Free Welcome to Bordertown by Ellen Kushner, Holly Black (editors)

from?”
    “California.”
    “No, I mean before that.”
    He gave her a long, cool look. “My parents came from India, if that’s what you’re asking. But I was born here—like you.”
    “We weren’t born here. Either of us. This is Borderland.”
    He picked at a frayed thread on one of the tiny whales on his pants. “True. And we both came here on a quest to learn something, didn’t we?”
    “You too?”
    Anush nodded. “Oh, yeah. See, when I left … I thought …” He worried at the thread, not looking at her. “I guess I wanted to be Vyasa and Ganesha, both at once—” He stopped. “You don’t know anything about them, do you?” Trish shook her head but kept her eyes on his face, hungry to learn. “Vyasa was the man who narrated the great Hindu saga the
Mahābhārata
, while the god Ganesha wrote it down.” He stopped for a moment. “But Vyasa was part of the story as well. He’s an important character in it, the father of princes.”
    “What kind of princes?” Trish asked.
    “Oh, the usual kind. Brave, reckless, beautiful, doomed. Indian princes.”
    “Did you study that at Harvard?”
    “No, my mom used to tell me those stories.”
    “Wow, that’s so cool!” said Trish. “The real oral tradition!”
    Anush grinned. “But transcribed first by an elephant-headed god.”
    “With excellent penmanship. That’s right, you said. So you didn’t read them as part of that class on myth and fantasy literature?”
    He picked at the whale again. “Um, no. We only looked at Celtic myth. All the classic fantasy novels are based on that, or Northern European material. Nobody writes about Indian stuff.” Trish nodded. “Kind of too bad, really, because it could be really cool—I mean, Vyasa’s son, Dhritarashtra, for instance, was a blind king; his brother, Pandu, was a great archer, but cursed.…”
    This is it
, Trish thought as the night went on.
This is what I came here for. Maybe not to be in a story, after all, but to hear them.
She loved listening to him explain things. She loved watching his hands move and his face shift as he told her of the great war between the two families, of the heroes and the strange and noble women in both of them … while around them at the Chimera there were people singing, dancing, talking, joking, eating, and, maybe, changing their lives.…
    *   *   *
     
    The tall kid has not been exaggerating: He
is
due on the stage in five minutes. The band has been announced, the house lights are dimming, the birds have commenced swooping (safely) overhead—and I’m soon standing in the wings with a tall, cold peri, Rosco curled up on some coats behind me. Even here in shadows, I feel conspicuous and stupidly out of place in my jeans and T-shirt and old Frye boots, while the band on the stage is all tattered oldvelvets and lace, like the crowd that’s come to see them. For a moment I think about turning and leaving … but that’s when the music starts.
    The tall halfling (whose name, I’ve learned, is Spider) now stands in the very center of the stage, a gangly scarecrow in a coat of elfin cloth worn over an old Scottish kilt and hobnailed boots. His silver dreadlocks hang heavy on his back, speckled with random bits of leaves and moss, and his wrists are weighted with Faerie gold and gems that sparkle in the stage lights. The other musicians are fanned out behind him, each one looking more outlandish than the next—except for a skinny human with a little goatee, dressed so plainly that he’s odd, too. Spider holds a bizarre-looking instrument that must come from the lands beyond the Border: intricately carved and painted, shaped a bit (but not entirely) like a fiddle, its six strings played with a thin white bow that looks twice as long as it ought to.
    The crowd falls completely silent as the halfling kid begins with a single note, so soft it is barely audible, and then it slowly, slowly rises in volume until it fills the entire room. It’s not