The War of the Flowers

by Tad Williams

  They could already feel the music as they waited for the elevator, a thumping, jarring sensation as though something extremely large was trying to escape from the floor below them. A few more fairy lordlings joined them, laughing and talking so fast and in such emphatic slang that Theo couldn't understand a word. He let himself be moved into the elevator like a puppet.

  When the door opened the sound hit him like an explosion, a walloping bass and strange polyrhythms he couldn't quite wrap his head around, topped with a soaring wind instrument like a clarinet. Two huge gray hands patted him down in a rough but cursory fashion, then shoved him through into the noise and the flashing lights and the crowds of extravagantly dressed (although some were nearly naked) and almost uniformly gorgeous young fairies. Transparent shapes gyrated in midair among the dancers, shapes that looked like nothing so much as ghosts and which popped like soap bubbles when the dancers touched them. But nothing stunned him as much as realizing what the club actually was.

  A church . . . ! He had been expecting something more in keeping with the name, some kind of mock-horror decadence with a Yuletide theme — serial-killer Santa maybe, mutilated elves, black tinsel and scorched trees. Instead he could have been in the chapel — albeit a large one — of an Episcopalian church. There were stained glass windows, lit from behind, and a simple altar near the far wall beneath a large crucifix, from which even the most frenetic of the dancing fairies in their extravagant finery seemed to keep a respectful distance. The Jesus on the cross was not even one of the more tormented, bloody sorts he had marveled at in Mexican churches during his traveling days. He was about to say something about it to Cumber Sedge — bellow something, since that was all that could be done — but the ferisher stumbled against him and almost fell. "This . . . is . . . horrible," Cumber groaned.

  "We have to get him out of here," Applecore shouted in Theo's ear.

  "Is he drunk?"

  "It's that." She pointed a tiny hand at the crucifix. "These people . . . they're all crazy. Sick." And suddenly he remembered what she had told him about swearing, and realized that it was the Christian symbols themselves which gave this place its nasty cachet. They didn't need to have pictures of mangled children or evil toys: it wasn't the Christmas bit that was the draw here for Faerie's jaded gentry, it was the Christ bit — not modern Christmas, but Christ Mass.

  "Where are you going?" Zirus shouted. He had already found a drink, somewhere. "This is fabulous, isn't it? They've actually hired Bishop Silver to do the music. All those great old music charms — everyone wants to get him. He's absolutely the most vaporous tunesmith in the city. Makes his own phantasms, too, you know."

  Theo waved his hand in a distracted way. He guessed that the phantasms must be the transparent, faintly glowing figures flying around the dance floor. The music certainly was interesting — he could hear all kinds of strange fragmentary resonances, and could sense noises in it that he couldn't quite catch with his ears. He would have loved to learn more about it, but not here, not now. "Yeah, it's great," Theo roared back above the din.

  "Can I get you something?" "Cumber's not feeling very well." Theo struggled to keep the ferisher upright. He'd been in this position before, but it was the first time he'd ever had to carry someone out of a club because of too much Jesus. "Is there another room?"

  Zirus laughed. "You're doing okay, though, country boy. A bit more than you seem, eh? Right, I think there's a quiet room just up the stairs. I'll catch up with you — I've just seen some friends."

  The room was open to the dance floor, and the noise boiling up from below didn't make it a whole lot easier to talk, but at least they couldn't see the crucifix from the table in the dark room. Theo got Cumber sitting upright and Applecore fanned his face with her wings until he seemed a bit more himself.

  "Sorry," he mumbled. "Just . . . not my sort of thing."

  "That's okay," Theo said. "Do you want some water?"

  "No, another drink."

  "Are you sure?"

  The ferisher nodded his head grimly. "It'll make it easier. We'll be here a while."

  "Well, why don't we just go home by ourselves? Catch a cab or something?"

