The War of the Flowers

by Tad Williams

  Now, to add to his vast fund of ignorance, he had another pressing mystery to deal with: What did Eamonn Dowd do to get that Primrose guy so crazy? Or what does Primrose think he did, anyway?

  The music was quite loud now. Theo turned down a long narrow space between two clusters of tents and found himself at the end of a cul-de-sac where the camp backed up against the river's old stone-walled banks. A crowd had gathered around the musicians; Theo felt a little touch of unease when he saw that they were all goblins, and not the friendly, civilized sort like Doorlatch, either. The musicians and most of the crowd were small, lean, and hard, most dressed in tattered, earth-colored clothes. A few were wearing brighter fabrics, robes of what even in the dim light were clearly bright reds and yellows, and many of the goblins dressed this way were dancing. It took him longer than it should have to realize these must be goblin women. Their long-nosed faces, or what he could see of them, since many of them wore hoods, were a little different than the men's, but what made him sure at last was what he could see of their bodies, slender above the waist but with wider hips than Coathook or the other goblins he'd met.

  A few paused to look at him — some a bit suspiciously, he thought — but did not stare long before turning their attention back to the music. There were at least half a dozen goblins playing, long fingers moving like spider's legs, one goblin blowing on an instrument with long twinned pipes like a forked recorder, another couple playing more ordinary fifes or whistles. A tall, long-whiskered goblin held something that looked like a boat's paddle with strings on it across his lap, and the rest seemed to be playing different kinds of drums and shakers. It was hard to tell for certain, because the dancing women, and some dancing male goblins, kept swaying back and forth in front of the musicians.

  The strangeness of the scene and the almost painfully unfamiliar music sent another wave of melancholy over him. He closed his eyes, halflistening to the wind instruments skirling around the drone of the musical paddle and the complicated, nearly arrhythmic scatter of drumbeats. What the hell am I doing here? Besides the obvious, trying to stay alive? The greatest adventure anyone could ever have, and I can't even appreciate it — I just want to go home. If I were Great-Uncle Eamonn, I'd try to write about it, but I couldn't even hack those essay exams for junior college. What am I, really? A bum. A fairy, maybe — he still couldn't quite believe it — but definitely a bum, no matter what. An out-of-work singer. A delivery guy for a florist, with no girlfriend and no family. That's the funniest part of the whole thing — the idea that someone thinks I'm worth trying to kidnap or kill. Give me a break! I can finish myself off. Just give me another thirty or forty years . . .

  He was beginning to hear patterns now in the polyrhythms, odd percussive ellipses, things left out that emphasized the things that were left in. He found himself swaying. Look at me — like a stockbroker at a jazz festival, he thought derisively. Too dumb to know he's uncool. But that wasn't really fair, was it? He'd believed most of his life that you didn't have to be cool to appreciate music, that it didn't even matter if someone liked uncool music. That was one of the things that had driven him crazy about Kris Rolle and his bandmates, that youthful certainty that there was good music and bad music and that they knew which was which. "Bullshit," he'd told them once. "A teenage girl creaming while she listens to some boy-band, a monk digging on the God he hears in Gregorian chants, or John fucking Coltrane himself climbing up into the sky on a staircase made of sixteenth notes, it's all the same. If it takes you there, it's good." That was when he cared enough to argue with idiots like Kris. That was when he cared.

  Theo was beginning to hear some of the sounds in the music, to get a tiny glimmering of what it was, and also, perhaps more importantly, to get an idea of what it wasn't. When people heard something or saw something unfamiliar, they had to compare it to something they knew. That was fine. But breaking away from that first identification was important or you'd spend the rest of your life thinking of it as a subset of the familiar thing. Theo was listening closely now, feeling the beat but also realizing that the goblin music wasn't any number of things it had sounded a little like at first hearing: it wasn't Middle Eastern music, wasn't Indian, wasn't Asian. It had too many strange unplayed bits in it to be any of those. If there was anything he knew that came close, it might have been the Qawwali stuff, the Sufi devotional music he had listened to for a while as a matter of rebellion when all his musical friends had suddenly discovered African music and were raving to him about King Sunny Ade and Ladysmith Black Mambazo. Not that they weren't fine, but he simply hadn't wanted to be the last guy onto the bandwagon, any bandwagon.

