The War of the Flowers

by Tad Williams

  Feeling a bit unsatisfied, although he should have been delighted to find anything at all — it wasn't like they really were a famous family or anything — Theo located an open computer and did some searching on the Internet. He wasn't hunting more information on his great-uncle, since there wasn't any, but on some of the more obscure things and places mentioned in the notebook. He lost himself for a while in the realm of online fairy information, land of both the scholarly and the stunningly credulous, but mostly just of dippy unicorn-poets with too much time on their hands.

  When he pulled himself away from the computer at last he discovered that the woman at the reference desk had gone to lunch or gone home; in either case, she'd been replaced by a glowering man with a hearing aid, so asking her out was going to have to be a long-term process whether he wanted it to be or not.

  He stopped for lunch at a café near a bookstore on the El Camino, purchased copies of Graves' The White Goddess, Grimm's Fairy Tales, and a book about the Beatles, then stopped at a mall and prowled around the L. L. Bean store. He bought himself a Coleman lantern and a good flashlight in case the power went out up on the hill, and briefly considered an expensive parka — it would get cold up there when the winter came — but it was impossible to manufacture enthusiasm in summery early September for buying an expensive, heavy parka. After all, he had his trusty leather jacket, companion on many an adventure. Well, on many an excursion, anyway, some of them embarrassingly stupid when you'd reached thirty and thought back on things.

  Theo realized he was stalling. He stopped at a liquor store and bought a six-pack of Heineken, then rode back up the hill in a slanting afternoon glare.

  ————— He sat with the book across his lap and three beers under his belt, tired and still heavy with the sense of impending . . . not doom, that was too strong a word, but impending something. It was cold in the cabin, but he didn't have the energy to get up and turn on the heater. He lifted his motorcycle jacket off the floor and pulled it on.

  He was losing patience with his great-uncle's book. The descriptions were interesting, even fascinating: whatever other faults Dowd might have had as a writer, he definitely had an imagination. But the tales of his life in the fairy-city were just as anecdotal and, ultimately, pointless as his stories of real-life adventure. The book was a strange and probably hopelessly uncommercial mixture of fantasy-without-adventure (not real adventure anyway, the kind the Dungeons-and-Dragons kids wanted) and authoritative traveler's guide to a place no one could ever actually visit.

  He was only fifty or sixty close-written pages from the ending now, and found himself skipping ahead, distracted by thoughts of what other people would be doing on a beautiful Thursday night like this — getting ready to go out, see a movie, go to a bar. What if he had just asked out the woman at the library? She hadn't had a name tag, so he couldn't even construct an imaginary dialogue. What would someone like her be called? Eleanor? Elizabeth?

  Just my luck, it's probably Catherine. That stung. He turned his attention back to his great-uncle's neat handwriting. Not a tremor to be seen — it didn't seem like an old man's handwriting at all. He must have written it years before he died. It was hard to focus on it, though, with the afternoon dying and the world turning dark outside.

  A thick, ragged line of ink ran right across the middle of a page. It followed a seemingly inconsequential sentence about a party at a gambling club where he had again met the young lord named Caradenus Somethingor-Other, who had featured in the brothel story. There was nothing beneath the black line, although there were many pages left in the book, all of them blank.

  No. Here, several pages from the end, leaping out at him from all that emptiness like black paint spilled on snow, was a last addition, also in his great-uncle's handwriting, but much less steady, the lines uneven on the page, the words large and hurried.

  I have come to the end. I will never finish my story, because the ending is something I cannot face. I hoped where I should have had no hope and fell into shame and darkness because of it. I was sent forth and the way back is forever barred to me, beyond even desperation.

  I thought I could tell it but it is too bleak. I have lost what few men could even dream of having because of my own hubris — that courage that even the gods abhor.

  It had the stark look of a confession, or a hurried last will and testament. Puzzled and disappointed, Theo leafed back over the pages that had led up to Dowd's abrupt abandonment of the notebook, but could see no suggestion of what might have stopped him. He decided to go back to where he had begun skipping and read more carefully, but it was a less enchanting process now that he knew the story would have no resolution. He tried as always to keep up with the minutiae of invented names and places, the intricacy of invention, but he was finishing the fourth beer now and his eyes were getting heavy. The sky had gone slate blue, the trees were shadows.

