The War of the Flowers

by Tad Williams

  Streedy brushed his hair out of his eyes and squinted at the street sign. It said Pentacle Street like all the others had, which was good. His small friends had told him just what to do, and one of the things was to stay on Pentacle Street. He was supposed to keep walking toward the Twilight District, but before he got there, while he was still in Eventide, he would come to the place where Pentacle crossed Sour Milk Way and find the bus stop there. He didn't know this because he had got off the bus this morning at the exact same stop on his way into the middle of the City (although that's just what he had done with Caradenus) but because his friends had talked with him about how to get home over and over if he was ever left on his own. They had tried to draw a map for him, but it was too hard to read and understand. Easier to learn things like they were the words to a song, the way he learned that song he liked so much, "Broceliande Blue," just say them again and again and again until he knew them as well as his own name.

  And he really did know the way home that well, and perhaps even better, because there were moments when he didn't remember his name at all — when the only thing that Streedy Nettle could think of to call himself was not a name at all but an idea, a memory of that horrifying golden instant in which the power of the entire plant had moved through him, had lived inside him as though he weren't a person at all but a beast of freezing fire as big as the sky. In those moments he was not the Widow Nettle's gangly son anymore, not the country boy from Hazel or even the new Streedy who found it hard to think but who wanted so badly to help his new friends: in those moments he simply was, a glorious, terrifying memory of being so full of light that he thought he might explode into glowing white fragments . . .

  People bumped against him and cursed as they hurried past. Someone tried to brush by and must have felt the crippled wings hidden beneath his loose coat, because she — it was a woman, a young girl in a servant's cap, with wings of her own that glittered even in the dull autumn light — gave him a very odd look.

  "All right for some," she said, then walked on quickly. Streedy realized that he had stopped in the middle of the sidewalk again. He was in the way. People were noticing him. His friends had been very firm about that, as firm as they had been about him learning the route: he was not supposed to do things that would make people pay attention to him.

  It was so difficult to think while he was walking, not just because thinking was hard work, but also because he was afraid that he would go past the place he was looking for while he was still trying to remember. And there had been so much to remember today! Not just how to get to where he had been, and how to get back to his friends again, but also not to stop in the street or say anything that would make anyone wonder about him. And then all the hard work to remember the things his friends wanted done in the middle of the city without Caradenus to help him! That had been the hardest part in some ways, but he was finished now, which was a relief.

  But was he really finished? He stopped again, just for a moment, because suddenly he wasn't sure. He thought and thought, panic making his chest feel tight again. What if he had gone to the place but had forgotten to do the thing he had gone there for in the first place? "Go with me," he had begged his friends, "it's too hard to remember all these things!" but they wouldn't do it. "We can't go where you're going, Streedy," one of them had told him — he thought it was Doorlatch. "They'd follow us. They'd be watching us the entire time. It has to be you."

  Suddenly, he remembered the bag he was clutching in his hands. The bag! Of course! If he hadn't done what he was supposed to do, the bag would be empty. He opened the top just a little, just enough to peer in. It was full of Truename cards, just like it was supposed to be. He sighed, relieved. He had done what he was supposed to — he could remember it now that he wasn't so nervous. Yes, now he could remember walking right in and doing all the things they had told him to do, in just the right order.

  He was bumped again. Stopped in the middle of the sidewalk. That was bad. Time to walk again. Walk along Pentacle Street. Look for Sour Milk Way. That was how it was supposed to go. But was this really still Pentacle Street? What if he'd turned down the wrong street somehow?

  He found a sign at last. Pentacle Street. So that was good. He resumed his march toward the bus stop.

  ————— "Get out of the street, strawhead!" someone shouted. Streedy Nettle at last pulled his attention away from the blinking blue light on the pole. It felt like it was blinking behind his eyes as well — such a strange sensation. And there were little smeary bits of light around everything, even the big black coach which had stopped in the center of the intersection, and whose driver was now shaking a fist at him, yelling out the rolled-down window. "Go back to Alder!"