  Hey, now I'm definitely the last guy on the goblin jazz bandwagon, at least on this world. But if I ever get home, I'll be the first goblin jazz guy on my block — on anybody's block.

  He smiled, his eyes still closed, head nodding to the beats he was beginning to hear, even the ones that weren't being played. That's what I am, when you come down to it, he realized. I may not be making any money off it, but I'm a musician. I'm a singer.

  Time passed — five minutes, half an hour, he couldn't tell. The dancers, male and especially female, had shied away from him at first, but now it was as though they no longer noticed him: he had sunk into the music with them until he was invisible. He was hearing things he couldn't have heard when he first arrived in the dead-end street, his brain making some sense out of the larger patterns of the music, some of which seemed to last for minutes before repeating. The musicians gave out occasional bursts of vocalization, swooping cries that scurried up the minor scale before holding for a moment, but they never lasted for more than a few seconds. Occasionally someone in the crowd would join in, singing a quick babble of unfamiliar words or even letting out a wordless cry, but otherwise the music had no singer's part.

  What was odd, though, was that there seemed to be such a part, or at least a place for another instrumental voice of some kind, implied in the shape of the music as he now understood it, commented on by the instruments and percussion as though it were actually being heard. Sometimes this gap disappeared, filled by the frantic, almost colliding sounds of the musicians; other times, especially when the drone softened and the drumming dropped to a faint purr of fingers on taut skin, the gap seemed so obvious that Theo yearned to fill it. He found he was humming, halfsinging to himself as he swayed, trying not simply to fill the perceived emptiness with something of his own creation, a blues vamp or jazz scat, but to create what should be there.

  The music wound around him, compelling as a drug, endless as a necklace of bright beads running continuously through his fingers. Someone was filling the space in the music now, cresting the drone then dropping back into the sinewy muddle of instruments, moving in delicately wordless, staccato sounds through the quiet stretches.

  When he realized that he was the singer, and that he was as loud as any of the instruments, he stopped singing and opened his eyes in shock. The dancers nearest him were watching him, but they were still dancing. He looked up to the musicians but the only one looking at him was the longwhiskered goblin with the string instrument, who met his eye and nodded. He was not smiling, but he was not frowning, either. The string player nodded again, then moved his head in a way that looked very much like "Go on." Tentatively, Theo began to vocalize again. The goblin still did not smile, but he nodded once more and closed his eyes as he lowered himself back into the river of music.

  Theo kept his own eyes open as he sang, at least at first, but although many of the goblin crowd looked at him with interest and even a little surprise, he saw nothing else — no resentment, no bitterness. He began to breathe more easily. He didn't want to be some American tourist crashing into someone else's ceremony, but unless goblin body language was completely upside down from his own, they didn't seem to mind, even seemed to accept and enjoy it. He let himself bask in the music once more, let the worried thoughts drop away until he found again the place he had been. The hole in the music led him on l
ike a firefly over evening hills, like a will-o-the-wisp through midnight swamps. He did his best to follow, to fill the space without filling it up entirely, to let the music breathe around him. When he worked hard, when he tried to think too much, he lost his way, but when he simply felt for it the bright thing was there before him, leading him through a world that was completely foreign and yet somehow at least a little familiar.

  This is who I am , he thought as the musicians crashed in with a loud, discordant break and he caught his breath. He was high, light-headed, happy. The more he forgot himself and sang, the more he felt like he truly

  was himself. Whatever else I might be, human or not, I'm a singer. No one can take that away from me. The frenzied blare died away. For a moment just the drums went on, an expectant, slithering patter as quiet as a small rock bouncing down a steep slope. Then the paddle-shaped instrument began to caw like a blackbird in a bare tree and Theo talked back to it in a high keening wail like the wind and his words and thoughts went away and he disappeared into the music again.

  29 THE HOLE IN THE STORY

  Theo was just taking another long hit from the ivory pipe and marveling at stars stuck on the celestial firmanent like lumps of burning napalm — whatever else about Fairyland might be disappointing or terrifying, he had to admit that the stars were almost worth the price of admission — when Cumber found him.