  I really ought to get up and turn on a light . . . was his last conscious thought. ————— Apparently he had got up and managed to turn on the light before dozing off, because although the sky outside the window was black he could see the lines of the countertop in front of the sink and the curve of the faucet and the white face of the little microwave quite clearly, all bathed in a sort of shuddering yellow light. He felt stupid, like he'd been partying seriously, and not just with a few beers, either.

  Gotta change that bulb, he thought. But the glow was coming from the shelves beside the sink, not from any of the lamps in the room, an unsteady glare that grew brighter even as he stared.

  Fire . . . ? Even that thought could not spring him out of his chair — he felt as though someone had draped an invisible, weighted net over him. He stared at the gleam on the bottom shelf as it wriggled and pulsed, then died. Then, in the moment before the shining spot faded and the room dropped into darkness, he saw something that finally made him lurch up out of his seat. By the time he reached the light switch he had decided it had to have been a remnant of dream, and that four beers had been a few too many.

  Oh, man, what have we learned here? Maybe that depressed people shouldn't drink . . .

  But when the light came on, the woman was still sitting on the shelf. She was still about half a foot tall. She had wings. "Shite and onions," she said, hugging herself, then dropped lightly down to the countertop beside the sink, translucent wings beating gently to slow her descent. Her feet and legs and arms were bare, the rest of her covered by a red dress that shimmered like butterfly scales. "That damn well hurt."

  "Oh, Christ," Theo moaned. "What now?" The tiny woman stared at him, frowning. She was terrifyingly solid, not a blur, not shadow. She had short carrot-colored hair — a bad color to go with a deep-red minidress, a heretofore unsuspected part of his own mind noted — and a heart-shaped face that was somehow a little too wide across the eyes and cheeks. She looked like the type who would have freckles, but if she did they were far too small to see. She didn't look happy, although he didn't know why she should be. He wasn't all that happy himself.

  "This is a dream, isn't it?" he asked hopefully. She bent to rub her knees, then straightened up. He could not get over how small she was. It was sort of like looking at a cute girl at the end of the block, except this one was in perfect focus and only a yard and a half away. "Well, if it's a dream, then I'm dreaming too, and I'm going to put in a request for a better one next time, 'cause this one is desperate. Now are you going to sit there staring like a gobshite or are you going to offer me a thimble of tea or something? I ache all bloody over from getting here."

  "You . . . you're a fairy." "That's one to you. And you're a mortal, so that's sorted. Now, I'm tired and I'm hurting and I'm afraid I'm in a bitch of a mood, so how about that tea?"

  If this was a dream, what did it mean? It's one thing to fantasize about women, but women half a foot high? What does that say about your sense of self-esteem, Vilmos?

  "Look," she said, and suddenly he could see that imaginary or not, she was definitely exhausted. "That t
ea? I'm not shy. I'd get it meself, but I'm not big enough to turn the knobs on your whatchamacallit here, your stove."

  "Sorry." He walked toward the countertop, turned on the burner and put the kettle on it. She still didn't disappear. When the ring began to heat up she even extended her hands toward it, warming them. "So you really . . . really are a fairy," he said at last. "I'm not imagining it."

  "I am. You're not." "But . . . why do you talk like . . . like you're Irish?" She rolled her eyes and blew a minute strand of hair off her face. "Thick, you are. We don't talk like the Irish — the Irish talk like us, more or less. Get it?"

  "Oh." The unreality of the situation began to seem a little less glaring, but no more explicable. The water boiled. The fairy fluttered her wings and lifted herself back half a foot to get out of the way of the steam. He fumbled two teabags and two cups out of the cupboard.

  "By the Trees, fella, I'm not going to drink that much. Just pour me a bit of yours." "Oh. Right." He put one cup and one teabag away, then set the tea to steeping. He didn't have a thimble, so he retrieved one of the Heineken caps from the pile on the bookshelf. "Is this okay?"

