The War of the Flowers

by Tad Williams

  The Terrible Child awoke to full reality only as the thing stepped through the gateway. He began to scream, a heartrending screech of horror that could have been any child's. The boy's flesh was already smoking, the little body struggling helplessly in the grip of its burning captor, as the doorway in reality closed again.

  Straight to hell, Theo thought. Just like in the old stories. Then for an instant the severed connection between them returned — just a brief touch, but even that merest hint of what the child was feeling made Theo scream and convulse in the unbending arms of his captor.

  Nidrus Hellebore had only time for a single shout of rage before the billowing purple light, uncontrolled in the wake of the Terrible Child's vanishing, or perhaps returned to the control of those who had reason to hate him, suddenly enfolded the fairy lord. Hellebore squealed as the very bones inside his flesh turned white hot and began to burn their way out of his body, howled as light burst from his joints, his belly, his eyes and mouth, then fell silent and collapsed in on himself, although small sounds still came out of the smoking mass. As the light from the pit expanded outward, growing weaker as it spread, the others ran away down the hill in heedless terror, scattering in all directions like startled pigeons.

  A chill hand covered Theo's eyes. "Enough," said the strong old voice, and the nymph pulled him down.

  As the hand that had temporarily blinded him lifted free, Theo saw green depths rushing up to meet him, incalculable depths. So that was it. That was a life. The thoughts were like bubbles, rising and popping. Goodnight nobody. Say goodnight . . . Then the water flooded into his startled, open mouth and blackness rushed in behind it.

  Part Five FAIRY-TALE ENDING

  42 FAREWELL FEAST

  In his dream he floated in thick, cool space, surrounded by streamers of green movement. In fact, almost everything was green — the light, the shadows, his own hands where they drifted slowly in front of his face, stained a sickly color like old lunch meat. Fish, hundreds of them, perhaps thousands, floated amid the rising bubbles just as he himself was floating, watching him with more curiosity in their glassy eyes than seemed decent.

  Sometimes the green went away completely, swallowed by darkness, and when it came back he was surrounded by women instead of fish, all of them lovely in a strange sort of way, hair furling and waving, moved by invisible currents. These women watched him as the fish had watched him, smiling (some of them seemed to have very sharp teeth) and whispering among themselves. Through it all, through the green light that came and went, he was aware of nothing about himself except weightlessness and a feeling of unconcern that seemed to make his thoughts as buoyant as his slowly kicking legs.

  Only occasionally did it occur to him that he should be drowning, or might even already have done so.

  ————— He had been staring at her for a while before he realized her black hair was not drifting, but instead hung down beside her pale, pretty face in what once would have seemed a perfectly ordinary manner. He stared a while longer before he realized he recognized her, although something about her was different and her name was slow in coming.

  "His eyes are open!" the dark-haired young woman said. "I think he's waking up!"

  Another face, this one less familiar, leaned in. "It is sooner than we would have guessed, but he has a strong constitution. Good breeding." "Don't say that!" the young woman said. "I hate that." "Poppy . . . ?" He had the name now, although some of the details were still wrong; his vision remained cloudy, as though he had not entirely left the lake bottom. She seemed to have lost her eyebrows. No, he realized, they were there, but they were so pale as to be almost invisible. It gave her a strangely Japanese look, the face a white oval, like a geisha's. One thing was certain, though — just seeing her made him feel good. "Poppy, is that . . . ? Am I . . . ?"

  "You're fine, Theo. You're alive!" She suddenly climbed up on whatever supported him — it had a certain give, and he momentarily feared tumbling back down into whatever green depths he had escaped — and kissed his face. She hugged him and he let out a little huff of pain. "Oh! Sorry!"

  "I think . . . did I break a rib?" He was trying to make sense of his surroundings. A tent? Whatever it was, the only light came from one of the glowing witchlight spheres. The other fairy woman had gone somewhere — he could just make out the light of what might be a doorway, but he couldn't lift his head high enough to be certain. "What else did I do? I can hardly move. Everything hurts."

