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THE WAR OF THE FLOWERS Sidewalks of New Erehwon "You have to tell her, Theo." He didn't want to do anything. He much preferred just looking out the window at the nighttime streets. It was a place strange beyond all imagining, this city, even on here on its outskirts with most of the sky-clawing towers still miles away. Johnny Battistini had gone to Japan once as a replacement drummer for a metal band past its prime — "They made me wear a wig, Theo, no shit. I looked like Phyllis Diller!" — a one-shot gig that he had talked about for years afterward. At the time Theo had been frustrated by Johnny's inability to describe Tokyo and why it had made such an impression on him. Although he spoke about it frequently, summoning up the memory without warning from a haze of post-practice weedsmoke, he could never explain is fascination more clearly than: "It was just ... weird. It's like a regular city, but then it's all different and shit. But to them, it's not different. That's the weird part!" I finally get where you were coming from, John-boy. He felt a sharp, sharp pang of homesickness. For the first time in his life, he truly missed Johnny B. The drummer would have reduced the whole of the experience to, "Wow, this is place is crazy!", and by doing so made it palatable. Other than the strange array of creatures going about their lives just as though they were normal people in Theo's normal world, it was hard to say what about the city was so alien. The buildings, although a bit strange in shape and decoration compared to those back home, were still within the bounds of comprehension. The quality of the light was different, of course, but he had seen that from a distance — he was just seeing it more closely now. The limousine had come out of a long stretch of darkened blocks of industrial warehouses on the outer rim of the city and was rolling through a lively network of streets lined with stores and theaters and clubs and restaurants, all with signs ablaze, but the light itself had a spectral, twilight quality, as though even the fiercest, hottest spotlights were draped with shrouds of pale green and silver and gray. But they weren't. of course. It was the light itself that was unusual, the radiance of Faerie, the light beneath which mortals first lost their way and then lost their souls ... "Theo!" Applecore's whisper was so loud it hardly qualified as a whisper anymore; it felt like she'd stuck her head all the way into the hole of his ear. "You have to tell her." "Why can't she just let us off somewhere near where this Snowdrop guy lives...?" "Ssshhhh!" It felt like she'd stuck a bicycle pump in his Eustachian tube. For a tiny person, she sure has a loud voice, he thought. A friggin' six-inch-tall drill sergeant. "Don't mention any names!" she hissed. Theo shot a glance toward Poppy, who was sitting with her head tilted back against the seat, listening to the music with her eyes closed and a little smile on her face. She was holding Theo's hand quite tightly. "Okay, but why can't she drop us off near where we're going?" "Because the more she knows, the more dangerous it is for us — and for her, if for some reason you're suicidal and my life doesn't mean much to you. We don't want her able to tell anyone anything except she dropped us in the Deepshade District." Theo started to raise an argument, but he knew she was right. "So when do we have her drop us off?" "Now. We can get a bus anywhere around here." "A bus? My God, trains are bad enough. There are buses in Fairyland?" "Shut it, you! Do you want to give yourself away completely? Now tell her. And don't go looking to me to fix it, or to make you look like a nice fella." She lifted off his shoulder and flew over to sit on the doorhandle at the far side of the car, fitting her back into the curve of the padded handle with her wings on either side. "Go on," she said loudly. Poppy opened her eyes. "Sorry," she said. "This is just so much nicer than that old train. Father's factor will have a fit, of course — he's a one of those old-school hobbanies who acts like every penny you spend is a hair plucked out of his own backside." She giggled. "My, Theo, you must think I'm a foul-mouthed creature." "Poppy ..." Theo hated being a bad guy. He tried to think of a half-truth, but could not ignore the fierce attention of Applecore, watching him from the door-handle with her arms folded across her chest. "Poppy, we can't go all the way into the city with you. You have to let us out here." "What do you mean?" She looked from him to Applecore; the sprite shrugged. "Where are you going?" "We ... we have lots of places to go. You're in danger now just for knowing us, for helping us. We don't want to make it any worse." "But ... but I thought ..." Her face cooled and hardened. "You used me." "No! No, Poppy, I swear ..." "You don't really care about me at all. You just acted that way so you could get a ride into the city. I should have let the constables take you away." In the dim light of the back seat, she seemed to have gone chalky white except for her staring eyes and the dark line of her mouth, which quivered. "You probably are murderers. No, that would at least mean you were really desperate. You're probably just thieves, just petty, nasty little thieves." She pounded on the partition that separated them from the driver. "Stop the car!" "Pardon, Mistress?" said the disembodied voice. "Stop the car. These people are getting out." The car pulled smoothly out of the slow traffic and over to the curb. The door swung open without a sound, Applecore still clinging to the handle. Outside, a sign advertising some kind of gambling parlor splashed shuddering blue-gray light all over the pavement. "Poppy, we're very grateful — I'm very grateful," Theo began. "And I really do like you. I think you're ..." "You think