by Tad Williams
"It would have been a quick death by fire or a slow death beneath the water," Button said thoughtfully. "They say that those taken by waterspirits come to love their captors before they die." He went silent for a moment and then shook his head. "There has been too much talk about death. Tell me more about your world. This is a feast, after all! I have been too much in the company of my own people lately, however much I love them. Tell me tales of your world, which has so recently escaped a terrible fate that it likely did not even know existed."
"I hope so — I'd hate to go back and find myself in the middle of the new Dark Ages or something." Theo paused. "Just one more question for you, if you don't mind — something I still don't understand. You said the goblins were ready to fight back, and it seems like the only thing keeping them under the thumb of those Flower lords was the treaty stick. Why hadn't anyone broken it before? Why were you the first?"
Button gave him a quizzical look. "Do you really want another goblin tale? Very well — I cannot refuse you tonight. I will try to make it a swift one. The answer is deceptively simple, Theo. First of all, most goblins did not know where the stick was kept. We supposed it would be hidden in some deep and well-guarded vault. It did not occur to us that the Flower lords knew so little about us, or cared so little for the danger we posed to them, that they did not understand only our sacred word bound us to them — our ancestors' promise in the form of the treaty stick. Primrose himself told me where it was. It was, hem, merely a curiosity to him, something he had stumbled across in the dusty back rooms of the Parliamentary Museum as he pursued his studies in justice and history. When he mentioned it to me, years after he had seen it, I realized exactly what it was and began to plan."
"But somebody must have known — there must have been goblin janitors or somebody. Why didn't anyone ever take it before? Why were you the one who broke it?"
Button was silent for a moment. "I suppose it is a bit shameful, in a way, that no one before me dared to do this thing. Yes, there may have been some that knew, but it was also true that no one wanted to face the death that would result from breaking that treaty."
Theo didn't understand. The goblins seemed a bit more gung-ho than that: it was hard to imagine them enduring servitude merely out of fear that many of them would die in a rebellion. He would never forget the wild warriors he had seen in Strawflower Square, calmly stringing their bows as the flailing black shadows came down on them from the sky.
"Enough of this," Button said suddenly. "I invoke my privilege as guest of honor. Tell me the tales of your world, Theo. Tell me of your life. Make me laugh."
"I'll do my best." He shrugged off the thoughts of war and worms, tried to think of the things he missed about the world to which it seemed he would soon be returning. He wondered if Button would understand why Johnny Battistini trying to parallel park a stolen ice cream wagon while ripped out of his mind on mushrooms was funny.
He told him the story. Button understood, or seemed to.
————— It seemed to be nearly midnight when he finally got up to say goodbye. Button also rose, and hugged him, a strange, wiry embrace that was not quite like anything Theo had experienced.
"I will miss you, Theo. It has been good to know you." "Well, don't change my address in your Rolodex quite yet. I'm still thinking it over."
"Ah." Button took his hand for a moment, fixed him with those slotted yellow eyes. "I feel sure that whatever you do, you will, hem, take a little goblin music with you always." He let go of Theo's hand. "Go safely, Theo Vilmos."
"I like that better than what you said to me the last time we were together. What was that? Something like, 'We aren't promised anything but the last breath we took.' "
"Something like, yes. Goodnight." No one was waiting for him outside the bridgehouse, Cumber and Applecore long since gone off to bed — and that was a personal arrangement Theo still hadn't completely wrapped his head around — but there were enough fires and torches burning in the riverside camp, not to mention the flaring stars, to make finding his way back easy. Something nagged at him as he walked, something about the way Button had spoken, the things he had said. On any other such night Theo would have let it go, but he was stone sober, having drunk nothing but goblin tea, and it was either that or think about his own still very muddled plans.