  "But I'm not from . . ." Streedy shook his head. The traffic light still seemed to be in his eyes, even when he looked down. A horn honked again. He hurried across the intersection and up onto the sidewalk on the far side. What street was he on? Pentacle Street? Good.

  It hadn't always been like this. He couldn't exactly remember how it had been, but he knew it had been different before the accident. He didn't used to forget things so quickly, hadn't had to be reminded by his friends that he was going somewhere when they found him standing and staring. Blinking lights hadn't sort of put him to sleep like they did now, hadn't whispered in his ear, on off on off on off, ticking like midnight footsteps in a tiled room. In fact, he had hardly ever noticed lights at all before the accident. Now he could see them for what they were, a certain kind of cold heat flowing back and forth from brilliance to blackness like water sloshing in a bowl, but so fast that most other people couldn't see the changes. Streedy could, though, or could at least feel them. He was glad he didn't have to go out in the nighttime. Even from a distance the lights of the city center at night made his head ache.

  He looked up at the next intersection and saw a sign that said Sour Milk Way. This time he remembered to move over close to the window of a store while he considered it. Yes, that was the name he had been looking for. Where Sour Milk Way crossed Pentacle. He was supposed to look for something. He frowned, but the frown didn't last long. The bus stop.

  Pleased and more than a little proud, Streedy looked all around the intersection. There was a big store on one corner, a very high building with brightly glowing letters over the wide glass doors that said "Loosestrife, Licensed," and people coming out with bags and boxes. That wasn't it — no, that was some kind of store. He remembered stores. He remembered his mother taking him all the way into the town of Twelvetrees to get a winter coat, and the department store — much smaller than this one — called "Zinnia Brothers," which had been so full of unattainable objects like an entire small mezzanine floor of toys that to young Streedy it had seemed like a dream.

  He blinked. Was he supposed to go to a store? No, the bus stop. Remember, Streedy! He was angry with himself.

  He spotted it at last, just a few yards back up Pentacle Street. He had walked right past it. His friends were so smart, telling him to look for Sour Milk Way! It was just like the one a block away where the bus had dropped him off this morning, with glass walls and a gray-green copper roof in the shape of a giant elder leaf.

  The Warstones and Dockyards bus, he told himself. That's what they said. Don't get on the wrong bus. Warstones and Dockyards. There were already a half dozen people on the bench, three of them old women dressed in black or gray. There were also two younger women in domestic service uniforms, one of whom was small enough that she might be half-brownie, and a man whose expensive coat fit so snugly it was clear that he had no wings at all, not even crumpled and melted ones like Streedy Nettle's. He had a mirrorcase open on his lap and didn't even look up when Streedy almost bumped him. A few of the others did glance at him, but only for a moment. Streedy decided to stand, even though his feet hurt. He was afraid he might fall asleep sitting up as he sometimes did. It was harder to fall asleep when you were standing.

  He was just wondering if the man in the suit had gone to a do
ctor to have his wings off, like people back at the power plant said that the supervisor Mr. Dogwood had done, when the little serving-woman tugged at the other woman's sleeve and pointed at the sky, saying, "What's that?" She didn't sound scared, just surprised.

  Streedy looked south down Pentacle Street and was dazed by the succession of orange and blue traffic lights stretching away into the distance. It took him a moment to see what she was pointing at, a strange, angular shadow coming across the sky like a fallen leaf caught up by the wind.

  "It's so big . . . !" said her friend. Streedy wanted to laugh because it wasn't big at all, it was small, he could have reached out his hand and covered it like a spot on the wall. But then he saw that it was getting bigger and bigger very fast and he realized he was wrong, that it had only been so small because it was far away — he'd forgotten how that happened — and then he saw what it was and he couldn't think about anything else at all because he was freezing cold all up and down his body. He felt like he'd swallowed a block of ice as big as his own head.

