War for the Oaks

by Emma Bull

  “Where are Carla and Dan?” Eddi asked the phouka after a respect­ful silence.

  “On their way home.”

  “No mass outing for coffee?”

  “They didn’t seem in need of it,” the phouka said.

  Eddi raised her eyebrows. “Which didn’t they need, the caffeine or the camaraderie?”

  “They seemed quite happy, and almost incapable of beginning a sentence, let alone finishing one.”

  “You’re right. They need to sleep. Well, then tell me who the Queen of Air and Darkness is.”

  “You don’t—? Ah, of course. Never mind. She rules the Unseelie Court.”

  Eddi took a deep breath; it wobbled when she let it out. “Oh.” Then she added, “I guess I understand why you might feel heart failure coming on.”

  “I should not have said that,” he said seriously. “You managed that confrontation very well indeed, my sweet. I suppose I spoke out of a spasm of guilt—here was the villain of the piece, and I had done nothing to prepare you for her.”

  “Is she really the villain?” Eddi sat down on the stage next to him. “I kind of liked her.”

  With a rueful snort, he replied, “It would hardly be to her advan­tage, my primrose, to be repulsive.”

  “Why did she tell me you could be corrupted?”

  “Oak and Ash,” the phouka muttered, “do you remember every­thing that’s said to you? She was sowing at random, hoping that a seed of doubt would find fertile ground in you.”

  “Well, it didn’t,” Eddi said crisply.

  The phouka turned and studied her face. She resisted the sudden shyness that urged her to look away. “Thank you,” he murmured.

  “Any time,” she said lightly, but she thought, If I’m not supposed to thank him, what the hell does it mean if he thanks me?

  “If you’re interested,” Willy’s voice came from behind them, “there wasn’t any fertile ground here, either.”

  “What?” The phouka looked confused; then his frown disappeared and he turned to Willy, who stood in the door. “Ah, that’s right—she aimed a bolt or two at you, didn’t she?”

  Willy strolled in and sat next to Eddi. He was trying to seem at ease, his equilibrium recovered. It was very different from the real thing. “I don’t think she seriously intended them to work,” Willy said. “She was shooting in the dark, probably, just to see if anything would break.”

  “So you no longer think I might be her agent?”

  “She wouldn’t have made the crack about not doing better herself if you were.”

  “I shouldn’t point out, I suppose, that she might have done it to lay your suspicions.”

  Willy looked disgusted. “Don’t be a pain in the ass.”

  “I thought I was being a devil’s advocate.” The phouka looked brightly at Eddi. “Are they synonymous?”

  “Don’t be a pain in the ass.” Eddi smiled and shook her head at him. Then she turned to Willy. “Where’s Hedge?”

  “He’s gone home.”

  It occurred to her that she didn’t know where or what Hedge con­sidered home. “We should follow his lead. It’s been a long night, kids.”

  “Now there’s a suggestion with merit.” The phouka bounced to his feet and held out a hand to Eddi. When she took it and stood up, he executed one of his casual bows. She copied it back at him. It made him smile.

  “Eddi?” Willy said behind her. The phouka looked over her shoul­der, raised an eyebrow, and shrugged.

  “I’ll be outside, my primrose,” he said, and went out the door with­out another word.

  She rounded on Willy. “Did you send him away?”

  “No. Or at least. . . I looked as if I hoped he’d leave, and he did. You tell me.”

  “Given your rank, doesn’t your wish become his command?”

  Willy snorted. “For the phouka? You’ve seen him in action. No, I think he decided to do me a favor.”

  “So are you grateful?”

  “Yes, yes, I’m grateful. Eddi—” He rubbed the space between his eyebrows. “Air and . . . I don’t suppose we could start the last minute and a half over again?”

  “Not really.” But she felt sorry for him, and sat down again. “What is it, Willy?”

  He sat for a moment, watching his right thumb stroke the edge of his left. “I. . . It’s been a long while. . . .” He pulled his hands apart suddenly, and they made a pair of half-finished frustrated arcs. “I’ve run out of charming euphemisms. Eddi . . . I don’t want to sleep alone tonight.”