I'm not a mortal, but I think like one — so where do I belong? And if I don't go home to the mortal world, will they take back the farewell feast? He was full of questions, and found himself almost nostalgic for the old days, for the happy ignorance of going home blasted and blank. Here's another one — why did Button throw a farewell get-together for me and invite a bunch of wild goblins I don't know? Perhaps it was only the goblin's odd, semi-formal way of speaking, but the theme had come up several times, including Button ending the conversation about the breaking of the treaty stick by invoking his privilege as guest of honor.
But if it's a farewell feast for me, wouldn't I be the guest of honor? And then it suddenly clicked, the whole strange way that things had gone, everyone's reticence and odd remarks. It was a goblin story, about the stick — he told me so. And they always have a hole in the middle. Button had said it himself, but Theo hadn't recognized it. "No one wanted to face the death that would result from breaking that treaty," those had been his exact words. Theo had assumed he meant the death of Button's fellow goblins in a rebellion, but he had been talking about himself. Those white robes — he hadn't been a holy man surrounded by acolytes, but a condemned prisoner, however respected, surrounded by his jailers. By his executioners.
Theo ran back across the camp as fast as he could but the bridgehouse was locked, the upper windows dark. He hammered his fists on the door but no one answered. At last old Doorlatch came out of one of the other buildings on the ramshackle bridge, wiping his eyes — whether because he had been asleep or crying, Theo couldn't tell. When he at last understood Theo's heartbroken ramblings, he tried to lead him back to his tent.
"There is nothing you can do," the goblin said. "Nothing. It is the law. Button knew that. He did what was best. He shall remain in us always — a great hero."
Theo would not be comforted by this and would not go away quietly. It seemed like he had been tricked, although if anyone had fooled him, he had fooled himself. He felt cheated of a final chance to say good-bye. Doorlatch had to summon half a dozen helpers, goblins and fairy-folk and one ogre bodyguard that Theo didn't recognize, to carry him back forcibly to his tent and Poppy.
The only thing he could think about, the only thing that made the pain the tiniest bit less agonizing, was that perhaps it had been easier for Button this way — one less weeping farewell, one less time having to listen to someone demanding the impossible.
Poppy, the child of a cold culture and a cruel family, did not try to make things better; poison was poison, she seemed to know, and had to be sweated out. She held Theo while he wept and groaned and shouted, and kept on holding him until, exhausted, he was taken by sleep at last.
43 THE LIMITS OF MAGIC
At the first light of morning he went to Caradenus Primrose, who invited him into his tent, which seemed to be both more sumptuous and more sparse than Theo's own, or any of the other riverside dwellings he had seen. The simple life seemed to agree with Flower-folk: like Button, Primrose could make a carpet seem like a throne.
He listened to Theo's impassioned plea for long minutes, but at last put up a long-fingered hand to stop him. "You must listen, Theo Vilmos, please. We owe you much, but nobody owes you this. And even were it possible I could not grant it. I have not the power. I have no power anymore, at least not the sort that comes with privilege and birth. That may return — we Flower families still have many resources, and I do not think the world will be so completely topsy-turvy as some believe — but even if I did, I would not have stepped in and tried to change things. Button chose this path, knowing all along what would happen to him, whether after victory or defeat. It was his will and his wish." Primrose
lowered his eyes for a moment. "But most of all, Theo . . . it is already too late. He is dead. The council of his tribesmen put him to death him last night."
For long moments, Theo could only sit, wiping tears from eyes that were already sore with weeping, trying to keep from losing his wits entirely. "H-he said . . . you were in mourning," Theo managed at last. "I th-thought he meant . . . for your sister."
"For her, too, but she has been lost to me a long time. Button was my brother, although we were from different worlds and peoples. He was my friend."
Theo looked up at Primrose's stiff, expressionless face. The mask of the Flower nobility, he had learned, was not always effective. "He said once that the two of you weren't friends, that you couldn't be. That you were . . . too different."
Primrose actually laughed, but it was a sound with a great deal of pain in it. "Then it only proves the goblin was not as wise as he usually appeared."
Theo dried his eyes with his sleeve. He felt empty except for the ache in his chest. "I . . . I don't think I like this world anymore. Can I really go home? Does the magic . . . the science . . . still work?"