  "No one's quite sure. You were bruised all over, but by the time we saw you they were all old bruises. The Duchess treated you well down there."

  "Duchess?" His head was quite remarkably empty of any useful memories, although it felt very full of something else, swollen and aching. "The one who had you. The nymph. Oh, Theo, I thought we'd never get you back!" She had a tight grip on him again, and he found that the pleasure of it was such that he could even ignore the pain in his side.

  "What . . . what happened?" He was starting to remember a little of it now, and the dominant image was a column of billowing lavender light and the terrible shrieking of . . . of . . . "Hellebore, Lord Hellebore. He's dead. And that child-thing, too." He looked up, worried by her expression. "They are dead, aren't they? They have to be. But doesn't that mean . . . we won?" But the memory of Applecore's last brave moments had returned and winning suddenly didn't mean as much as it should have. "Did we win?" She shrugged. "Yes, I suppose. Everything is a mess, but it's a lot better than it would have been." A noise distracted her and she looked up toward the doorway. "There are people here to see you. They've been waiting as long as I have, hoping that Primrose could make a bargain."

  "Primrose? Bargain?"

  "Wait. You'll find out everything. And I'll be right here with you."

  "What happened to your eyebrows?" "What do you mean?" But she knew. "Oh, the color? It's nothing — they were always white like this. I decided to stop dyeing them, that's all. To stop pretending I wasn't a Thornapple."

  "Ah." He lifted a hand to touch the pale white stripes, although it seemed a long distance to reach. She took the hand before it reached her face and held it, as though it might hurt her to be touched there.

  "You do still care about me, don't you, Theo? No, that's not fair, to ask you that right now." "Just try to leave and you'll find out how I feel." He gave her hand the strongest, most reassuring squeeze he could muster — which in his present state, he guessed, was something like being humped by a very old starfish. But for all his growing joy at realizing that by some mysterious means he was back in the world again, and that Poppy was in it and waiting for him, there was a hole inside him that could not be so easily filled. "Oh, Applecore," he said quietly, speaking to a ghost, a memory. "I'm sorry. I'm so sorry."

  "Sorry for what?" someone said. "Being a great, hulking eejit? That's not entirely your fault, now is it?" Cumber Sedge was sitting on the foot of the bed, and unless he had become an amazing ventriloquist, the tiny shape sitting on his shoulder had to be . . . "Applecore!" Theo tried to sit up but couldn't manage it. "You're not dead!"

  "And neither are you, you daft thing, but not for lack of trying." She stood and Cumber picked her up and set her carefully on Theo's chest. She was paler than usual, with pronounced dark rings under her eyes and some healing burns on her face and even on parts of her head, as displayed by her very closely cropped hair, but otherwise she seemed to have all her limbs and her old personality intact. "What are you staring at? Have you never seen a good-looking woman before?"

  "Not one I'm as surprised to see. And Cumber, thank God! I mean, sorry, thank the Trees or whatever. Didn't mean to make you flinch. We all made it! We're alive!"

  Cumber nodded slowly. His smile, too, took a while to come. "We are. Not everyone was so lucky. There were many deaths in the City before the end. Zirus Jonquil, among others, and hundreds upon hundreds more. In fact, Zirus died trying to save you."

  "I'm sorry to hear that. He was nice to me — nicer than almost anybody els
e of his kind. But what do you mean, trying to save me?" "He and a bunch of folk from the Flower houses fighting against Hellebore's lot were following all of you," Applecore said. "The goblins helped them track you, but it gets very hard in the center of Midnight. I found them in the woods, trying to get to the lake, but I knew they wouldn't make it in time. That's why I came back by myself. Then, when they did get there, the rest of the constables and Foxglove and . . . and Poppy's father . . . sorry, Poppy . . ."

  "Nothing to apologize for," Poppy said, but her expression had gone stiff and cold. "Well, they fought back, even though Lord Hellebore was dead. Lord Foxglove was killed, and some of the guards, and Poppy's father was wounded, but Zirus and several of his troops were killed, too." Applecore sighed. "Anton Hellebore threw himself into the Well instead of letting himself be captured, the pig. At least they say it took him a long time to die. And of course, thousands were killed in the City, and there were terrible fires even after the dragons died. So nobody's felt much like celebrating these last few weeks."