  She sprang up and hovered beside him, wings beating swift as a hummingbird's. She sniffed the cap. "If you wash it out. I've nothing against beer, but I don't want it in me tea, thank you very much."

  He sat down with his mug, lost in a roaring internal silence of utter dumbfoundment. The fairy kneeled on the counter, blowing on her capful of tea to cool it.

  "I'm sorry if I haven't . . . haven't been a very polite host," he began.

  "Don't worry," she said between sips. "They often get taken that way, your kind. It's the glamour, I expect."

  "Are you . . . do you . . . What's your name?"

  She gave him a look that did not seem entirely friendly. "What's yours?"

  "You don't know?"

  "Of course I bloody well know, you great eejit. But you have to tell me first, then I can tell you."

  "Oh." He realized he'd been saying that a lot. "I'm Theo Vilmos."

  "Fair play to you. My name is Applecore."

  "Applecore?"

  "Don't start."

  "But I just . . ."

  "Don't start, fella, or you'll be wearing the rest of this tea." He stared at her, alarmed but also amused at the thought of being attacked by an angry fairy. Then again, maybe it wasn't funny — maybe she could turn him into something unpleasant, a toad or a pea under a mattress. At the very least, wouldn't she sour the milk or something?

  Of course, the milk in my refrigerator's probably sour already.

  "I didn't mean to offend you," he said out loud. "I was only surprised because . . . well, because I don't know anyone with a name like that."

  She gave him a stern look, then softened somewhat. "It's not my fault. I was the last born."

  "What do you mean?" "We're a big family, the Apples. Got twenty-seven brothers and sisters, I have. Seed, Skin, Pie, Pip, Doll, Tart, Tree, Wood, Bark, Blossom, even Butter, just to name a few — all the good names were taken by the time I came along. 'The mistake,' Ma and Da always called me, but it was in good fun. But there was bugger all choice left for names."

  "Ah." It wasn't very clever, but it was better than "Oh." A little. "So . . . so what brings you here? Not that you aren't welcome," he added hastily. "But we don't get many fairies around here."

  "And with these prices, I'm not surprised." She showed him a weary smile, the first from her he'd seen. "Sorry. Old joke, that." She tilted her little head to look at him carefully. "You really don't know?"

  "Is it something to do with my great-uncle's book?" "Not that I've heard. The old fella who sent me didn't tell me much. Apparently he's not the only one interested, but . . . Someone's keeping an eye on you."

  "Someone? Someone like who?"

  "Shite, man, I don't know! But the old fella's worried about it, so he sent me to fetch you. Don't ask me, ask him."

  "Old fella . . . ?"

  She put down her tea and cocked her head as though listening for something.

  "You said 'old fella.' What 'old fella'?"

  "Tansy, his name is. He's a sort of doctor-fella from one of the important families."

  "But who is he? Where is he?" Applecore shook her head slowly, distracted. Suddenly, he thought he knew what she was noticing — a sharp stench, sourly rotten. "God, what is that?" he asked. "A skunk?"

  "Something's outside." He stared at her, slow to catch on, but his nervous system knew it before he did: his heart was already going triple-speed. "Outside . . . ?" The smell was painfully strong now. His eyes were beginning to water.

  She was up and hovering, her wings blurred almost to invisibility, making the air hum like the propellor of a toy plane. She shouted something in a high clear voice, words in a language he did not recognize, then turned to him, clearly frightened despite the attempt to keep her tiny features hard and expressionless. "It'll take a little time to open again — who knew we'd need it so fast?"

  "Open . . . ?" It seemed like he hadn't finished a sentence in hours.

  Something bumped the front door, one, two, three times. Theo was so bewildered that he actually reached for the knob.

  "By the Trees!" she shouted, buzzing up close to his face, fists clenched. "Are you completely thick? Don't open that!" "But there's somebody there . . ." Something shoved the door again, hard enough to make it creak, as though a huge animal had leaned against it. The stink was even more powerful. He reached out and flicked on the outside light, then put his eye to the peephole.