Primrose thought for a moment. "I know of no reason why you cannot go back to your world, now that you need no longer fear the undead spirit that pursued you. Any reasonably practiced person can open a gateway for you to use. It is not the power of the generating plants that is needed for that, since no one will be trying to hide the gateway as they did when you were brought here, but the power that each of us in Faerie contain in ourselves. With a little study, I do not doubt you could do it yourself." He brought his hands together in his lap. "We will miss you, Theo. If you go, you will not be able to return — not until such a time as we can undo the Clover Effect, which was a work of great craft performed in an era when power was more freely available."
"To be honest, right now I don't care about returning." But he did care about Poppy, he suddenly realized. He needed her to go with him or it would all be meaningless. What use the memories of heroism, of life-anddeath decisions, of beauty and horror, if he left behind the only truly good thing that had happened to him? He would turn into Eamonn Dowd, sour and bitter and maybe even driven mad by what he had lost. "I'll leave you alone now. I have to go talk to someone."
"Then go in peace, Theo Vilmos." "You, too." He reached the door of the tent and looked out for a moment at the morning of a day that showed something of the stunning loveliness Faerie could produce. Even the distant City skyline seemed to him again, as it once had, a wondrous, supernatural thing, the tips of the towers not skyscrapers but minarets, elfin castles. He turned back to Primrose. "Will you make things better this time? Here, I mean. In this new age you're starting."
Caradenus Primrose did not quite manage a smile. "I hope so. We can only try."
"Yeah." He lifted a hand, suddenly feeling awkward. "Take it easy." He had only gone a hundred paces or so when a fairy man he did not recognize emerged from the crowd of passersby and fell into step beside him. The newcomer was dark-haired, and of the same human-type as the Flower lords, but otherwise undistinguished. He kept his eyes down as he walked.
"I wanted to say good-bye," the stranger said. "And that I am sorry. I have done terrible things. I have much to think about."
Theo shook his head. Why did everyone know so much about his business? "I'm sorry, do I know you?" The stranger smiled, still without looking Theo in the face. He had his shoulders hunched, as though he didn't want anyone to notice him, which was odd because he was already almost completely unremarkable. "You turned out to be quite clever, really — I admired what you did with the water-nymph. I don't think that was all just your true heritage coming out, either. There's something to be said for a mortal upbringing, after all — I'm beginning to think we're tougher than the fairies, in some ways. Are you called Theo Violet now, by the way?"
"Wait a second — who are you?" He grabbed the man by the shoulder, spun him around. The man looked back at him, but even face-to-face he was still unfamiliar. The stranger's posture was that of someone ready to run away, but a sly little smile flickered around the edges of his mouth. "You haven't figured it out yet? Maybe I've given you too much credit."
"Dowd?" It seemed impossible, but suddenly he could hear the suggestion of that soft, strained voice coming from this far more ordinary throat. "But you're dead! I saw you die!"
"Come, Theo, that could have been a speech out of a Flash Gordon comic. You saw that body die. It's happened to me once before, as you know, and I survived it. Since then I've spent years trying to strengthen myself so I could eventually get into another, less . . . unpleasant . . . body than the Remover's. As it turned out, I needed every moment of that practice." He held out his arms like someone who had just performed an impressive conjuring trick — which, obviously, he had. "As my body died, I took refuge in one of Hellebore's guards. He wasn't a particularly nice man but I'm still not proud of forcing him out of his own flesh. The body and I were captured on the hilltop after Hellebore and the Terrible Child died — we were running away, of course — but we were let go after a few days. This fellow's been officially rehabilitated, you see, so I'm in the clear. There's no real guilt attached to being a foot soldier in the losing army, or even one of Nidrus Hellebore's private guard. So here I am. I think I'll head out to Ash or Birch, start over. Erephine is dead now, really dead. I have much to think about."