  "And how are we going to pay for it, boyo?" asked Applecore. "Do you have any tallies? No, I didn't think so. Cumber?" The ferisher shook his head. "I paid for the meal in the restaurant. I left it on the table. It's one thing for Zirus to walk out on a bill, but I'm not the Jonquil heir." He sighed. "But that was all I had, so we'll have to wait for him to take us home. Could I have that drink? I'll be perfectly happy to put it on Zirus' tab."

  "I'll go find a waitress," said Applecore, and hummed straight over the railing into the seething mass of creatures below. Another group of fairies, apparently upper crust and dressed in a weird mixture of what looked to Theo like High Victorian and slashed and smeared punky Goth fashions, piled into the quiet room and settled around a table in the opposite corner, making it much less quiet. Theo frowned and moved a bit closer to Cumber Sedge. "I don't know how much you know about me," Theo said, "but I really don't want anyone to . . . well, notice me. There were people trying to kill us on our way to Daffodil House. I shouldn't even be here."

  "Nor should I," said Cumber mournfully. "Don't belong." "I'm just saying that I don't know enough to pass myself off as anything, really. So please, help me out. We can't afford to draw any attention. We just need to stay sort of quiet and unnoticed until your Jonquil friend takes us home again."

  "Understood." Cumber tried to lay his finger alongside his nose in a gesture of secret solidarity and managed to poke himself in the eye. Applecore buzzed back in, followed a few moments later by a waitress, who took one look at Theo and Cumber Sedge and went to take orders at the other table first.

  "How are you boys?" Applecore asked. "Enjoying this charming place?"

  "I was just telling Cumber that we need to be . . . inconspicuous." "No worries about that," the ferisher said. "Nobody here wants to see you. These Flower folk, they could care less. One of the lesser classes — even worse, one of the other races . . . !" He shook his head. "Wouldn't help you if you were lying dead in the street."

  The waitress appeared, an attractive fairy woman with surprisingly prominent wings. She was wearing an odd costume that Theo only figured out after she had left — bearing their drinks order and instructed to charge it to the young laird of Jonquil House — was a nun's habit shortened and slit into a minidress.

  "But Zirus seems like an okay guy," Theo said. "Oh, as far as they go, he's a good one." Cumber had recovered from his initial shock, but had become morose and distant. "But most of them wouldn't piss on you if you were on fire."

  "Unless you were lying on an expensive carpet," said Applecore.

  —————

  "So are you telling me that no matter what language I spoke back in my world, I'd be speaking Fairy here?" "You'd be speaking the Common Breath," Cumber said, working very hard to enunciate his consonants above the musical din. He'd had three drinks on Zirus' tab, and what he had gained in cheerfulness he had lost in articulation. "That's the language all the races of Shaerie fare. Bugger. Faerie share."

  Applecore, who had downed a few thimblefuls herself, giggled. She had left Theo's shoulder and was sitting in the middle of the table. "Okay, I guess I get that. But what if my normal language was, I don't know, Arabic? No, Chinese. Isn't it kind of weird that I'd arrive here and I'd see all you fairy folk from, like, old Irish stories and whatnot?"

  "That is an interesting question," said Cumber, downing the last of his drink. "You see, Seeo, we don't thee . . . we don't see . . . ourselves the way you do. And we don't see you the way you see you. Right?"

  "You've lost me." "See, there have always been people of Faerie visiting the mortal world. Well, until recently — the Clover Effect has cut back on that." He frowned. "And until just lately, there have always been mortals who have crossed over into Faerie. So most of the difference between what some mortals call us and what some others
call us is just the difference in mortal languages. You call us fairies, other mortals call us peris or whatever the Chinese word or the Balinese word is. See? But there is another difference, too. It was a ferisher who did the important work on it, actually." He nodded slowly. "Holdfast Buckram. A few centuries back. Wrote a marvelous book called The Mortal Lens. About how mortals tend to see what they want to see. No 'fense." He belched. " 'Scuse me." Theo was trying to pay attention — this was something he hadn't read about in his great-uncle's story — but a fairy lordling at one of the other tables in the quiet room was smoking what looked very much like a cigarette in a long cigarette holder, and Theo found himself wishing he had the courage to go bum one. But that would be asking for trouble, wouldn't it? He tried to refocus on Cumber Sedge. "So I see most of these fairies as looking like . . . like the kind of fairies I expect to see?"

