The War of the Flowers

by Tad Williams

  New Erewhon is by its very nature a dangerous place for a mortal, but oddly, I was able to find a niche for myself. The citizens are surprisingly tolerant, perhaps because they are themselves so various in form and constitution. (Although the leading families seem to have almost completely adopted the appearance of human beings — assuming that I have the process right-way-round!) Mortals have always found their way to that place, either by themselves or as fairy-pets, but travel between there and here has become much less frequent in recent years, almost nonexistent, so I was treated as a bit of a welcome rarity — even invited to the homes of many of the leading families.

  When I was not a guest of the Flower Houses themselves, I found it possible to make a living in another unusual way. Because of the present rarity of mortal visitors and the infrequency of fairy-folk traveling to our world, things that once were in common supply within the City and its environs are now very hard to find — tears, for instance, since although the fairy-folk themselves do cry

  occasionally, they find the tears of a human being far more useful in many of their preparations (including those that we would think magical, although everything in that place is magical just by dint of where it takes place). In fact, when I learned about this specialty trade, I found myself regretting for the first time in my adult life that I was not a woman and, especially, not a virgin, because the tears and other excreta, hair, even the fingernails and dried skin of a mortal maiden fetch a very high price all over New Erewhon, either in barter or fairy-gold. Still, I did well enough: with the whiskers I trimmed from my beard and the tears I was able to wring from my eyes with the aid of onions obtained at the weekly market in Fernwater Row, I managed to secure myself a small but pleasant dwelling on carefully chosen neutral ground in a neighborhood near New Mound House, which is the site of the Fairies' Parliament and has long been a kind of sacred place, secure from the contendings of even the most rebellious houses. Later I moved to a larger place in the Forenoon district, but often missed the bustle of the City center.

  I mentioned that the leading families all closely resemble human beings (although a man would have to be almost deaf and blind to mistake them for real humans). This may give my reader the idea that a walk through the winding streets of New Erewhon would be almost indistinguishable from a tour through one of the great cities of our own world. I will take a moment here to tell you why that is not the case.

  First, the Flower families, with their semblance of humanity, are but a small part of the population. Even their house servants do not, except in the richest or most fashion-obsessed houses, look much like us. For one thing, the wings that the great families have somehow discarded or at least completely hidden are still to be seen on their servitors, shining behind their shoulders, translucent as the wings of dragonflies and shot with subtle color. (They are working appendages, too, although the larger fairies seldom fly.) And these servants are among the most apparently human of the other fairy classes — one of the reasons they are allowed into service. The population of the great city is staggeringly diverse, and a journey down Fernwater Row at twilight is more like entering a Hieronymous Bosch painting than any earthly stroll: on every side tiny sprites, boggarts, pookas, elegant wispmaidens, even beetling goblins jostle one another, argue, shout their wares, and conduct the first steps of the dance of romantic attraction — and these are but a few out of hundreds of types, thousands of strange sights. Every time I believed I had seen the strangest, I was almost instantly proved wrong.

  A single anecdote will illustrate this supremely well. I was on my way back from a moon-brandy party in the fortress-house of the Stock clan, where I had been the guest of one of the young women of the family, who had introduced herself to me on a dare from some of her friends. Moon-brandy is a distillate of dew, taken at a certain phase of the moon, and from what I can remember is highly potent, creating a surplus of both amusement and lust in even the most staid creature. Here I might note that the sun and moon, as far as I could ever be certain, are the same sun and moon that climb above our mortal world, although as with everything else beyond the Last Gate, they seem more potent in that place, more present and more magical — especially the moon. Whether they truly are the same celestial orbs that mortals see, now reduced in our present day to a giant gas furnace in the one case, and in the other a cold round stone where men in diver's costumes may swing golf clubs and erect stiffened American flags, I cannot say. I am not sure I want to know. In the city I call New Erewhon, and in all of Faerie, sun and moon are what we humans so long thought them, the heavenly brother and sister who watch over us.