  He met her eyes (oh, those speaking green gemstones of his), then looked away into the darkened room.

  She waited for her emotions to stop flailing, until she knew it was hopeless to wait. Then she said, “No.” That was too bald. “I’m sorry. But no.” Was that worse? Probably. There was almost certainly no good thing to be said, after all.

  He gave her one of his fiery, intense looks, and this time she had to turn away. “Is it still because of the glamour? Because I hid what I am?”

  “No. And the problem wasn’t that you hid what you are, damn it. It was that you became someone else, and made me like him.”

  “But still, that’s not the problem?”

  “Oh, hell.” One voice inside her said, I don’t need this now. The other said, I will not cry, I will not cry. “You don’t love me. And I don’t want to sleep with you.”

  Anger crossed his face in a series of tensions and tics, crossed and was gone. “So, you’ve never slept with someone when you didn’t want to?”

  She almost told him no, she hadn’t. “All right. Yes, of course I have. I’m only human”—he smiled coldly, and she wanted to hit him—“and sometimes you don’t realize until afterward that you didn’t want to. But why the hell should you want me to repeat past mistakes for you?”

  “You’re sure they were mistakes?”

  “Of course I’m sure! Sex without love is like a goddamn business transaction. And sometimes both parties feel as if they got a good deal, but that doesn’t make it any less so. If I go to bed with you as a favor, because you need it—son, I might as well charge you for it, because there are places where they do.”

  He must have battled his pride, to be able to ask her for this. His terrible lordly pride. Perhaps she should have granted his wish. But combining sex and self-sacrifice—it was obscene, like mixing sex and cruelty. And surely Willy had seen enough people set aside their needs and desires for his? She wished she could be sure.

  She stood, before she lost the courage of her convictions.

  “I’m going home,” she said.

  He looked up, one eyebrow raised. When he spoke his voice was full of mockery, and Eddi couldn’t tell if it was at her expense or his. “No sad speeches about hoping we can still be friends—I’m grateful for that, anyway.”

  “You’ve seen too many movies.”

  “I suppose I have. I didn’t get that from personal experience, you know.” Bitterness slipped from his voice, replaced with—surprise? Cu­riosity? Now that Eddi thought about it, she realized Willy’s experience with rejection was not likely to be extensive.

  He shrugged. “Safe trip home.”

  “Aren’t you leaving?”

  “Soon.”

  Eddi looked back when she reached the double doors. Willy was still sitting on the stage, staring out into the dark room.

  The phouka was a shadow in the shadow of a tree. He detached himself from it and ambled toward her when she came out.

  “No, my sweet,” he said cheerfully, “don’t mind me for an instant. I live to wait for you, outside in the cold and damp.” His face, in the streetlight, was at odds with his voice; he looked sad and sympathetic.

  “Did you overhear any of that?”

  “No, I try not to eavesdrop unless it’s likely to profit me. Ought I to have?”

  “No, you ought not, and don’t you dare ask me about it.”

  The phouka sighed hugely. “And now I haven’t even the excuse of stage fright t
o offer you. Come along, my obstreperous primrose. Everything will be improved by a night’s sleep and a day’s reflection.”

  He might have been right, but Eddi couldn’t swear to it. She spent much of the night awake, between sheets that seemed unusually harsh and cold.

  chapter 15 – In a Different Light

  They were playing the Uptown Bar, one of Eddi’s favorite ven­ues. At least, it began with the Uptown Bar, and with the memory of a good first set. Then piece by piece the surround­ings turned inside out, until the stage was on the roof of the building, and Eddi and the Fey were gathered around it. Eddi couldn’t find her guitar. It was probably still inside, downstairs. Carla called to her from the stage, warned her that it was time to begin. But it would only take a minute to get the guitar. . . .

  She stared down the stairs and discovered that the building had grown several floors. On every stair landing there was a party, elegant people of the sort she’d never seen at the Uptown Bar—and of course, it wasn’t the Uptown. It was the Guthrie Theatre, with the lobbies and wide iron-railed staircases thronged with concertgoers. A tall, black-haired woman in a cream-colored dress stepped out in front of her. “Great show, Eddi,” the woman said. “I didn’t think you’d live this long.”