  "More or less." Sedge got the attention of their waitress and ordered another round of drinks. Theo shook his head. He had been drinking only a sweet wine, and was only on his second glass since reaching the club, but he was already feeling more fuzzy than he wanted to. "So if you had grown up in some quite different datrition . . . bugger . . . tradition, you'd be seeing and hearing things a bit differently."

  Theo had now stopped listening entirely. The young, pale-haired fairy with the cigarette holder had leaned back to laugh at something. Sitting on his far side was Poppy Thornapple. "Oh, my sweet Jesus," said Theo.

  "That only hurt a little!" Cumber announced cheerfully.

  "Vilmos, I told you, don't do that," said Applecore. "There . . . over at that table, it's the girl we were on the train with." Poppy was dressed quite differently now, no longer wearing what he realized had been her meeting-her-family clothes. In a sort of elaborate mourning-outfit with a surprisingly low bodice, and makeup that looked like it belonged in a Japanese play, she blended in well with her companions, but he knew without doubt it was her. He was surprised by the flipflop in his stomach. Remorse? Or just jealousy? She was leaning her head against the young lord with the cigarette.

  "Well, I'm not surprised," Applecore said. "This is just her sort of place, isn't it?" Before Theo could reply, Poppy looked up and saw him. She had been speaking, and for a moment she simply froze, mouth open, eyes suddenly wide and startled. Then she looked away and finished what she had been saying, forcing a laugh. When her companions responded and the conversation eddied away, she looked at him again. This time it was as though a gate had been slammed down behind her eyes: she stared as though she had never seen him before and never wished to see him again. After a moment, she whispered something to the pale-haired fairy and got up and left the room, her stiff, wide skirt swinging.

  "Just a minute," Theo told Applecore. "I'll be right back."

  "Don't you dare, Vilmos . . . !" the sprite began, but he was already up from the table and heading for the door. She wasn't on the stairs. He went down into the full blare of the music and pushed alongside the pulsing swarm of dancers, looking for her on the floor or in one of the alcoves that lined the wall, dark places where people were kissing and groping, inhaling things out of odd little crystalline tubes, or engaging in other activities he couldn't quite make out, but about which he felt he could make a good guess or two.

  He found her at the bar, waiting for a drink. "Hello," was the only thing he could think of to say.

  "Do I know you?" For a moment he wondered if he had mistaken a mere resemblance under thick makeup. But then he remembered the way she had looked at him across the tables, the anger and hurt. "You know me, Poppy. From the train."

  "I don't think so. I certainly never talk to country riffraff on trains, so you must be mistaken. Very badly mistaken." She would not meet his eye.

  "Look, I'm sorry it turned out that way. I didn't want to leave, but we had to." Still looking toward the bartender mixing her drink, she said, "I'd hate to have to call for security — they are extremely rough here in Hellebore House, as you might guess. They would probably break your legs at the very least. And the wings that you are no doubt hiding under that ill-fitting jacket — well, they would probably rip them right off."

  "All right. I'll leave you alone." It had been stupid coming after her — what had changed? And he could only hope she was exaggerating for effect and that she wouldn't really call security. The last thing he needed was for that to happen. "I just wanted you to know that I was sorry, and that I didn't lie to you about anything. It was just . . . bad timing." He turned and walked away.

  "Stop. Come here." He turned and looked at her, wondering if she had changed her mind and wanted to keep him in sight until she could call for the bouncers. She had an odd look in her eyes, a staring, red-rimmed intensity.

  "I just want you to know," she said quietly, making him lean forward to hear until his face almost touched hers, "that I hate you, Theodorus weftDaisy, or . . . or whoever you really are. Do you understand? I'll be staying at Thornapple House for another week before I go back to school, and you are not under any circumstances to call me there on my private line. Because I hate you, you wretched, horrible, heartless monster."