  In any case, I was on my way home from Stock House by way of Weavers' Row, a place that seems perpetually under cloud, although that might merely be caused by the shadows of the much taller buildings that surround it. (In any case, the darkness is healthful for the spiders in their strange artificial forests, where they spin and spin so that the city's gentry may have this most elegant of silks for their clothing.) As I lingered for a moment to look in the illuminated front window of one of the shops, I was surprised by a cry from behind me, and turned to see young Caradenus Primrose staggering toward me. He was generally a serious young fellow as befitted the importance of his family, which was one of the Seven, but at that moment he was clearly suffering from the effects of moonbrandy. Two saucer-eyed kobolds were propping him up, one at each elbow. The squat little creatures seemed a bit worse for drink themselves, but evidently had a greater capacity than the youthful laird of Primrose House, who was having trouble explaining to me where he was going and why he so wanted me to go with him because he kept interrupting himself with snatches of song . . .

  Something went snap outside the window. Theo flinched and turned to look out. Something dark was just disappearing around the corner of the cabin — the haunch of a deer, he was almost certain. He turned back to the book, but his concentration was broken. He leafed ahead a page or two. In his wordy, roundabout style, Great-Uncle Eamonn appeared to be working his way up to some kind of brothel scene, which might be interesting, but Theo had been reading for an hour already and he was feeling restless. He put the book down, not just out of impatience with his great-uncle's old-fashioned prose, but also because the tale, however fantastical, had given him a sudden pang of dissatisfaction with his own situation.

  I mean, I'm obviously not going to make it to Fairyland, but think of all the other places he saw, real places — China, Africa. I've got some money now, I could really do something, but here I am sitting by myself in a little cabin, twenty miles from where I was born.

  He took his helmet off the chair by the door and headed out for a ride.

  ————— Battered by wind, buoyed somewhat by the two beers he had drunk in a roadside tavern down near the bottom of the hills, and also by a conversation with the bartender about the man's boat and the problems he was having with it — it hadn't been particularly interesting, but at least he had been talking to a live human being, something he hadn't been doing much in the last few days — Theo low-geared up the steep driveway and found an unfamiliar car parked in front of the cabin. For a moment he thought that it might be Johnny come to visit in some borrowed ride, but the dark-haired man in a short-sleeved blue shirt and a tie was a stranger. He looked to be in his forties, and also like he might spend regular time at the gym.

  "Are you Theo Vilmos?"

  Theo nodded. "Can I help you?" "Maybe so. I'd like to ask you a few questions, anyway." He pulled out his wallet and displayed a badge, a gesture so familiar from television and movies that for a long second Theo did not entirely take it in. "I'm Detective Kohler, from the San Francisco Police Department. Do you have a minute?"

  "Sure." The two beers suddenly felt like more. He hoped he was standing up straight. "Come on in. You're a little out of your way, aren't you?" "Didn't mind the ride. I have books on tape in the car." The police detective said it lightly, but he was watching Theo's face as the motorcycle helmet came off. Theo had a brie
f moment of paranoia as he led the man inside, wondering if that eighth of an ounce of weed Johnny had given him the last time at his mother's house was out in plain view, somewhere — he had run across it the other day, unpacking.

  C'mon, he told himself. Don't be stupid. I'm a solid citizen now. I've got two hundred thousand dollars in the bank. Nobody's going to send some plainclothes guy all the way up here to look for a little dope.

  What the hell was this about? "Can I offer you anything? I'd say a beer, but you guys can't drink on duty, right? That's what they always say on TV. But maybe that's bullshit, too, like most of the other stuff on TV." He felt himself flush a little. He was babbling. "But I think I have a Coke or something. Coca-Cola." He moved his Gibson acoustic off one of the chairs and into its case. "Please, sit down."

  The man shook his head. His smile didn't quite seem genuine. "No, thanks. I won't keep you long. Looks like you're pretty well moved in. How long have you been here?"