  “Neither did I,” Eddi heard herself saying. “But I have to find my guitar.”

  Her axe was backstage, of course. But where was backstage? The band would be waiting. If she asked an usher, she’d have to prove she was with the band. No one would believe her.

  Eddi pushed her way despairingly through the crowd. Suddenly she saw Stuart Kline, halfway up the next set of stairs. He looked the way he had when she first met him, young and clear-eyed and clever. He wore formal dress, white tie and tails. She waved furiously, and he saw her and smiled, and beckoned. Eddi fought her way to the foot of the stairs and saw him disappearing around a corner at the top.

  There was no one on this flight of stairs; Eddi ran up unhindered. At the top of the next flight was a gray metal fire door, swinging closed. Eddi caught it before it latched and pushed it open. Before her was the roof of the Walker Art Center, the Guthrie’s sister building. A Calder mobile creaked gently in the wind, its black silhouette like locust leaves against the night sky. So many stars—more than the city lights ever allowed for.

  Stuart sat on the low wall around the roof. He had her guitar, the red Rickenbacker, propped on his thigh, and she heard the melody of Peter Gabriel’s “Here Comes the Flood.” The Rick resonated like an acoustic. Stuart looked up at her and struck discord. He smiled.

  “What are you doing with my axe?” Eddi said.

  “You were looking for it, weren’t you?” He hopped up on the wall, and the wind tugged at his brown hair and the tails of his jacket. He held her guitar by the neck in a gray-gloved hand, out over the street below.

  “Why are you wearing gloves?” Eddi asked him.

  He looked at his free hand. “They’re burned,” he said calmly. He shook the glove off, and the wind took it. His hand was charred black. As she watched, the black began to flake away, swirling off bit by bit after the glove, until it revealed the hand beneath, pink and new and much smaller than the old one. Then Stuart turned and walked off the wall.

  He didn’t fall. He stood in midair like something from a cartoon, smiling and waving her guitar. “Come get it!”

  She stood beside the wall, unable to move. Stuart did a little dance step on nothing. “Well, come on. What, didn’t your new friends teach you this?” Then his face changed, still Stuart, but cruel and angry. “Oh, that’s right. They don’t want you to know shit. Your taste in friends sucks, Eddi.”

  “It’s getting better. I used to hang out with you.”

  “Come on.” Stuart waved her guitar. “Before I drop it.”

  Eddi climbed up on the wall, which was tall and narrow now. The wind caught her under the arms, a warm wind full of the smell of lilacs, and she stepped out.

  Stuart was gone, the roof and the street and the traffic, all gone, and she hung above the trees of Loring Park like a kite. She saw the orange globes of the park lights, and the dark glitter of the lake, pat­terned over with the fluttering brocade of the tree branches.

  The phouka lay on the lakeshore. He was asleep, lying on his side with his knees drawn up a little and his head on his arms. His dark skin seemed almost luminous under the moon and lamplight. He looked young and fragile, not at all like the wretched nuisance he was when awake. She felt a deep pain somewhere under her breastbone at the sight of him.

  Then she looked down and saw the gray shaft quivering in her chest, the blood welling dark and staining the cloth around it. The archer stepped out of the shadow of the park building, his skin the gray of his arrow, his staring eyes milky white, a grin baring his many sharp teeth. The phouka was not asleep. He was dead, and so was she.

  . . . Which brought her wide-eyed awake with her heart banging against her ribs. She rolled over and looked at the clock. Nine A.M. Too early to get up, especially when she could remember most of the hours of the night. But her thoughts rattled like a teletype and wouldn’t let her sleep. She flung the covers back finally and grabbed her robe. She would go out to the kitchen, get something to drink. Then she would be able to sleep. And if the phouka asked her what she was doing up so early, well, she’d tell him to drop—she’d tell him to shut up.

  The light slanted strangely through the living room windows. It was strange to her, anyway; she was so rarely up when the sun was still low. She didn’t see the phouka at first. Then she found him, in dog-shape, asleep in front of the door to the hall. His pointed black ears flicked forward, as if acknowledging her presence, but his eyes stayed closed. At least somebody gets to sleep in this morning, she thought. For a moment she watched his sides rise and fall with his breathing. Then she turned back toward the kitchen.