  "Bloody black iron . . . !" someone shouted — it must have been the man with the mirrorcase, but Streedy didn't look at him. He couldn't look at anything except the thing that was growing bigger and bigger in the sky.

  "But there isn't any such thing!" one of the old women shrieked. "Not any more! There isn't!" The thing blocked the light as it plunged down. The bus shelter fell into shadow, the air perfectly still for just half an instant. Then wind filled the street like a living thing, sending papers, leaves, dust spiraling up to cloud the sky. Coaches skidded, crunched into each other. A horn blared and would not stop.

  As it leveled at the base of its dive, only a few feet above the top of the street's tallest buildings, the huge black dragon spread its wings — Streedy could hear the wind roaring and thrumming in the membranes. Signs tore loose from the walls and tumbled clattering into the street. Lights popped and fizzed with the gassy green light of escaping power, something that normally made Streedy want to run away as fast as he could, but his feet seemed stuck to the sidewalk. Glass spattered down the length of the sidewalk in a sudden downpour as windows broke all along the block, some of it clattering on the bus shelter roof. The people around him had been knocked to the ground, battered or terrified into silence. Streedy clung to the shuddering wall of the shelter as the huge black wormshape twisted in midair, its wings snapping up then down as it writhed back into the high sky. A moment later it was hurtling away north, no longer on the same line as the street. It did not vanish, though: Streedy saw it rise, wings spreading even wider, like the petals of some exotic hothouse flower, then a line of bright fire leaped down from its mouth toward the ground, toward some target Streedy could not see. The dragon flame was so searingly bright, as though someone had scratched a burning stick across his eyes, that for the first time Streedy Nettle shrieked and lost his grip and fell to the sidewalk like a half-empty sack.

  Even through his closed, dazzled eyes he could see a great white flash, then something roared like a long peal of thunder. The ground jumped beneath him as though struck by a giant's hammer, bouncing Streedy over onto his belly. The cold pavement against his face was the only real thing for a moment — that and the stinging sight of dragonfire still painted on the inside of his eyelids like a razorslash of burning light.

  "The dragons are going to kill us all!" someone shrieked. The voices crowded together — people were shouting up and down the street. More coaches crunched into things.

  "That was Hollyhock House — that thing just burned down Hollyhock House!" screamed someone else.

  "They'll kill us all!"

  "It's war!"

  "It's the end, the end, the end . . . !"

  Streedy pressed his cheek against the cold concrete and listened to the winds rise. He didn't want to remember anything more. He didn't want to.

  ————— He was walking, although he didn't remember why. It was snowing, just like back in Hazel, which seemed wrong, somehow, but there it was, a constant flutter of gray and white flakes everywhere, in the air, sifting and swirling around his feet, getting into his nose and mouth so that he could hardly breathe or see for crying. Strange snow. The street was winter-dark, too, but nighttime had come only in certain places, great inky clouds of blackness in front of the sun but with bits of blue-gray sky peeping through. He didn't understand any of it.

  No bus had come. He couldn't remember exactly why, but everyone else had stopped waiting before he had. In fact, they had all run away, except for one of the women, who had spread her wings to fly, but she was clumsy like she hadn't done it much, and also crying hard. She had fluttered awkwardly through the snowy wind until she ran into a wall and fell and then didn't get up again.

  Streedy hadn't seen a big fairy like her fly in a long time. Something really bad must have upset her. He felt he should remember what that something had been — it seemed like it was important — but he couldn't. So now he was walking, his special bag still clutched in his hand. He didn't want his friends to be upset. He hoped he was walking in the right direction. Pentacle Street? He was pretty certain that was the right name, but he had no idea if he was still on that street. He tried to ask people where he should go, but most of the folk he saw hurrying through the gray snow, some holding things over their heads to keep the stuff off, some with scarves or shirts clutched over their mouths, didn't want to stop and talk. He finally found someone, a little ferisher in a suit who was standing on a streetcorner talking into a shell. Streedy asked him whether he was going the right way to get the Warstones and Dockyards bus.