  The cramp of paranoia returned. Why did this guy know anything about him? "About three weeks. Well, if you're sure you don't want anything to drink . . ."

  "Bear with me, I'll make this as quick as possible. Just out of curiosity, Mr. Vilmos, where were you the night before last?" Theo went through a moment of panic — where had he been? — before remembering. "I drove down to the coast for the evening. Wandered around on Pacific Avenue in Santa Cruz. Had some dinner. I thought about seeing a movie, but I was tired." He had a sudden idea, pulled out his wallet. "I think I've probably got the receipt in here." He found it — a yellow credit card slip for an upscale diner called Jimmy Brazil — and handed it to the cop, who surveyed it briefly. "What's this about?"

  "What time did you get home?" Theo shrugged. "Not sure — probably sometime between eleven and twelve. Nobody saw me come in, if that's what you're asking." He tried a casual laugh, wondering how he could feel so guilty with nothing concrete to feel guilty about. "You can see that it's a little tough around here to know what your neighbors are doing."

  The policeman nodded slowly, as if what Theo was saying had answered a question he had nursed for a long time. "I see."

  "Look, I know you're just doing your job, but this is kind of freaking me out a little. Did someone get robbed around here or something?" Detective Kohler held his eye for a long time. He had the sharp, unhurried gaze and thin mouth of an Old West gunfighter. The shirt and cheap slacks began to seem like a disguise. "How well do you know Dennis and Stephanie Marsh?"

  Theo shook his head. "Sorry, can't help you. Who?"

  "They bought your mother's house." "Oh, Jesus, them! The name didn't ring a bell. How well do I know them? Not at all, really." He tried to remember if he'd ever actually seen them. It would have had to have been at one of the viewings at the house — all the sale papers had been signed at various real estate and title company offices, and buyers and seller had never been in at the same time. "Are they . . . is she kind of tall?" He vaguely remembered a woman with dark hair and long legs, the skirt on her business suit surprisingly short. If that was the right couple, he had thought Stephanie Marsh was a bit sexy, but he couldn't remember her husband at all.

  "You didn't meet them?" "Only if I was there when they came to see the house. The real estate agents took care of everything. I wasn't real sentimental about the house — my mother just died there, but I had never lived in the place before that, so it wasn't like I was all worried about making sure it was going to nice people or something, like they were adopting some puppies from me or something . . ." He stopped. Babbling again.

  "And you haven't been back to the house since?" "No, no. Like I said, it wasn't a real happy place for me. Why?"

  The detective nodded, apparently lost in thoughts of his own. "They're dead," he said at last.

  "What?"

  "Dead. Murdered, maybe as part of a robbery that got out of control, maybe for some other reason."

  "Jesus!" He stood for a moment, overwhelmed. "Jesus. In the house? In my mother's house?" "Yes. Did you . . . did anything happen while you were still there that seemed suspicious to you? Prowlers? Strange people coming to the door, or hanging around the neighborhood?"

  Theo could not help a moment's flashback to the moaning sound that had brought him out into the backyard, heart thumping. But what could a randy tomcat have to do with people getting killed? "No, nothing I can remember. Christ, is that when it happened? Night before last?"

  "Yes, and fairly early in the evening, as far as we can tell, so if this receipt checks out you don't have anything to worry about. Do you mind if I keep it?"

  Theo waved his hand, anxious to get rid of it, as though merely by being from the same night it was somehow tainted. "But why would you think I might have anything to do with . . . with that? Jesus."

  "We don't think anything, Mr. Vilmos. We just have to ask questions, get ideas, try to get a feeling for what happened." The detective shuffled his feet a little, looked around. "I'll get going, let you get back to what you were doing."

  "Doing? I wasn't doing anything, really . . ." Theo frowned. "Have you talked to the lady next door? To my mom's house?" "Why?" "Because she's the kind of, excuse the expression, nosy old bitch who was probably watching the new neighbors like a hawk. Mrs. Kraley, that's her name. She could probably tell you everybody who went in or out of there, to the minute. She probably writes it all down."