I'm stupid. You think I'm a stupid child. Get out. Go to the Well, for all I care." Applecore, ever the pragmatist, was already out and hovering over the sidewalk. A trio of beefy young ogres slowed down to peer inside the open door of the limousine. "Hello, seedling!" one of them said, bending his immense form almost double to be able to see Poppy. He had fists like Virginia hams and he smelled like something sluiced out of factories in big pipes. "Looking for fun? Come down from the pollen palaces for a little of the gray stuff?" "If you touch my car," Poppy snarled at him, "—if you even breathe on the windows, I won't bother to have you killed, I'll have your family killed instead. Every one of them." The young ogre blinked at her. "Then you can explain to the neighbors that they're all dead because you were thinking with your knob when you should have been minding your own business. Now, think carefully — do you really want to fuck around with Thornapple House?" The ogre had time only for one more dumbfounded blink, then his two companions grabbed him by the arms and pulled him away with a force that would have easily yanked a normal-sized person into pieces. "Wow," Theo said as he watched them hurry away. "You're tough ..." "Get out of my car." He turned. There were tears in her eyes, which made him feel like one of the lower life-forms imaginable, but there was also something in her face that made him shut his mouth again without the protest of regret and innocence that was halfway up his throat and rising. Instead he turned and scrambled out onto the sidewalk. The door scraped his ankle as it slammed closed. A second later the limousine pulled back into traffic, which parted for it as though it were a dynamite wagon. "You certainly can pick 'em," Applecore observed. "Shut up." He wanted to say something else — he couldn't stand to alienate the sprite as well, his only friend — but he was too full of boiling misery. "Shit," was all he could think of to add. He followed her down the sidewalk in a daze, trying to sort out his feelings, almost oblivious now to even the strangest surroundings and most unusual lifeforms, glad only that the night skies were clear so he didn't have to add wading through puddles in a driving rain to his list of miseries. The thing was, he felt bad because he hated being misunderstood, but there was more to it than that: he genuinely had liked her. In the midst of all that had happened, it had been lovely to have a few hours of nearly innocent flirtation, the cheerful companionship of an attractive young woman who liked him. And there had been something about her, a what-the-hell quality, that had fascinated him. "What did I do wrong?" Applecore, who was doing her best to find the right sort of bus stop, ignored him until he asked again. "What do you mean, wrong?" she said. "I didn't lie to her. I didn't promise her anything!" Applecore shook her head. "We don't really have time to talk about this now, Vilmos. And you probably don't want to hear what I have to say, anyway." "But I don't get it. I was really careful ..." The sprite dropped onto his shoulder, grabbed his earlobe, and leaned out in front of his face. "By the Trees, fella, have you ever actually had a girlfriend?" "What the hell does that mean? Lots." "Then you must have worked really hard not to learn anything about women. Is that why you had so many? Easier just to dump 'em when they started making sense?" She snorted and sat down on his shoulder. Theo groaned. "My life just sucked already, and now I'm getting lectured about my relationships by you — a fairy the size of a dog's chew toy. Perfect." She didn't say anything for a long moment, didn't even move. When she spoke, even with her head so close to his ear, he could barely hear her over the noise of the traffic. "I'm going to give you one chance to apologize." "What?" "You heard me." "What did I say? I'm sorry!" He turned his head to try to see her, and had to stop in the middle of the sidewalk. A two-way procession out of an illustrated children's book eddied around him. "Applecore, please don't leave me. I said something stupid — okay, I'm sorry. But I don't even know what it was." "Theo," she said after a pause, "almost everything you say is stupid." "Probably," he said, relieved. Her voice had sounded almost normal again. "And you shouldn't pass up an opportunity to kick me when I'm down, anyway — you might not get another one for at least ten minutes. But I really don't know what I said." "Do you think my size makes me stupid?" "No?" "And do you think I'm a woman?" "Of course I do ..." He swallowed down the, "I guess," reasoning that it might muddy the situation. "And is the problem you're bitchin' about a problem with a woman?" "Yeah, but ..." "So why would I not be qualified to give you the benefit of my experience, being as I'm a member of that particular sex?" "Jeez, that wasn't what I meant. I just ... Shit. Forget it. I'm wrong and so what else is new?" "Quit whingeing and start walking, ya thick. And listen a little bit." "Okay, okay." "What did you do wrong — isn't that what you asked? You said, 'But I didn't promise her anything!', as if how someone feels about you was some kind of court case or a contract, like you can solve it just by taking out the agreement and waving it around — 'See, I never said it!' But how people feel isn't like that, Theo, especially women. And the thing is, you know it, too." He groaned again. "I don't know anything." "Oh, yes, you do. I used to have a gentleman friend just like you. Sweet-tempered most of the time — he could be lovely, he could — but he just took everything that was given him and never wondered what was expected back." "So what the hell is expected back, will you tell me that? Or are we men just supposed to read your minds?" "By the Trees," she said, "it's like talking to a faun