"I should turn you over to Caradenus Primrose — he's just back there. Or kill you myself!" Theo fought the overwhelming sense of unreality: this was the second time he had spoken with Eamonn Dowd, and both times it was after discovering the man was alive beyond all logic. "You helped to kill our baby. Me and Cat."
"There is nothing I can say except that I am sorry. Yes, I assisted Hellebore in delivering the spell. It was a madness that affected all I did, my desperate love and my anger at having been cheated. I think it has passed now. I certainly feel I see things more clearly. But perhaps that is just the effect of having a new body."
"I still can't let you walk away." "Yes, you can, and in fact you will. Because if you don't, I'll be forced to take someone else's body to escape — not yours, but some innocent's. You won't stop me, no matter what you do. I will leap from body to body if I need to and many will die needlessly."
Theo stared at the stranger's face. He felt weary and sick. "So I have to let you go?" "Yes, you do. In fact, I'm going now." The dark-haired fairy turned and walked away down a narrow street between rows of ramshackle dwellings, tents and lean-tos, a small thoroughfare crowded with fairy-folk of all shapes and sorts, talking, trading, living their lives. Within moments Eamonn Dowd was lost from sight among all the other refugees.
————— Poppy wasn't at the tent when Theo got back. He had been full of useful arguments, scads of convincing reasons why she should come with him back to the mortal world, but he suddenly found himself with nothing much to say and no one to say it to. In fact, he was stunned. Things had become altogether too strange. Dowd was dead but had come back. Mud Bug Button was dead and wasn't going to be making any reappearances. There lay the unfairness of life in a single nutshell, and it went pretty much the same way in Faerie as it did in the mortal world.
There's not much difference between the two when it comes to the important stuff — not really. He sat for a long while in the doorway, staring out at the clouds and the play of light in the sky, listening to the racket of the camp's daily life. There seemed to be more children around than before, or at least they were being allowed to make more noise. Children always sound the same, he thought. No matter where they come from, what language they speak, whether they have fox-ears or yellow goat-eyes or whatever, they always sound the same.
It was a nice sound, he realized. Good-bye, Button, he thought. I guess this is your epitaph — the sound of children playing. Goblin children, fairy children. There are worse things to leave behind.
Someone made a small sound and he looked up to find three faces looking down at him, one
from a very great height. It was the nearest face that startled him, the goblin face, since he had been thinking of Button, but he hadn't seen any of them since he had returned from the lake-bottom and it took him a fraction of a moment to put names back on the familiar expressions.
"Streedy Nettle! And Mistress Twinge and Coathook, too. How are you all?"
The tall, shock-haired fairy did not look any better connected to reality than he had been before the downfall of the old order, but at least he looked calm and happy. He extended a long-fingered hand to help Theo up. "Hello, Theo," he said, and his cheeks colored. "Poppy's here. Not just in my head, but she's here. Every day."
"I know. It's good to see you, Streedy."
"She's nice."
"Yes, she is." He turned to the others. "So we all survived, huh?" "More or less," said the pooka, then leaned toward him and lowered her voice. "Although eedy-Stray here doesn't know about utton-Bay just yet, if you get what I mean, so watch what you say. It's going to upset him and we want to have a wire around his ankle when he finds out so he's grounded and he doesn't set the whole camp on fire or turn us all into butterflies or something." She straightened up again. "Anyway, Coathook had something he needed to talk to you about and me and Streedy thought we'd tag along and say hello. So how's it hangin', roommate? I hear you've been pretty busy."
Theo shrugged. "Not by choice. Actually, almost none of it was by choice."
"Even so, the grapevine says you met the Big Guy himself." "Big Guy . . . ?" For a moment he thought of Button, small slender Button handing him that card at the bus stop, and had to swallow hard. "Sorry, who would that be?"
Mistress Twinge took a moment to reply, applying a flame from her fingertip to an ugly turd-colored cigar. "The Big Guy!" she said through a cloud of foul smoke. "Robin Goodfellow, of course. He's pretty much the hero of my folk. The king's right-hand man, he used to be. Most famous pooka that ever lived. What was he like?"
