by Tad Williams
"No, you're not going. It's my problem. I'll deal with it."
Part Four THE LOST CHILD
34 INTERLUDE WITH VAN GOGH STARS
"No, you're not going. It's my problem. I'll deal with it." Cumber looked irritated but spoke calmly. "You'll do nothing of the sort. You're no hero, Theo. Neither am I, but maybe together we might manage to equal one Lord Rose or whatever."
"It's not a battle, Cumber. I'm not going to fight anyone with a sword or anything, just going to ask for some help." "From the Remover of Inconvenient Obstacles, one of the most dangerous creatures in all the world. You don't even know how to find your way there, do you?"
"I wrote down the directions." It didn't sound very heroic, he had to admit. "I know you like Applecore, Cumber, but you don't owe her the way I do. She saved my life."
The ferisher shook his head. "I'm not demanding to go in your place, Theo, I'm just going with you. We'll have a better chance of making it work, especially if something goes wrong. You don't know the city very well, Theo. No, I'm definitely going with you."
The tent flap opened and Mistress Twinge looked in. "Going where?" Theo almost told her — misery being the inveterate lover of company — but a look from Cumber seemed to indicate caution. "Nowhere special. Just having an argument."
"Ah." She slouched in and arranged herself in a corner of the tent. "I like arguments. Can I play, too?" The goblin Coathook came in behind her, dark and quiet as a raincloud slipping across the sky. He nodded to Theo and Cumber as he settled on his bedroll.
"Hey, Coathook, that was a world-class fit you threw in what's-it-called — Elysium House," Theo said. "You really looked like you were dying or something."
"He was," said Mistress Twinge cheerfully. "There's too many people with diagnostic charms around these days. A little poison makes it look good and feel good, no matter what charm you use to read it with. You just have to make sure to take the antidote before the stuff hits — right, Hooky?"
Coathook was wearing his poker face today. He didn't even blink at the nickname.
"Hang on," said Theo. "I'm not sure I'm getting this. Coathook took real poison so he could fake that fit in the records office?" "Had to," the pooka explained. "Most of the guards in places like that have at least some elementary healing training. They've got charms that will tell them what's wrong so they know whether to call for an ambulance or just make the person comfortable. So Coathook had a little sack of iron filings in his pocket and a healing charm to make him right again. Take the first, wait 'til you begin to feel it, then take the other before you forget." She chuckled. "Good, huh?"
"Jeez . . . Wow," Theo said. "So all that screaming and . . . you were really feeling that?" Coathook looked at him with inscrutable yellow eyes. "Yes." He unrolled his bedroll and stretched out. "Sleeping now." He closed his eyes and appeared to begin doing so immediately.
After a long moment's silence Mistress Twinge stood up, pulling a cigar out of the pocket of her red overalls. "Well, I can see you young lovers want to be alone so I think I'll just go for a walk and a smoke — maybe I'll grab Streedy on his way back from Button and teach the boy how to drink or something. That might be amusing." She gave them a jaunty salute. "Have fun, kids!"
"Is that where Streedy is?" Theo asked when the pooka was gone. "With Button? I was just over there and I didn't see him."
Cumber shrugged. "Anything else you want to talk about, now that we're agreed I'm going along to see the Remover? Are you still planning on tomorrow?"
"I guess. Button wouldn't be specific, but I got the feeling things are about to start happening and if something's really up I want to be ready with information on how to get into Hellebore House — if we can get any, that is." Theo rubbed his face. Watching Coathook's placid slumber was making him tired and it was getting late. "What do you think Button has planned, anyway? Do you think he has a hope in hell against the Flower houses?"
Cumber frowned at the unfamiliar expression. "I don't know, Theo. He's awfully smart. Primrose isn't stupid, either, although he's not in Button's league. But if they really think there's a chance they must know something we don't, because even if you gave every able-bodied adult in this camp a weapon they still wouldn't have a chance against the Parliamentary Guard, let alone Hellebore's dragons. It looks quite hopeless to me, but they used to hunt dragons, you know. Goblins did, I mean — Button's people. Perhaps that means he's tough and hard-minded enough to pull it off." Cumber didn't sound very much like he believed it, though.