  "Theo, I've been looking all over for . . . what are you doing?" He held it in for a few more seconds before replying. "Hanging out with some new friends. Smoking some ghostweed." He turned to the goblin musicians. "That's what it called, isn't it? Ghostweed?" The musicians had not been particularly chatty before, but with Cumber's appearance they had all gone silent. "Whatever," Theo said. "It's pretty cool. You want some?"

  "No!" Cumber waved his hands. "No. You'd better give that . . . thing back. We're late. We're going to miss Button's story."

  Theo shrugged. "These guys said that he never starts until everyone who's supposed to be there is there. Right, Bottlecap?"

  The stringed-instrument player nodded slowly. "He always knows the right time."

  "Well . . . well, I think we should go anyway, Theo. There are things to talk about." Theo handed the long-stemmed pipe to Bottlecap, who tapped out the ashes against his bare heel and slipped it into his baggy coat. "Okay. Well, thanks, guys. Thanks for letting me sing with you, too."

  "You sang with them?" Cumber seemed unusually agitated. "Theo, you didn't let anyone give you anything called philtre, did you?" His voice dropped. "Or . . . pixie dust?"

  The goblin musicians glanced at each other and began to disperse. One of them began to hum a plaintively droning little air. Bottlecap looked back at Theo and smiled deep in his furry face. Apparently some things were universal, and one of them was how musicians reacted to straight people.

  Cumber had his elbow and was practically dragging him away. "Man, what's the problem?" Theo asked. "Those people were nice to me." He couldn't get very upset, though. The ghostweed had crept into some of the draftier cracks in his mind and sealed them up. He felt warm and connected to everything from the smoldering stars on down. "What's with this pixie dust you're in such a panic about? Is it addictive or something?"

  "Yes, it is, but the main objection is that it's made from real pixies."

  "Say what?" "Mummified. In any case, just stay away from it if someone offers it to you. I was worried because everyone says that the goblins come into the city and sell it — mostly to the rich Flower kids."

  "Those guys were just players. Good, too — you should have heard them! And I joined in after a while. We had fun." Cumber shook his head. "You never cease to amaze me." He had let go of Theo's elbow but was moving purposefully and Theo had to move faster than he wanted to keep up. "What's it like?"

  "What? Singing?"

  "No, ghostweed. I've . . . I've never tried it."

  "Not even when you were at the university? Man, what were you doing?" "Studying." There was a stiff edge in his voice. "Some of us couldn't afford to ease our way through. Some of us couldn't have Daddy and Mummy send special tutors down to help us cram for our Transmutation finals."

  Theo had been about to tease the ferisher a bit, but there was too much pain in Cumber's answer to ignore. "Well, you didn't miss that much. It's . . . I don't know, it's just copping a buzz. Sort of like marijuana back home, or a few beers. At least I think so, but this is my first time — maybe an hour from now I'm going to be screaming and seeing green tigers."

  "Once a term, after finals, Zirus and the others used to drag me out and make me drink with them. The first time I was a bit proud and excited — these were the children of very important families, you know, famous families. But I drank too much and made a fool of myself, started crying about how much I missed my home. Do you know what Zirus did the next day?"

  Theo shook his head.

  "Invited me out again. You see, they loved it. They thought it was hilarious. The little ferisher who couldn't hold his liquor." "Well, based on what I saw at that Christmas club, maybe you're the kind of guy who shouldn't drink — weird things start to happen when you loosen up. That's just how it is sometimes with people who are a little too tightly wrapped. Don't take offense — you know what I mean."

  Cumber nodded sadly. "I do." "Hey, what's going on up there?" Theo had just noticed that they were not the only people moving toward the bridge, and that most of the camp seemed to have arrived ahead of them. A row of torches had been set along the wall of the bridge with an empty spot in the middle where a small knot of people were standing, looking down at the crowd. "It looks like Elfapalooza or something. Is there going to be more music?"

  "Button's going to tell a story. Everybody's been saying that for hours. Don't you listen, Theo?" "Yeah, I listen." He was not going to let Cumber take the sheen off his mood, or harsh his ghostweed buzz, or whatever it was. "I just didn't think it would be like this."