  It took a moment. "Few weeks . . . ?" Theo tried to sit up but couldn't. "Where . . . ? Have I been unconscious all that time?"

  "Perhaps." Cumber too had more than a few healing scars, but there was something else about him that was also different — a gravity he had not possessed before. He's a survivor, Theo suddenly realized. If he were a mortal, I'd say he's grown up now. "We don't really know what you went through. You were under the water, you see."

  "Under the water . . . Yeah, I suppose I knew that — even remembered it a little. But how did I get back here again? Wherever 'here' is." "We're in the camp at the Old Fayfort Bridge," Cumber said. "Button's tent city has become sort of a temporary headquarters for . . . for the reorganization, I guess you'd call it. You see, the Parliament of Blooms is scattered, a lot of them dead or retreated to their country estates, so there's no one in charge here, really. Also, the big power plants aren't working any more and New Mound House is just a mass of smoking rubble, so this seemed as good a place as any — we never had much generated power to work with out here, anyway. And pretty much everybody knows now that this is where it all started, so they're showing up here from all over Faerie, asking to help. That, or trying to get a piece of whatever's coming next . . ."

  "But I still don't know why I'm not living with the water-nymphs or whatever they were. How did I get out again?"

  "We should let Primrose tell that story," Cumber began. "I think he'll be coming to see you later . . ." "I have come now," declared a new voice. This time Theo found he could lift himself enough to see the tall shape silhouetted by daylight in the doorway of the tent.

  "This is like the end of Wizard of Oz," Theo said. "You know, 'I had a dream — and you were in it, and you, and you . . .' "

  Primrose shook his head. "I do not understand your reference, but this is certainly no dream. I too have been waiting to speak to you, Theo Vilmos. Or would you prefer to be known as Septimus Violet, now?"

  "I think it's too late for me to change names," he said. "At least the Theo part. Speaking of which, you must be Lord Primrose now." Primrose came closer. "I do not know. We may find that in the new world coming there are no longer lords and ladies. The goblins will have much to say about that, and others, too."

  "Goblins! How is Button? Did he survive? Jesus, was he smart about everything!" Primrose hesitated for a moment. "Yes, he is alive. He is well. He has asked to see you later. In the meantime, I will tell you my part of the story, although it is largely uninteresting, even the bargain I made for your freedom. The nymphs, like everyone else, are interested in having a stake in the changes that are to come. I offered them my help and they agreed, more or less."

  "More or less?"

  "It is nothing for you to concern yourself with. You are free of your nymph-binding, that is what matters."

  Theo could not help staring at the band of rivergrass that encircled the fairy's wrist. "Yes, well." Caradenus Primrose shrugged. "I suspect that even with the world upside down, enough of my family fortune remains intact that I will be able to ransom myself before spring comes and I have the urge to swim in any ponds or lakes. I owed you a debt of honor, Theo. I nearly killed you, after all."

  "You didn't owe me anything. Actually, I think it's me who owes you something, now. Some information." The memory had been nagging at him since Primrose had appeared. The thought of Eamonn Dowd's crimes made him feel a bit queasy but he had no right to keep them secret. He reached for Poppy's hand, found it, and squeezed again. She reached across and spread her fingers on his chest as Theo turned back to Caradenus Primrose. "I have to tell you about what happened to your sister."

  "But how could you know?" Primrose asked, surprise creasing his forehead.

  "Know? Know what?" "That she is dead. Her heart failed." For a moment even the Flower lord could not hide what was inside him, but then he composed himself again. "It is for the best, I suppose. It was just before we struck back at Hellebore, before the dragons came down on the City. Her nurses say that for a moment she was herself again, but so frightened they could not comfort her. Then she died. I saw her. She looked as though she was at peace at the last."

  Theo swallowed. "Let me tell you what I know. In fact, since Cumber was out cold for most of what I heard, there are probably things in all this that none of you know yet."