in the springtime. Look, fella, so you didn't tell her you loved her or that you were going to live with her in a cottage by the sea. Did you hold her hand? Did you listen while she talked about how happy she was? Did you or did you not tell her she was lovely and that you were glad you met her?" "I thought you were sleeping! You were listening!" "Fair play to you. This is my life, too, remember. Can you blame me for being curious about what stupid things you might tell the daughter of one of the people trying to kill us?" He was walking again, all but oblivious to the grotesque and beautiful faces watching him through the windows of restaurants and bars, to the shouts and the strange musical tones of car horns. "Okay," he said at last. "You were listening. What was I supposed to say? She was nice." "You're just like that other fella I went with. Theo, what do you lads expect? You make us work for every word out of you. Half the time if we let you have what you want, we never hear from you again, or if we do, you've gone all strange on us. We have to try to read you like a book in some foreign language, then when we make a mistake, you tell us, 'Ha! I never said that! You can't prove it!' Look, you, you can't hold a girl's hand, cuddle up with her, tell her she's beautiful, then pretend that because you didn't ask for her hand in marriage it's all a mystery why she's upset when you piss off at the first opportunity." Theo shook his head. "But you didn't like her! You wanted me to stay away from her!" "I like her better for not sitting around listening to your sniveling excuses. But you're right, I didn't want us mixed up with her at all. Which, you may have noticed, is why you didn't see me playing finger-tickle with her, or rubbing me leg on hers when I thought me companion was asleep. Turn right here." "What?" "Turn right here. There's a stop down this street for the bus through to the Morningcloud District." The stop, an ornate bench beneath a small but equally ornate roof, stood in front of a boarded-up storefront. The sign over the store's front entrance had been pulled down, but in the silvery streetlights Theo could still see the bolts that had held the letters in place, spelling "Lily Pad Sundries" in that strange gibberish-but-he-could-read-it way that Fairyland writing always seemed to him. There was only one other person at the stop, a goblin sitting with a very straight back at the end of the bench. He did not look over when Theo sat down, but there was a change in the quality of his attention to the street that suggested he was not entirely oblivious. "Okay, you win," Theo told Applecore. "You're the zen master of relationships and I'm the whatever, the uncarved block. Teach me." She laughed sourly. "As if I need to add to my list of impossible jobs. Just use your brains, fella. I think you've got some." "Is that a compliment?" "Of a sort." She frowned. "If this is the right bus, we can stop at my place first before we go on to ..." She stopped and shot a quick look over to the goblin, who was still solemnly watching the traffic slide past, his long nose pointed at the street like a finger. "To the other place." "We're not going to go there tonight, are we?" "I don't know," she said. "It's getting a bit late. But I don't know where else you can stay." "You said we were going to stop at your place. I'm not picky — I'd be happy to sleep on the floor or something." She cocked her head, looking puzzled, but before she could answer the bus came around the corner, the engines humming like the sound of drowsy wasps, the brakes screeching a little as it pulled up at the stop. It was shaped a bit like a caterpillar, with accordion folds and a humped back, but still recognizably a bus. I'm getting used to things here already, Theo thought as he went up the steps, then stopped when he got to the top. It wasn't the driver who gave him pause, a squat figure half Theo's size on a special booster seat, with modified pedals in reach of her dangling feet: he just assumed she was some kind of brownie or something. "Damn! I don't have any money," he whispered to Applecore. "Doesn't cost anything," she said. "But that's a good thought. We need to get our hands on a bit of silver pretty soon — I've pretty much emptied my tallybank." The goblin had got on ahead of them and had already made its way back to the rear of the bus. Since all the seats at the front were full, Theo followed, with Applecore on his shoulder. The passengers hardly looked up as he went past. They wound up in a seat in the second-to-last row, beside a sleeping fairy woman who seemed a bit the worse for drink or something: she had an odd smell to her, almost like camphor. Her cheek was mottled with an old bruise and her wings were bedraggled, one of them even tattered along the edge. The goblin had taken a seat behind them in the last row, and was still staring ahead as though afraid to do anything else. The bus had gone a few blocks when Theo realized he had been drifting, thinking of the look on Poppy Thornapple's face as she threw him out of the car, and wondering why it hurt him so much to remember it. "About money," he said. "Why don't we just have Tan ..." Theo was learning the trick of discretion, too. "Why don't we just ask your boss to wire us some. You can do that here, can't you?" She frowned. "Not as simple as you think, but for reasons I don't want to talk about now. And I still have to puzzle out where we can put you up for the night." "But ..." He hesitated. "Listen, I don't want to cause trouble. I mean, if there's some religious reason or something that an unmarried sprite can't bring home a member of the opposite sex a hundred times her size ..." He suddenly thought of something. "Wait, is this your parents' place? Is that why you don't want to bring me home? But I thought they lived back in ..." She stood up and