  It was strangely quiet as they worked their way into the densest part of the crowd, nearest the bridge. Most conversations around them were being carried on in low tones; only the cries of birds and the occasional happy or angry shrieks of children lifted above the abnormal stillness, which gave everything a tense, expectant air.

  They had reached a point in the gathering where if they were going to get any closer they would have to squeeze between a group of ogres who were passing a hogshead of something around, and even in his cheerfully stoned state Theo could see it might not be a good idea to try to shove past drunken ogres. They moved back a little bit so they could see over the large gray folks, who were even taller than they were wide.

  "All this for Button?" Theo marveled. "The little guy who gave me the card? What is he, some kind of rock star? A magician? Does he do tricks?"

  Cumber, who had fallen into a morose silence, did not reply. As if Cumber and Theo were indeed the two he had been waiting for — although they were surely too far back in the crowd for him to have seen them — the knot of people at the center of the bridge split apart and a small, slender shape stepped forward to the edge. Theo couldn't be certain, but he thought that beside a couple of ogre bodyguards, one of Button's companions was Caradenus Primrose, the fairy who had tried to kill him. At least Primrose didn't look proud of himself: from what Theo could see of his long face at this distance, the fairy seemed as depressed as Cumber Sedge.

  "By the Taproot, there are many of you here today!" said Button cheerfully, surveying the crowd. Somehow, either by particularly fortuitous acoustics or magic of the more ordinary Fairyland sort, his voice seemed to fly to Theo's ears as though the little goblin stood only a few feet away. "So many have come since the terrible day when the dragons flew. But you all are welcome! My clan name is Button. In the nest I was called Mud. My other name — well, hem, we shall talk about that. Goblin names, like goblin stories, always have a hole in the middle." "We're hungry!" someone shouted in a rasping voice. A few others echoed the cry, but on balance the crowd seemed patient and i
nterested in what Button had to say.

  "And we shall feed you. Many kind people have brought food to this place and it will all be shared. First, though, because there are so many new ones here, I ask you to listen to my story.

  "But this is not truly my story, no — it is not the story of Mud of the Button tribe, although I am in it, as you are in it, and you, and you. In fact, we are all in it. Rather it is the story of a very beautiful land of forests and fields and rivers. The goats and cows and sheep grazed the hills that the sun warmed, roaming as far as they wished — or at least as far, hem, as their herders would let them. In the evening the white stag came stilting out of the forest to watch the moon rise. There was room for all, food and shelter for all, fire and water and earth and sky for all. Do you know this place, this wonderful place? Faerie, it was called."

  A few people laughed as though it was the punchline of a joke, but Theo was feeling the effects of the ghostweed quite strongly and had been slipping into a pleasant reverie, seeing the pictures Button made in his mind's eye; he didn't like people laughing at them.

  "Yes, it seems strange now, when most of the trees stand behind the walls of the great houses or are fenced in as part of those households' country estates to shelter the animals our lords hunt for pleasure, to know that once the forest covered much of Faerie. Most of you remember, but those of you who are too young — imagine! Only imagine! A black squirrel, leaping from branch to branch, tree to tree, could spend her entire life crossing Faerie without ever touching the ground. Trees like an ocean! Trees more ancient than Flower lords or gnomes or even goblins. Trees which saw the first sun, which were old when the first mountains thrust up from the ground, trees so broad that an entire town such as you find at any railroad station could have sheltered under the branches of one, trees so tall that their leaves touched the clouds and their roots were set in the very scales of the world-worm. Hem. Is it any wonder that the fairy-folk, when they arose in the long grass of that first evening, looked on those ancient trees with awe? That in the long days that followed, those among them who distinguished themselves in power and beauty took the names of trees for their own? Where have they gone, those ancient Tree lords and Tree ladies? We know their names, for we live in their old fiefdoms, the fields of Lord Rowan of the fair hair, of Lady Birch tall and slim, of Oak and Alder and stately Willow, all of them lovely and wise beyond our understanding. Where did they go? Why is there nothing left of them but their names?"