  "Warstones . . . ?" The little ocher-colored man put his shell in his pocket. He laughed, but he looked like he wanted to cry. His face and suit were very dirty. He looked like the kind of person who should know Warstones, Streedy thought, but the ferisher disappointed him. "Cracks in the Floorboard, how should I know?" He wiped sweat and gray snow off his forehead, giggling. "Three of the great houses — Lily, Daffodil, Hollyhock, all gone in an hour! Somebody said Parliament is shut down. It's war!" He stopped laughing and burst into tears, just as Streedy had thought he might. He seemed to be a very emotional fellow. "I can't help you. I can't help you. They say everyone's to be off the streets by sunset. It was that Thornapple fellow who was saying it, Lord Thornapple. Seemed very calm . . ."

  The Thornapple name frightened Streedy, although at the moment he couldn't remember exactly why, but he also was confused by something else the man had said. "Sunset? But it's already night!"

  The ferisher shook his head, wiping at his eyes with the sleeve of his suit coat, smearing the dirty snow on his face even more until he looked like he was wearing a mask. "Go home! Go to your children!" He turned and began trotting down the street. In a few moments he was lost in the swirl of gray and white.

  "I don't have any children," said Streedy, but there was no one to hear him.

  He walked on for what seemed like hours. He forgot what street he was supposed to be on and stopped looking at the signs, stopped trying to remind himself. It was hard to see, anyway — his eyes burned and burned and for some reason his lungs did, too, just as they had in the days after his accident. He kept stumbling and falling down, and each time it was harder to get up. But his friends were waiting for him back home. He clutched at his bag. His friends were waiting.

  In a dark street where the snow was not so thick, a small, narrow street crisscrossed overhead not with streaks of fire but with washing lines, he crawled up onto a porch and fell against a door that had a smaller round door in the middle of it, set about the height of his stomach. He didn't know where he was anymore and he didn't know whose apartment or business this might be, but he remembered this kind of door — his friends had told him about doors like this with a hole in the middle. He slapped at it until he remembered to close his fingers into a fist, then went on knocking on the door, trying to remember what his friends had taught him about the right way to knock — three fast, two slow, two fast, then do it again and ag
ain and again . . .

  The goblin that finally opened the inset round door and peered out did not say a word, but he did not close it again, either. Instead he watched Streedy with wide, fearful eyes. Voices washed out from behind him, buzzing goblin voices raised in argument, as well as the familiar tones of the mirrortalkers that had greeted Streedy every night back home when he came in from the fields, before he went away to work in the plant. His mother had loved her mirror. "My company," she called it. "My friends."

  Friends. "Help me," said Streedy, and suddenly he was looking up at the goblin's face instead of down. He had fallen, somehow, and it was very hard to breathe, as though the snow was filling up his lungs, hot snow that smoldered inside him and pushed out all the good air. "Help me . . . find my friends. They live . . . under . . . a bridge."

  25 A MILLION SPARKS

  For long moments he waited to burn. There was noise all around him, distant shrieks and the disembodied voice of a hob reporting danger and destruction, listless as a feverish child, but at the moment it seemed to Theo he was surrounded by, and sunken in, a deep and stunning silence.

  I'm going to die, was the only coherent thought, and so it seemed his only thought: I'm going to die. But after a while he became aware that the silence was a kind of pall of shock, and that just as the world around him was actually filled with frantic noises, so his own mind was full of disconnected thoughts flitting, squeaking, and colliding like startled bats in a sealed chamber.

  I'm going to die here. In Fairyland. Why had he sat waiting for this? Why hadn't he seen through Tansy before? Why had all the fairies he'd met been so certain that there wouldn't be a war? Well, they're all dead now so they're probably feeling pretty stupid. Through all the disconnected fluttering in his head, he knew he was stuck in the middle of a moment of great change, a point from which everything else could be seen as strands leading backward. He could only hope — but not quite believe — there might be strands leading forward as well.