touched his lip, silencing him before he could say more. "No, you great eejit. It's just that when I'm staying here in the city, I live in a Comb." He didn't get it. "And, so, what, do you have a hairbrush you keep as a weekend place? If you don't want me in your home, just say so." Applecore rolled her eyes. "A Comb! It's a place where people like me live. You don't think I rent something the size of what you'd live in, do you? What a waste! It's a special place just for sprites, ya thick." "Oh. Is that ... Comb like 'honeycomb'?" "You get the prize, boyo." "And I take it that it's not big enough for me to sleep on the floor." "Theo, if you took the roof off you could just about wedge your head into the main room, but you wouldn't have room to wink. As for my room, well, I've got the biggest in our part of the place, and you couldn't probably spread your fingers on the floor without touching the walls." "Our?" "Me roommates. We're all in and out, but there's near a dozen of us altogether. That's just in our bit — the whole Comb's got thousands." She looked out at the street. "We're almost there." The thought of thousands of winged fairies was faintly disturbing — like termite-hatching season. "Okay, I see why that wouldn't work. So what am I going to do? I sure don't have any money myself. Can I sleep in the park, or will the constables or whatever they're called come roust me out?" "More likely you'd get eaten by werewolves." She didn't look like she was kidding. "You don't want to be in the park at night if you can help it. This is our stop." As the bus shuddered to a halt and a few of the other passengers squeezed their astonishingly disparate and in come cases quite awkward shapes out of the seats and into the aisle, a gray-brown hand suddenly appeared beside Theo's head holding something small and vaguely white. He turned to see the goblin who had briefly shared the bus stop with them leaning forward. "Please forgive my too-sharp ears." The goblin smiled, showing sharp little teeth. "I had no intentions to destroy your privacy, but I could not help hearing something of your dilemma. If you should find yourself without a roof in this the very large and not excessively friendly city, come to this place. My friends and I share it. Not much, it is not much, but it is safe." He nodded emphatically. "Safe." "Time to go," Applecore said, hovering noisily by Theo's ear. "Thank you." Theo took the paper and stared at it for a moment, then closed his fingers around it. "That's very kind." "We all wait by the roadside," the goblin said. He nodded his head once — it almost looked like a benediction. "And we all wait for the wind to change." Still trying to make sense of the last two remarks, Theo followed Applecore down the stairs and onto the sidewalk. "What was that about?" "Who knows? Some kind of cult — these goblins go for all that shower." Theo stared at the slip of paper. The goblin had written on it in a labored hand, "Beneeth the Old Fayfort Bridge." He showed it to Applecore. "Not your high-rent cult, then," was all she said. He was about to crumple it and throw it away when he remembered where and what he was: in a strange city in an unfamiliar land, penniless and homeless. Can't afford to throw anything away, he thought. I might need to leave a note for someone and not have any paper ... a suicide note, maybe ... He folded it instead and put it into the inner pocket of his shirt. "Here we are," she said as they turned another corner. "Orchard Flower Comb." His first impression was not what he had earlier thought it might be, a termite nest, but of a vertical meadow full of fireflies. The air in the small side street was absolutely ablaze with flickering, swooping lights — gray-green, pink, yellow, and pale blue, like a blizzard of radioactive snow. Some of the glowing shapes were on the banks of tiny balconies that stretched the length of the street, but most of the gleaming spots were actually flying in or out of the hundreds of doors. "What are all those lights?" "Sprites," Applecore said. "A few pixies and hinky-punks and hob-lanterns, too, but all the flying ones are sprites. Why, what did you think?" "But ... you don't glow in the dark." "Can't be bothered. Come along, you." She tugged at his ear, then flew on ahead of him. Theo took a breath and followed. Smoldering shapes shot past him with every step, and although many of them were indeed tiny little glowing creatures, most just as human-looking as Applecore, the phenomenon felt more like walking through tracer-fire: for every self-illuminated winged figure, at least a half-dozen that were unlit whizzed past him in the evening darkness, making themselves known only by the wind of their passing, an occasional wing-brush through his hair, or in a few cases, a small voice shouting something that he could not make out. In fact, now that the rumble of traffic from the larger streets was behind him, he could hear a lot of voices all around — laughing, shouting, gossiping from balcony to balcony as they hung clothes or just enjoyed the evening. The firefly-colony metaphor was beginning to fail; with its rush of wings and the background of barely audible voices, the alley the contained Orchard Flower Comb was beginning to seem more like a cavern inhabited by talking bats. The housing complex extended all the way along a wall that Theo only realized after some moments was the back of another, full-size building. The Comb started at about the level of his knees and extending several yards up above his head, something between a high-rise tenement and a dovecote, row after row of box-shaped buildings mounted side to side so that it looked almost like someone had mounted an immense set of wooden post office boxes on the wall and cut little birdhouse doors in each one. Most but not all of the dwellings had balconies added onto them — some