"The dragons seem to have caught everyone by surprise," said Theo. "I remember Daffodil shouting something about it wasn't fair, or that Hellebore had broken the rules . . ."
"There have always been dragons in Faerie," said Cumber. "But the big ones were killed off a long time ago in the Dragon Campaigns back in the days of the Tree Lords — the first generation of fairies. Everyone agreed the dragons had to go — they were just too dangerous, too big and too smart. Only a few of the smallest survived, mostly hiding in caves in the high mountains. Every now and then one would carry off few sheep or something, but basically they were scavengers living in remote areas and nobody even knew they were there except the wild goblins. But during the last Gigantine War it was clear to everyone that we were going to have to come up with something new to beat the giants, so Parliament decided to start a breeding program, but only after a lot of very bitter argument — see, the dragons had almost wiped us out early on, and a lot of folk weren't too pleased about bringing them back. All kinds of agreements were signed by all the houses, swearing that these dragons would be kept under control, that they could only be flown by an act of the full Parliament of Blooms, and they could never — never, never, never — be used against fairy-folk."
"So Hellebore broke that law." "Of course, although he got Parliament to rubber-stamp it once the smoke had cleared. Because the winners make the rules, Theo." A depth of bitterness was in Cumber's words Theo hadn't heard since the night in the club named Christmas. "That's how it always works. They make the rules and they write the histories. So if things end the way they're probably going to, Hellebore and Thornapple and those other lizards will be the heroes and Button and Primrose will be the villains — you and me too, if they even remember us. Five hundred years from now there will probably be a public holiday to celebrate the anniversary of our executions."
"Thanks for that pleasant thought," said Theo. "Shit, I just thought of something. Five hundred years — but fairies don't die, do they? I mean, if he wins, Hellebore will probably still be around then, won't he? Celebrating."
"He'll be fairly old by then — nobody lives forever, we just endure a lot longer than mortals — but unless someone kills him, yes, he'll probably be sitting in Strawflower Square watching us being burned in effigy for the five hundredth time."
It was disconcerting that although Coathook was apparently sleeping deeply, he made no noise or movements at all — not a snore, not a fidget. "Answer me one more question," Theo said quietly. "It's purely hypothetical since I'm probably going to get killed tomorrow anyway. I'm a fairy too, or at least that's what you and the others tell me. Does that mean if I didn't do anything stupid, just kept my head down and my nose clean, I might live for a thousand years or so as well?"
Cumber frowned. "It's hard to say, because nobody knows all the effects of being raised in the mortal world. You're not entirely like other fairies — I saw some of the physical differences when we were testing you in Daffodil House. Your facial features and body shape have taken on a little mortal coarsening. Excuse the expression, Theo, but you must know what I mean."
"Yeah. I don't look like an anorexic male model like the rest of these Flower-folk." "But you're not that different, either, so it's hard to tell. I'm trying to remember — you didn't have children, did you? That makes a big difference."
For a moment that terrible night flashed through Theo's thoughts — Cat in her blood-soaked bathrobe, the overworked emergency room intern saying in a w
eary, offhand way, "It's a miscarriage, of course. There shouldn't be any permanent harm to her ability to conceive, if that's any help at a time like this." "No," he said. "No kids. But what does that have to do with anything?"
"Nobody knows for certain — by the time people began to want to test these things in a proper, rigorous way there weren't enough mortals crossing over to our side, or fairies to the mortal side, to provide the information necessary for a decent study. But the conventional wisdom is that a changeling — a fairy raised by mortals — will still retain most of the Faerie birthright, whether he or she knows it or not, until the changeling in turn becomes father or mother to a child in the mortal world. Then what remains of the birthright, which can be anything from fairynature to some kinds of fairy talents and innate knowledge, passes to that child diminishing a bit with each generation. At least that's what everyone thinks. There hasn't been a chance to test, as I said."