  She abruptly reached up and pulled his head down toward hers, then kissed him so hard that her teeth banged against his. When she let go he tasted blood from his own lip. She was crying.

  "Now go away," she said. "You've spoiled my evening." She wiped her eyes with her sleeve, smearing her makeup, then turned to shout at the bartender, "Running water and black iron — where is my drink?"

  Theo stumbled back across the club, a bit overwhelmed. Someone grabbed his arm near the bottom of the stairs. It took him a moment to recognize Zirus Jonquil: the young fairy lord was even more happily drunk than before, his hair disarranged and his shirt unbuttoned to reveal ivory skin almost to the navel. He looked quite wild and beautiful — there was something deeply, weirdly attractive about him that had nothing to do with sex. At least Theo hoped it had nothing to do with sex.

  "Daisy! There you are. Where have old Cumberbumber and the fingerling girl got to?"

  "Upstairs." "Well, you're missing the most tremendous fun — one of the Campion lads was teasing the Hellebore security, who didn't take it well. They just took Campion out on a stretcher, but he was still ragging them even as they put him in the hospital coach . . . !"

  "Hysterical." Theo was distracted by the sound of someone shouting at the top of the stairs — shouting very loud, he realized, if he could hear it over the thump and whine of the music. As he reached the door, something flew into his face like a confused bird, battering him for a moment in a flurry of wings and tiny limbs.

  "There you are!" Applecore said as she fluttered backward. "Oh, and you, too, your lordship. I was just coming to look for you. It's your friend, Sedge."

  But Theo for one did not have to be told that. Cumber Sedge, who had apparently had a bit more to drink than was absolutely optimum, was standing on the tabletop shouting at the gathering of fairy lordlings of which Poppy had been part. Theo was grateful to see there was no sign of her now — it was bad enough trying to figure out what was going on between the two of them without adding a shitfaced ferisher into the mix.

  ". . . And just because you were born to the right families you think you're better . . . better than ev'ryone . . . !" Cumber swayed and pointed a wavering finger at the fairies. "You think ev'ry one wans . . . wants . . . wants to be like you!"

  Poppy's companion, the young fairy with the cigarette holder, saw Zirus and called out, "Ah, there you are, Jonquil. Is this one of yours? If he is, you'd better silence him before someone takes offense and has his head."

  "Point taken, Foxy," said Zirus. "Maybe we'll just trundle him home . . ." But Cumber Sedge would not be so easily muzzled. "I don't belong to anyone!" he screamed. "You wingless bastards run everything, but you don't own me!"

  Everyone in the room was watching now, and Theo saw someone on the stairs below him turn and head back down toward the ground floor, perhaps looking for the massive security gua
rds. If Cumber went to jail, Theo had a feeling he might wind up there as well. For a moment he considered making a run for it — what did he really owe the little ferisher, anyway? — but the thought of wandering the alien streets showed that for the foolishness it was. He was relieved when Applecore settled on his shoulder again. "We have to get him out of here," he said. "Now."

  "You have a gift for the obvious, boyo." Poppy Thornapple's former companion was actually debating with Cumber — debating, or playing with him as a cat with a mouse. "Wingless?" the young fairy said with a lazy grin. "And did you not choose to be the same? If you are so fond of wings, little class-warrior, where are yours?"

  Cumber Sedge gave out a drunken shriek of frustration. He crouched down, and for a horrifying moment Theo was positive he was about to leap onto his tormentor. Theo and Zirus both sprang toward the ferisher, but he was only setting his drink down on the table; an instant later he straightened up and yanked his shirt over his head. Somehow he managed to keep upright long enough for Theo and Zirus to reach his side and take his arms, but Cumber fought with surprising strength, and though Jonquil hung on, Theo could not; Cumber Sedge turned halfway around toward the table of young fairy nobility to show them the pair of jagged pink scars on his back.