including a 15-page graphic story), the original writers are now joined by the generation that grew up dreaming of Bordertown, including acclaimed authors Holly Black, Cassandra Clare, Cory Doctorow, Neil Gaiman, Catherynne M. Valente, and many more. They all meet here on the streets of Bordertown in more than twenty new interconnected songs, poems, and stories.
down enough blood not to starve. If it got worse, though, I’d have to find another source of food, and I didn’t even want to think of the danger that entailed. I rounded up my dinner with no trouble, but I couldn’t find the right angle or something. My teeth wouldn’t slide in smoothly; I had to try several times. I made a mess of his neck. After I ate and threw up, I cried. Even without Dr. Vee’s final bite, I would be exactly like him, forever and ever, and I wouldn’t even be good at it, and
too hard at this being an elf thing. So did Gladstone, but she at least had a reason. She was half elf, after all. Half elf and all Bordertown. Beti was probably neither. “You realize most of these clothes too mash up to mend?” Beti grinned at me. “I’m going to, uh, mash them up even more.” She took a crumpled and stained linen dress shirt from me and began tearing it into long strips. Her hands were strong. “Today I walked through your marketplace, and I visited a place across the Mad River,”
learn that control is something you might try to exercise over a runaway train, not over a lover. The revelers started bellowing out the song about not giving a damn, ’cause they done dead already. So long I hadn’t heard that kaiso! From the big standard the two Frankenstein flag-bearers were dancing with, the crew was called the Jumbie Jamboree. Dead mas’ all around us. Vampires. Ghosts. Even douen mas’—small children dressed as the spirits of the unbaptized dead, wearing panama hats that hid
word, and off they went into the traffic of bicycles, cars, and floating rickshaws pulled behind the strong legs of street runners. Stitched upon the velvet of the bag was the elf’s family crest. It was easy to recognize. It appeared on the side of a reconstructed skyscraper in the business district. Until that moment, I hadn’t realized that the night before had been a transaction. And when I complained about it a few days later at Danceland, where I’d gone to drink away my idiocy, the
Alain waves an arm languidly from the couch. “Go on, then,” he says. “Rehearse. Only five days until opening night.” He yawns and closes his eyes again. “Inspiring,” mutters Renata. They take their places on the stage. They are rehearsing the scene where Elizabeth, Ashley’s character, is saved from drowning by Jack. The ocean is represented by a blue circle painted on the floor. Ashley pretends to gasp and tumble into it, and is hauled out by Nat, the skinny teenager to whom Alain has