Theo sighed. "So there really is a chance I might live to be a thousand or so. A chance."
Cumber nodded. "I suppose so."
"Well, at least I'll have that to be miserable about when they're torturing me and killing me — you know, just to keep me distracted." "Does being raised as a mortal make everyone strange?" asked Cumber. "Do you have the expression here, 'You have to laugh to keep from crying?' Well, right now it's more like, 'You have to laugh to keep from throwing up in terror.' "
—————
He slept only fitfully that night, for several reasons. After falling almost immediately into one of the worst of the shared-mind dreams yet — one in which he felt himself helplessly drowning inside his own stolen self, swallowed up by a terrible cold blackness — he escaped into a succession of less frightening episodes, although he was never entirely free of the feeling that he was sharing his thoughts with something foreign, something other. The last dream was something about delivering flowers to his mother in the hospital and trying to tell her that it was really him, her boy Theo, and that he didn't care whether she was his real mother or not, he still loved her, but in the dream she was too far gone in her illness and couldn't understand him. All she could do was stare at the flowers on the bedside table as if they had her hypnotized.
It was a sad dream, and usually he didn't remember the sad ones, just the happy ones (making out with some woman he'd lusted after but would never touch in real life, winning the lottery) or the really dreadful ones. Lately there had been quite a few really dreadful ones. But the chances were that he would not have remembered this one, with his mother's lost face and the drooping flowers beside the hospital bed, if he had not woken up in the middle of it to find a hand across his mouth and another around his throat.
The thing! It's found me! His heart sped from sleep-slow to terrified in a second, as though someone had pushed the cardiac pedal to the floorboards. He tried to roll away from the clutching hands; the one on his throat came away but the grip on his mouth only tightened. He clawed at the arm and torso, expecting to find rotting flesh, but his attacker was distinctly whole . . . and distinctly feminine.
"Theo! Ssshhh! You'll wake everybody!" "Poppy?" He was stunned. "What are you doing here? Why are you trying to strangle me?"
"I'm not, you idiot," she whispered. "I was trying to find your mouth to keep you from shouting and I slipped . . ." She suddenly let out a little gasp and fell away from him into a deeper shadow.
"Are you well, Theo Vilmos?" It was Coathook's voice. The goblin had come out of his bedroll across the tent as silently as a cat, and now seemed to have Poppy Thornapple in some kind of chokehold.
"I . . . I think he's going to kill me!" she wheezed. Theo could barely hear her.
"Don't, Coathook. She's a friend. Let her go."
"Are you certain?"
"Yes! Yes, let her go." Suddenly Poppy came sprawling into his lap, knocking him back onto his rumpled blanket. The other three residents of the tent were beginning to stir now as well. He pushed her toward the tent flap. "Wait for me outside."
"Theo?" asked Cumber, muzzy with sleep. "What . . . ?" "It's okay, really. Just someone with a message for me. Coathook was looking out for all of us but it's a false alarm." By the thin moonlight leaking in through the flap Theo could see the yellow eyes staring back at him. It was like being watched by the Devil himself, but he knew that if the intruder had been anyone other than Poppy he would have been helplessly grateful for the goblin's vigilance and excellent night vision. "Thanks," he said.
Coathook nodded, blinked, then slithered back across the tent and under his blanket once more. Theo took a moment to catch his breath — his hands were still shaking — and then followed Poppy out through the flap. The Faerie-moon was almost full, a vast white onion sinking toward the horizon, so bright that even the pyrotechnic stars were glared into the background. Washed in its light, Button's bridge loomed above the flat emptiness at the far end of the camp like a phantom castle out of an old folktale making its once-in-a-century appearance on some misty Scottish heath.
Before Theo had even stood all the way upright she had her arms around him. She kissed his face, then pulled back, her dark eyes wide and serious. "Is it too terrible I've come? I was half-afraid I'd find you with some other woman."