of them seemed to be little more than fruit baskets fastened to the fronts of the minuscule houses just below the doorway. Theo's first impression of something as swarming and impersonal as an insect nest did not last long: the residents had clearly worked hard to put their individual stamp on their homes. Many of the fruit-basket terraces had potted flowers, hanging tinsel or streamers of cloth and other decorations, and most of the tiny houses had windows cut into the front walls as well, with curtains or blinds which colored the light shining inside so that the flickering pastels of the glowing residents were matched by the more static colors of the windows. Some of the dwellings had been modified even farther, perhaps by a single family which had bought and connected anywhere from two to a half-dozen of the boxy apartments and then connected them in a number of clever ways, with exterior stairways and sliding poles and even a few, to the secret delight of Theo's inner child, which were scaffolded by a complex arrangements of chutes and ladders. Not all the ladders led from one dwelling to another. There were long accordions of steps that hung down to the ground as well, and looked as though they might be meant to be pulled up in an emergency. "What are those long ladders for?" Theo asked. "Pixies don't fly," Applecore said. "Now, you, wait here. I'll be back in just a wee while." Theo found himself stopped halfway along the wall in front of a part of the Comb indistinguishable from any other part. Applecore rose up a foot or so above his head and then flew into a lighted door he could just barely see. A few small shapes poked their heads over adjacent balconies to look at him, but didn't seem overwhelmingly interested. The sprite didn't hurry back out. As he waited, Theo found himself wondering for the first time what it really must feel like to be Applecore, how he would have felt if he had grown up in a world of giants who were, proportionately, as tall as ancient redwoods. He couldn't quite wrap his head around it. Somebody who knows something, a college professor or something, ought to come here and study this place. No, researchers, a whole bunch of them. Because you could live here for years, I'll bet, and only just start to get a handle on how different it is ... "Ooh, he is a big one," someone said above him. For a moment, the pseudo-Hibernian dialect made him think it was Applecore poking fun at him, but the voice wasn't quite right. "Well of course he is," said someone else. "She told us he was a big one." "I meant he's a big one for a big one," protested the first. "He's got shoulders!" "Will the two of you quit it, you silly cows?" said a third unfamiliar voice. "I'm getting me headache back." Theo squinted upward. On a balcony just above his head a trio of Applecore-sized figures were looking down at him. All three were young women, as far as he could tell, one with long brown hair, one with short brown hair, and the other with an immense fluffy mane of gold half-rolled in curlers. All three had wings poking out of the back of their housedresses. "Are you Theo?" said the blonde. "You're a big one, aren't you?" "Can you think of nothing else to say, Ginnie?" snapped the one with short dark hair. "You're doing my head in." She looked down. "Pay no attention to this lot. They've only been in from the country about two hours." "Ooh, Pit, it's terrible you are!" said the other brunette. "She's been here about a month longer than us and she puts on such airs!" "Ummm ..." He tried to let his brain catch up. "Are you ... are you Applecore's roommates?" "Yes," said the long-haired brunette, "although for as much as Core comes around these days, you'd think we were sharing the place with a will-of-the-wisp." She made a little mock-curtsey. "I'm Fuzz. The one with the sour face is my sister, Pit." "Fuzz ... Pit ..." Theo nodded, still struggling. "We're Peaches. And that one with her hair all sticking out like Peg Powler is Ginnie." "Don't tell him that! That's just a nickname," the blonde said, and sniffed at her roommate. "It's really Auberginnie. I'm an actress and that's my stage name." "Yeah, back home in Hawthorn she was just another Eggplant," said Pit. "Oh!" said Ginnie. "You're so stroppy tonight!" "Well, me head hurts, doesn't it?" Theo cautiously raised his hand. So far he had not been endearing himself to the female population of Faerie, and at the moment he was outnumbered three to one. He had a feeling that the size differential wouldn't make any more difference than it had with the power balance between Applecore and himself. "Hello. Nice to ... nice to meet you. Yeah, I'm Theo. Is she ... um ... almost ready? She didn't tell me how long she'd be." "She's faster to get ready than most," said Fuzz. She leaned over the balcony, squinting,, her long hair dangling. It looked to be almost as long as she was tall. "So, are you really a Daisy? You don't look much like a Daisy." "What would you know?" demanded Pit. "When have you ever seen a Daisy?" "I saw one on the news talking about some parliament thing. Don't be such a cow." "Saw one on the news." Pit shook her head. "Just ignore them both. They only came out to ogle you." "What?" said Fuzz. "Are you saying it wasn't your idea? What a liar you are!" "He'll think we're terrible," Ginnie wailed. "See what I mean?" said Pit with grim satisfaction. "Farm girls. Fresh out of the branches. Still have pollen in their ears." "Take that back!" Fuzz demanded. Fortunately, just as Theo was seriously contemplating making a run for it, Applecore appeared beside them with a small suitcase in her hand. She rose up from the balcony and began to descend toward Theo, then flew back up to the balcony and hugged her roommates. "Where are you going?" asked Ginnie. "We've hardly even seen you!" "Not certain," said Applecore. "I'll let you know. We