  ————— It was hard to tell when an already grim fairy had become more so, but that certainly seemed to be the case with Primrose. As Theo finished his explanation, the new master of Primrose House rose and bowed.

  "I salute you again for your bravery and your honesty. These tidings do not ease my heart much, I must confess — my sister suffered long and terribly, and must have suffered even at the end, when Dowd's spell was broken by his death and her wounded mind returned to its body — but it is better to know, I think, than to be ignorant. Still, after I pass the most important pieces of news along to Button I would be alone for a time."

  "I'm sorry for what he did to your family, even if he wasn't my real greatuncle." Theo shook his head. "I liked him, at least from his notebook. It's hard to believe it was the same person."

  "We enter a perilous country when we decide that because we mean well, or because we are largely good, that we are thus allowed to do something we know is wrong." The fairy paused in the doorway. "Oh, and Theo, Button would very much like you to come to him in the bridgehouse this evening." Primrose lifted a hand, his face somber, and walked out of the tent.

  "I should go, too," Cumber said. "For now, I am nearly the only ferisher here that any of the powerful parties actually know, and decisions are being made in small groups and at surprise meetings that will be laws one day — may even be the stuff of learned books. You would find it most interesting, Theo — you'll be in more than a few pages of those books yourself, by the way. We are building a new Faerie from the ground up."

  "When I can actually sit up without puking, I'd love to hear about it. I don't know how big I am on meetings, though."

  "It is your future being planned, too." Cumber suddenly flushed. "Oh, I forgot. You'll be going back to your world."

  "If it's still there, I guess I will," Theo said. "Did we stop the Terrible Child in time?" Cumber smiled. "We think so. What scientific tests we have been able to do suggest that your world continues much as it always has, no better and no worse."

  Theo noticed that Poppy had suddenly let go of his hand and was staring steadily at the fabric of the tent wall. "Poppy?" Cumber cleared his throat. "As I said, I should be going. Core, can I carry you someplace, or would you like to stay and talk to Theo and Poppy a bit longer?"

  "Core?" Theo saw that Cumber was blushing again. "Hold on, are you two, like . . . an item?" Applecore gave him her most baleful stare. "Maybe. And what business of yours is it, boyo? You seem to have been keeping yourself occupied." Her face softened. "Meaning no offense, Mistress Thornapple. You make a cute couple."

  "None taken," Poppy said, but there was not mu
ch life in it.

  "But . . ." Theo stared at Applecore, then at Cumber Sedge. "But I still don't get it. I mean . . . how would . . . ?" "Once the hospitals aren't quite so busy, one of us will probably have the operation," Cumber said, and now the blush was lighting him up like a neon sign. "I mean, me, probably. It's a lot easier to go large-to-small."

  "Large-to . . ." Theo couldn't quite wrap his head around it, but he could tell it wasn't going to get any less weird no matter how hard he tried. "Whatever. I wish you both well." He paused for a moment. "That doesn't sound right, but I mean it. You're two of my best friends in the whole world — in any world. That's all I can say. I hope you'll be so happy together you wake up every day singing."

  "Thanks." Cumber could not quite meet Theo's eye, but he was grinning.

  "Pick me up, Theo," said Applecore, waving her hand at him. "Come on, I want to tell you something private, like."

  He had already put his hand down for her to step into before it hit him. "Why . . . why aren't you flying?" She looked at him in surprise, then her face twisted into a sadness that he now realized had been beneath the surface all along. "Ah, of course, you don't know, poor thing. You've been down with that soggy lot at the bottom of the lake." She hesitated a moment, then turned her back toward him and carefully pulled the top of her dress down over her shoulders, edging it lower until he could see the blackened stumps where her wings had been.

  "Oh, Applecore!" His eyes filled with tears. "Oh my God, I'm so sorry." "I'm not dead, Theo, and that's what counts. If Hellebore had pointed that finger another few inches to the side, I would have been, so I was bloody lucky." She made herself smile. "Besides, it gives me and Cumber something else in common besides what we already have — both being intellectual types, and both having a lot of practice at putting up with arsehole you."