He didn't think it was terrible at all — she felt wonderful against him. He kissed her for an answer, then suddenly stopped and leaned back. "But how did you find me?"
"I have a friend who works in the Parliamentary Bureau of Mirror Service. She's having an affair with her boss and she has an access to records that is simply scandalous. It wasn't that hard for her to trace back the call you had your friend make to me the other day."
"But you already knew I was in the camp." "I didn't trace it back to the camp, I traced it back to your friend." She lifted the small wand she used as a phone. It glowed with the faintest silvery light. "See? I had it charmed to show me when it was getting close to the person who made the call. I was hoping that if you weren't in the same tent he'd at least know where you stayed — but there you were."
He was shocked and disturbed. He'd underestimated the technology of Faerie again. "But that's terrible! That means anyone can trace us . . . !" "Why, have you been calling a lot of other girls? Because if you haven't, then you only have to worry about me and I'm obviously not going to turn you in." She gave him a look, half-suspicious, half-amused. "There aren't any other calls, are there?"
"No, no. That was the first time I tried that. But what if your friend in the Whatsit Bureau . . . ?"
"She won't think twice about it. I told her a man with an attractive voice got my shell by accident and I was curious what he looked like. She's so busy agonizing over what's going on with her and her boss she's probably forgotten already. Feel better?"
"Yeah, I guess so. I was just . . . see, I made Streedy do it. I'd feel terrible if something happened to him because of me." Now she did look amused. "You and your obligations! You may be of fairy blood but it's certainly not from any of the high houses, not if you spend your time worrying about things like that. Even the relatively nice boys like Lander Foxglove would step over their own dying grandmothers to get into an interesting party."
"But you're not like that." Although, remembering how she had spoken about her own brother's murder, he couldn't be sure. "I don't want to be," she said seriously. "Sometimes I think I'm not, then sometimes I think I can't change it, it's just the world I grew up in." She put her arm through his and pulled him down the path atop the levee, away from the camp. "People like my father and his friends — I'm not talking about the Hellebores, they're completely mad, I'm talking about the ones that everyone thinks of as normal Flower types — they don't waste their strength caring much for anyone except themselves. I used to think that was normal, but every now and then one of the servants or one of my more distant relatives would be . . . different. Do something simply because it was nice. Be kind to me just because I was a sad little girl, not because they wanted something from my father. One of my aunts actually
stood up to him — told him he treated his children worse than he treated the servants, and he treated the servants like animals. That was almost the only time I'd ever seen him surprised."
"Wow. What happened?" "He killed her." She gave an angry little laugh. "Oh, not in an obvious way. But he ruined her life. Destroyed her husband's business, spread poison about her all through our social circle. Got her children thrown out of their school. Eventually her husband left her and she went to the Well." "The Well . . . ?"
"She killed herself. But really he murdered her, my father murdered her. If she'd said those things about him in private he wouldn't have cared — he would have laughed, probably, that she thought it worth mentioning as though it were something bad. But she said it in public, in front of the lower orders who are supposed to worship him, and that he couldn't allow, so he destroyed her. That's when I started hating him." She stopped suddenly. "I don't want to talk about this any more, Theo. I know you're going after your friend. I . . . I don't want to talk about my horrible family when I don't know how much time we have before . . . before . . ."
"Before I head off to get myself killed, too." "Don't say things like that!" She threw her arms around him and squeezed hard, like a drowning swimmer and Theo suddenly understood how a rescuer could be turned into a victim. He wished he had spoken in a less petty, self-pitying way, but at the moment he felt caught between duty and common sense, neither of which were things he really wanted running his life in the first place — they certainly hadn't been big parts of the Theo Vilmos Master Plan before now.
Poppy still held him. "I couldn't stand it when you walked away the other night. I could just tell you were planning to do something heroic and stupid."
"I was? I mean, you could tell that?" "Yes, you had this determined air that they always have in the mirrorplays — Lord Rose going off to fight the goblins, kissing his little daughters good-bye, or Memnon Alder on the eve of the Frost War."