  "The neighbors haven't had anything very useful to say so far, but I'll check with her again, based on your . . . characterization." His smile was a grim thing; Theo suddenly wondered how you could have a job like that without it burning away parts of you.

  "Can you . . . what happened? I mean, how were they killed?" Detective Kohler examined him again. "We're keeping the details to ourselves as long as we can. It makes it a lot easier to sort through the good and bad information as it comes to us. But I can tell you this — it wasn't pretty."

  For long minutes after the policeman's car had rumbled away down the driveway, Theo could only pace back and forth across the cabin, unable to settle, his thoughts tumbling like windblown leaves. Why should the deaths of two people he didn't know bother him so much, people less real to him than the fictional characters of a daytime soap opera, connected to his own life only by one thread of coincidence — two people out of the thousands that died somewhere every hour? Why should these two distant deaths, however awful, give him such a feeling of morbid, fearful helplessness? Was it something to do with his mother's death, with his own lost, miserable hours in the house?

  Whatever it was, he didn't like it. But that didn't make it go away.

  8 RUNAWAY CAPACITOR

  Findus Dogwood always thought of himself as a decent chap, unlike some of the other supervisors — that Barberry, just to name one, was sour as curdled milk — so when he was told that one of the capacitors from the day shift was feeling poorly and wouldn't work, he didn't send Saltgrass or one of the other foremen to beat the slacker out of the dormitory and onto the line, but put down his cup of saxifrage tea and went to go see for himself. He walked across the station briskly, just as if Lord Thornapple himself were sitting in the big main office looking down at him. It was actually possible he could be, although it would be the first time in several years the owner had made an appearance on the premises: Aulus Thornapple was one of the most important people in all Faerie, after all.

  "What's the problem's name?" Dogwood asked Snowbell, the wizened block captain. The old fellow, who had long since given up on a promotion to management, but still harbored hopes of a little something better in the way of his eventual pension, bobbed his woolly white head up and down. "Kind of you to ask, Mr. Dogwood, very kind. Nettle comma Streedy is what the boy's called."

  "Metal Comets Greedy? What sort of name is that? Is he a goblin or somesuch?"

  Snowbell's rheumy eyes grew wide. "No, sir. Sorry, sir. His name is Streedy Nettle, out of some farming village in Hazel."

  "What's wrong with him?" "Couldn't say, sir." Snowbell managed to
make it clear that he didn't think anything much was wrong with the shirker at all. "He didn't sleep well — his bunkmates say he moaned and groaned all through the night. Then he didn't get up for breakfast." Snowbell sucked one of his remaining teeth. He was an urisk; like many cold-climate fairies, he had aged rapidly in the warmth of the City and looked two or three centuries older than he actually was. "Lovely bit of porridge, it was, too. Fool boy."

  Dogwood nodded. "Yes, yes, I see. Well, then, you can go join your line . . . er . . ." He couldn't for the life of him remember the old urisk's name, so he substituted a quick, insincere compliment, which always seemed to work. "Good job, by the way. Appreciate your help."

  Old Snowbell bobbed his head so quickly as he backed away that Dogwood feared it might fall off. "Thank you, sir. Always a pleasure, sir." To Dogwood's irritation, the boy's pallet was at the room's far end, one of two hundred beds in this dormitory alone. The pallets lay lengthwise on the floor all across the barnlike dormitory, like a mouth too full of teeth.

  "Here now, young fellow." Dogwood tried to put a comforting, cheery tone in his voice as he crossed the vast, echoing room — that kind of thing always made the little chaps feel better. Perhaps the fellow was just homesick. Nettle — a farm-country name, common as mustard. There must be half a hundred working in the station.

  His first surprise was that this Nettle was not in the least a "little chap": the youth stretched out on the pallet was so slender his knees seemed wider than the rest of his legs, but he was also quite startlingly tall. Dogwood's second surprise was the look of something like pure fear in the pale boy's eyes.