just have some business to take care of ... some Daisy business ... and it's better we don't advertise ourselves." "Could this have something to do with those fellas who were asking about you?" Fuzz wanted to know. "What?" Applecore was clearly startled. "What fellas, when?" "You mean you didn't tell her when she first came in?" said Pit. "What's wrong with you two?" "You were in the next room. You could have come in and told her...." "Shut up, the lot of you!" shouted Applecore, and the heat of her response was so unexpected that her three roommates all fell silent. "Just tell me what you're talking about." "A couple of pixies we haven't seen before came to the door," said Pit briskly. "They said they were friends of yours from back in Great Rowan, but they seemed nervous." "Shite and onions." Applecore shook her head. "I don't know any pixies from back there. What did you tell them?" "That you were gone and we didn't know when you'd be back, what do you think?" Pit scowled. "I didn't like the look of 'em at all. Just as well I came home — these two probably would have had them in for tea and cakes and let them go through your room." "That's not fair," said Ginnie, almost crying now. "And if you chased them away so well, then why did I see them just this morning? Sitting out on the front sidewalk, watching the Comb?" Pit glared at her. "You what?" "Oh, Ginnie, why didn't you say anything?" demanded Fuzz. "Because before I had a chance to remember, Core came back ..." "You had time to eat an entire sesame cookie by yourself before she got here ..." "Enough!" Applecore quickly gave her roommates another hug. "Don't fight, you three. And if those fellas come back, don't let them in. In fact, call the superintendent and tell him the pixies are harassing you. Talk about it on the terrace, get some other folk paying attention to them. Chances are they'll get tired of watching for me, but for all your sakes I want you to make it uncomfortable for them to hang about here." She lifted up off the balcony. "But where are you going?" asked Fuzz. "This doesn't sound good at all." "It's not, so it's better you don't know. Don't worry, dear ones, I'll be fine. I've got my big, strong friend Theo, after all." She settled on his shoulder, leaned to talk in his ear. "Let's get going. The Trees alone know who's watchin' us right this moment." Theo gave Applecore's roommates a distracted wave as he stepped out into the alley. "Go where?" he asked. "I've been thinking. Walk that way, back toward the bus stop, and try to look normal, will ya?" When she had him facing the right direction, she settled on his shoulder again. "I don't think pixies will come after you — wouldn't be too sensible. Even if they had poison arrows, they'd need a lot of 'em to knock you down and keep you from getting away." "Poison arrows? What the hell are you talking about?" "But that doesn't mean they won't do their best to follow us. So we've got to scramble around the buses a bit, then get to a safe spot." "That Snowdrop guy's house?" "I don't think so. Hang on until I have a look." The bus stop was in sight. She lifted off his shoulder and buzzed away into the darkness. She was back on his shoulder before he reached the empty bus-stop bench. "Don't see any sign of anyone watching, but that doesn't mean much. A pair of pixies with the right charms ..." She let it hang as though Theo would know all about it already. "So where are we going? Why not what's-his-name, Snowdrop's place?" "Because I don't like any of that lot and I certainly don't trust 'em. See, I'm not a Flower, in case you haven't noticed, and I don't think that way. Tansy and those other gentry types, when times are bad, they think they've got more in common with each other than with anyone else. So to him, he'd rather send you to someone in his own party. But they're deal-makers, those in-betweeners, and I don't ever want my life in the hands of people like that. I'd rather take you to someone who's got something to lose, who can't make a deal because they're mortal enemies with the folks who are trying to kill you." "The ... the Creepers, right? The ones who wanted me in the first place." "But not the Hollyhock clan. Tansy's right about that — who knows how the evil bastards found out about that young fella coming to the commune to escort you, but they did, and in times like this it's usually an inside job." He couldn't help smiling at the phrase. "You're pretty hard-boiled, Tinkerbelle." "Call me that again and you'll be wondering how your bollocks wound up lodged in your windpipe — from below. Just because we don't get to your side of things much anymore doesn't mean we don't know anything. 'If you belive in fairies, clap your hands!' If you believe in fairies, kiss my rosy pink arse is more like it. Now are you going to shut your gob or not?" "What's a gob? Just kidding!" he said hurriedly. "I figured it out from context. I'll shut up." "That's good, then. So we're not going to talk about this on the bus — if a goblin can hear us talking, so can a lot of other folk. We're going to get on and off the buses a couple of times, but in the long run we're heading for Daffodil House. There's someone there who'll want to meet you — someone who hates those Chokeweeds like poison." If it had been something like nine or ten at night when they had visited the Comb, it was approaching midnight when they got off the last bus. Theo stood shivering on the sidewalk beside a wide thoroughfare — the night air had turned cold — while Applecore sniffed the breeze. "I don't think we're being followed." "Followed?" He looked around at the silent walls and dark windows. Actually, he realized, there weren't that many windows, at least at ground-level. "There isn't anyone here at all." "This part of downtown's like that. No restaurants, no night life, just government buildings and some of