  She heard a creak, as if from a cupboard door, and a soft, rhythmic thumping. Eddi crossed the room softly and inched forward until she could peer around the kitchen door.

  Above the sink, a dish towel writhed across the surface of a plate. The plate then skimmed toward the open cupboard like a frisbee, and Eddi clenched her teeth. It slowed and settled on the stack with a faint click. By that time, the towel was at work on a glass.

  Her largest bowl wobbled on the counter, rocked by the fury of the spoon flailing the batter inside. The carafe from the coffeemaker skid­ded across the countertop and ducked under a stream of cold water from the kitchen tap. The sponge mop drag-raced down the floor. The curtains shook themselves vigorously, and the resulting dust gathered itself up and puffed out through the kitchen window.

  In the midst of it all was Hairy Meg. She was naked, bandy-legged, profoundly ugly, and full of a deep and obvious contentment. Her pose was martial: arms crossed over her breasts, long chin thrust out, long knobby nose pointing like a finger wherever she turned her head.

  Mickey Mouse in Fantasia, with all those brooms, Eddi thought. She watched in awe, forgetting that she was in hiding. When she remem­bered, she wasn’t sure what to do next. She could clear her throat. . . no. That seemed like a good way to get the coffee carafe broken. Per­haps it would be better just to sneak back to the bedroom. She leaned slowly back, away from the kitchen door. . . .

  And bumped into something hard and soft at once, and warm. Sur­prise pushed the air out of her lungs and made a squeak of it, the tiniest little sound. In the kitchen, there was sudden, earsplitting si­lence.

  “Shhh!” said the phouka, next to her ear. That, too, was probably audible in the kitchen. He was in human form again, blue-jeaned and bare-chested, his hands clasped behind him and a grin on his handsome dark face.

  “You could have tapped me on the shoulder or something.”

  “You would have jumped and squeaked,” he said smugly. “Just as you did, in fact.”

  “You—you little—”

  The phouka looked over her shoulder. Warily, she looked behind her.

  Hairy Meg stoo
d in the kitchen door, her martial look fixed on Eddi and the phouka.

  “Lover’s quarrel,” the phouka told her.

  “I will not hit you,” Eddi muttered, glaring at him. “It is beneath my dignity.”

  Meg looked unimpressed. “I’ll no’ be spied at. Come in, or be about tha business.” Then she turned and stomped back into the kitchen.

  The noises began again. Eddi shrugged and went to stick her head in the doorway. She hesitated to do more than that. She watched a box of currants hurl itself like a suicide from a cupboard shelf, stop with a lurch above the mixing bowl, and dump its contents into the dough.

  “May I ask you a question?” Eddi said, with caution.

  Hairy Meg made a horrible face, but said nothing. Eddi decided at last that this was not meant to be discouraging.

  “I won’t, if it would offend you, or if it’s bad manners,” Eddi added. “The only things I know about. . . your people are from the phouka. And I don’t think he’s a good example.” She stole a look back over her shoulder, but didn’t see him.

  Meg snorted. “Proper amaudhan, that ‘n’.” Eddi, having no notion what that was, did not reply. “Tha’ll get nobbut nonsense out o’ him, for all he means nae ill.”

  Eddi watched the mixing bowl tip over on a floured countertop. The dough wriggled and stretched out a little; then it folded over onto itself and stretched again, and folded, on and on.

  Would she truly get nothing but nonsense out of the phouka? She couldn’t be sure, but she didn’t think his explanation of matters in the Seelie Court was nonsense. On other subjects, perhaps—but he was so changeable, how could she tell? He showed her a multitude of faces. Were any of them true?

  “Nay, never mind, lass,” said Hairy Meg gruffly. “Th’ had summat to ask, then.”

  Eddi looked quickly into that wrinkled brown face. Meg was scowl­ing at the counter, where the dough was dividing itself into eight neat ovals. “It’s not really important, I guess. But. . .”