  He was actually relieved to see the green duffel coat in the glare of the porch bulb, the slouched but obviously human shape huddled against the door. He could see a matted tangle of curly hair, a sheen of dark-skinned scalp and forehead. Some old black guy, a transient . . .

  "It's all right," he called to the fairy. "It's just . . ." Then the figure's head lolled back. Its jaw was broken, dangling flat against its chest. The blind eyes were not just milky-white, but like poached eggs were beginning to collapse and run out of the sockets. Theo staggered away from the door, his heart frightened straight up into his mouth so that for a moment he could not even draw a breath.

  Applecore buzzed to the peephole, then swam backward in the air. "Bad," she shrilled. "This is bad!"

  "Wh . . . what . . . ?" "You don't want to know. Where is that double-cursed door?" He didn't know what she meant. It was pretty obvious the door was right there, and hell was on the other side of it. But this had to be another nightmare, all of it, however real it seemed — that was the only explanation. He was locked in sleep — maybe he was even comatose, dying, limp on the cabin floor with his mind showing weird movies like a projector running in an empty theater. There couldn't be anything in the real world like any of this . . .

  But if she was part of a dream, Applecore did not know it. She sped around the room like a fly in a bottle, her tiny shape little more than a shadow. "It will get in the easiest way it can. If it has to break in, we may have time. Are there any other doors, man?"

  She was on about doors again and Theo couldn't stand it anymore. He sank to a crouch on the floor and clutched his splitting head. The stench was terrible, as though the thing were right in the room with them . . .

  "The bathroom," he said, dragging himself upright again. "Oh, Christ, I think the window's open. There's just a screen . . ." He lurched across the room and pulled the bathroom door open. His nostrils were scorched by a blast of ammonia and sulfur.

  The thing in the duffel coat was pushing at the screen. Even as Theo watched in stunned disbelief, it began to come through, the rotting meat of its hand forced through the netting like hamburger through a grinder. It stopped, impeded by bone. The wormy strands of the fingers writhed and groped a little farther forward, then the screen ripped out of the frame.

  Theo shrieked and stumbled back into the main room. The bulky shape came through the high bathroom window and fell to the floor with a complicated, wet noise, then dragged i
tself upright. Theo snatched up his guitar and held it by the neck, trying to keep his legs under him as the stinking thing shambled out into the light.

  It wasn't even a rotting corpse. Nothing that simple. It stood, swaying, a thing of stinking tatters. Bits of bone and rags and greasy flesh and even curls of newspaper protruded from the torn pants and coat. The left foot was bloody-ragged and moldering, but where its right foot should be two smaller feet seemed to have been smashed together as a makeshift, one of them still wearing a filthy woman's shoe. One of its hands had been mangled by the screen, but was already growing back together. The other arm, raised now beside the collapsed face, did not end in a hand at all, but in the mummified corpse of a cat. Its skeletal jaws opened and closed like clutching fingers as it extended toward him.

  Theo screamed and swung his Gibson as hard as he could. Part of the thing's mouth and nose flew off and it staggered but it did not fall. Air rattled in the hole of its throat. The gaping, crooked jaw twitched, tried to close, but most of the muscles were gone. As the duffel coat gaped open he saw that a suppurating hole in its chest had been bandaged over with a shredded mask of flesh — something that had once been a human face. Theo felt himself growing dizzy, saw blackness close in on him.

  Suddenly the fairy was there, a winged glimmer between him and the monstrosity. The room grew brighter, until it was full of flickering light. He could even see Applecore's face, hard as a cameo brooch.

  "Go on!" she shrilled, then flew at the thing's head like an angry sparrow. It leaned away from her, hissing, and swung its arm. The cat-hand clacked, the teeth just failing to close on her. "It's open, the door's open! Go through!"

  A smoldering glow hung just before the kitchen sink, a seam of dripping light like a zipper in the fabric of reality. He stared at it for a stupefied moment, then flung aside his broken guitar.

  "Hurry up!" Applecore screamed, but Theo hesitated. Where did it lead? Anywhere would be better than here, now . . . but . . .