the bigger tower-houses. Once everyone's in for the night, it's pretty quiet. Let's go." She led him down a street full of tall buildings that, like everything else in this city, were both like and unlike what he knew. Many of the office complexes were squat structures like ancient castles, with walls around the outside that hid all but the tops of the buildings within, and although they were covered with bright spotlights, and had quite modern looking guard stations in the massive gates, they did not look much different from the medieval towns of earth that were still inhabited, the kind of places that Theo had seen on his one trip to Europe with Cat, new technology bolted right onto the ancient structures. But the family compounds — the "house-towers", as Applecore named them, were a bit different. For one thing, while the office buildings averaged five or six stories, the house-towers ranged anywhere from twice to ten times that amount. One of the first they passed, a huge structure lit by upward-slanting footlights which Applecore told him was Snapdragon House, was a good example of the type: it was not cylindrical but polyhedronal, and although it had regular rows of windows on the upper floors, there were none at all within fifty feet of the ground, probably for security: the only entrance to the building seemed to be a massive gatehouse set well back from the street, the massive doorway set deep in the thick wall. But although there were few windows in the first hundred feet, the tower was not without decoration: the windows themselves were in a number of different sizes and shapes, and most of the available wall space was covered with ornamentation as complex as the gargoyles and carved saints of a medieval cathedral. Even in the glare of the spotlights Theo couldn't quite make out the nature of the carvings, but they seemed to run across the side of the tower he could see in slanted bands, as though the whole thing was a single picture spiraling around the structure. He asked Applecore about the decorations. "Goblins getting' killed, mostly," she explained. "Snapdragons made their names and their fortune in the last Goblin war. You should see Phlox House. They were big in the wars with the giants. They've got carved giant heads and shoulders built into the foundations — the big fellas look like they're not having a real good time holding up the building, either." Her voice took on a thoughtful tone. "At least I think they're carved." She led him across a wide expanse of trimmed lawns and meandering paths, all quite empty in the pale, bluish light of the streetlamps. "Elysium Park," she told him. "Do we have to watch out for werewolves?" he asked nervously. "I think they've just planted the new wolfbane — remember those hedges? They take better care of downtown then they do the parts where us working folk live." Keeping his ears open for the sounds of something lupine in the hedges — because who knew what you could expect from disgruntled gardeners; Theo could just imagine them planting ivy instead of wolfbane by mistake — Theo slowed to look at a statue. It was the first he'd been close enough to see. It was of some strange, silvery metal, and seemed to represent a fairy lord in full armor, holding his swan-winged helmet in the crook of his elbow. He looked out across the park in a heroic pose that Theo had seen on dozens of statues back in his own world. "Who's this?" "How should I know?" Applecore flew in impatient circles. "The first Lord Rose, or maybe Dogwood, one of that shower. Come on." Theo stared a moment longer at the sharp-featured face. If the subject of the statue was not one of the most arrogant creatures that ever breathed, the artist had done him a disservice. "... Cold!" said a voice. Theo jumped. "So ... cold ..." He looked around, heart pounding. "My God! That statue just talked to me!" The voice had seemed miles away and yet right inside his head. "No, it didn't." Applecore was beside him now. "Come along." "It did! It talked to me! It said 'Cold!'" "That wasn't the statue. See, when they cut down all the forest that was here to make the park, the tree-spirits, what do your people call them — some Greeky-thing ..." She frowned. "Dryads. Anyway, their trees all got cut down. Some of them got into the statues as sort of a protest, but it didn't do any good. They're still in there." She shook her head. "Can't be nice for them." "When did all this happen?" He was still shivering — the voice had sounded so lost, so miserable. "Twenty years, must have been. Nobody cared. It's sad, I suppose, but what can you do? Now hurry up." He could not help looking back over his shoulder at the gleaming, silvery figure. Twenty years! He might have fancied it, but he thought he could still hear a faint echo of the hopeless voice. He caught up to Applecore. "How can anyone put up with that? It's ... it's horrible!" "Nobody who lives around here stands next to 'em long enough to hear. You just learn. Anyway, here we are." They looked down from the top of the grassy hill onto the edge of the park and a huge complex, the biggest he'd seen yet, perhaps four city blocks square and so wide that the whole park was its front garden. The main tower was large, perhaps as much as thirty or forty stories high, but it was not the tallest he'd seen — the Snapdragon house-tower and a couple of others had been higher. However, it was surrounded by four others that were each about half its height, so that the landscaped lot looked something like a monstrous university campus, or perhaps the complex of Gizeh pyramids. Or like a cemetery full of monuments, Theo thought. The encounter with the dryad had upset him deeply — he could still hear its voice, the exhausted disbelief of an abandoned child. "Daffodil House," Applecore announced. "Although really only the center tower-house. The others are Iris, Jonquil, Narcissus, and (*)." "Jeez," he said. "It's huge!" "They're a big, powerful family," she said. "In fact, they've practically been bankrolling the Creepers all by themselves, so if it weren't for them ..." She fell silent and Theo realized she had decided against finishing her sentence. "If it weren't for them, what? Your kind would be busily wiping out my kind?" "I'm tired, Theo. Let's just try to get off the street before someone catches up to us. Wouldn't you rather be inside those walls than outside just now?" He had to admit that it was appealing. He had been less than 24 hours out of Tansy's house and felt like he had been on the run for weeks. He was exhausted, frightened, and had no doubt that he smelled pretty rank as well. One of those hollow-men could probably spot him from a mile away. "Let's go." She led him to a tunnel barely higher than he was. It went all the way through the stone outer wall. The wall was at least twenty feet thick. "The guard station's through here." "Isn't this a bit of a weak spot in the defenses?" Theo asked. "Have you ever seen a pastry-bag?" Applecore asked. "You know, how you squeeze on it and this little stream of goo comes out the end?" "Yeah?" "Somebody in Daffodil House or in the guard tower pulls a lever and these walls slide together." She made a squelching noise. "Whatever's in here — goo." He shuddered and thought briefly about turning around and running out again. "What if someone pulls the lever by mistake?" "Hardly ever happens." "Oh, I feel much better. How do you know so much?" "Been here before." The guard station, which was really only the bottom floor of a guard tower in the front wall was an odd combination of medieval and modern: the interview room which was mostly behind walls that seemed to be transparent glass or plastic. At this time of the night they were the only people on the visitor side of the barrier, but that did not hasten the approach of the guards who were playing some kind card game on the far side of the room. At last one of them sauntered over and spoke to Applecore through a slot too small even for her to get through, while Theo tried to look interested in the Daffodil — the Dynamic House! and Explore Historic Hawthorn Scathe brochures in a rack by the chairs. After a drearily long time, the guard sauntered off, stopping on his way toward what looked like the communication center to kibitz on the card game. "Aren't they going to figure out pretty quickly that I don't have the right identification — that I'm not really a Daisy?" Theo asked quietly when Applecore came back to him. He was almost too tired to be afraid. Almost, but not quite. Applecore looked surprised. "Didn't Tansy give you anything?" "No." She shook her head, troubled. "Well, no matter. I called the person we're going to see from the comb. They're just double-checking. If she's coming, it won't matter if you're wearing your pants on your head and dancing a jig." They were kept waiting long enough that Applecore buzzed to the slotted window after a while for another exchange of ideas with the guards; the sprite's main idea seemed to be, "Get off your fat gray arse and call again." Theo did not really want to hear what the guard, a seven and a half foot tall ogre with something that looked very very much like a submachine gun hanging by a strap on his shoulder (and with a dozen or more similarly-attired and similarly-armed friends ranged around the guardroom behind him) might think about some of Applecore's more critical opinions, so he huddled on his chair by the brochure rack and tried to look as though he were just innocently waiting to get his work visa for Never-Never Land stamped or something. Even this tension couldn't last forever, and at last Theo found himself nodding. He was startled awake by Applecore hovering very close in front of his face, tugging cruelly on his eyebrow. "Get up," she said. "Stop it," he mumbled. She leaned in close. "You don't know how lucky you are," she hissed at him. "Her ladyship came herself." Theo opened his eyes wider and staggered to his feet. Standing just inside the barrier was a slender, handsome fairy-woman, indistinguishable at first from any number he had seen in the train stations and on the streets. This one had light brown hair with an actual streak of gray in it, and although there was little else in her features or posture to suggest she was anything but in the bloom of young adulthood, Theo suspected he might be meeting one of his first older fairies. "Marvelous," she said, looking him up and down. Her voice was deep and fell into the category Theo would have labeled "no-nonsense" — she sounded like the kind of woman who would stick her arm up a pregnant horse without a moment's hesitation. "Just marvelous. We are so lucky to have you." She turned to Applecore. "Just think. A mortal!" "She knows?" Theo was a little surprised. "Of course I know. And I am really thrilled." She extended her hand. "Please forgive me — I am being a terrible hostess, but that's what happens when the thirst of inquiry is on me, I'm afraid. Welcome to our house. I am Lady Aemilia Jonquil." Still a bit fuzzy from sleep and everything else, it took Theo a moment to realize that the hand he was shaking wore some kind of latex glove. Maybe she really had been helping a horse give birth, he thought. Or, more likely, a unicorn. "Nice to ... meet you." "Oh, and you too, Mr. Vilmos. Now, I know this should really wait until tomorrow when we can get the testing under way properly, but before we put you to bed I'd like to perform just one or two small — and, I'm afraid, a bit more than moderately painful — experiments on you." With Applecore hovering just out of range and ignoring Theo's increasingly nervous questions, Lady Jonquil took him by the hand led him through the guard tower into the stony fastness of Daffodil House. |