by Tad Williams
Theo's eyes were blurred with tears of rage and desperation. "Fuck you!" he screamed at the watcher in the shadows. "If you won't kill me, I'll make them do it. I won't give them what they want."
"You would not keep that promise very long once they began to work on you," said the dry voice. "But you misunderstand me. The irrha was summoned to bring you to me first, not so I could earn Hellebore's commission, but so I can have my own conversation with you. Nidrus Hellebore is not the only one who has waited a long time to gain his heart's desire. You see, I too need your help."
"Help you! You must be joking. I'll die first. You might as well start with the thumbscrews." But it was false, hollow. He knew that even the strongest, most iron-willed people could succumb to torture, and he wasn't one of those. His only hope was to keep this Remover-thing talking and pray for a better chance to escape. He remembered Poppy's phone, and for a moment wondered if he could pretend to be more compliant, then find a chance to signal her with it somehow. But what could she do? Drive here with her school chum? He had already failed his other two closest friends, Cumber and Applecore; he could not drag Poppy into this as well. "So you're double-crossing Hellebore," he said. "So you've found some other client who'll pay more for whatever it is I'm supposed to know." "I am truly sorry that it has come to this, Theo. I already have enough on my conscience with the suffering I have brought to you and yours, but my need is very great."
"Conscience? Fairies don't have goddamned consciences. All of you people, you're the most self-centered creatures I've ever heard of. Even Hitler wouldn't do what Hellebore wants to do, destroy an entire world just to keep himself in power."
"I rather suspect he would have if he'd had the chance," the Remover said. "But in any case, your accusation isn't entirely fair. You see, I'm not a fairy. Or at least not really."
"So what are you? A monster, obviously."
"Whether I am a monster is open to debate. But I am even less of this world than you are."
Theo's terror had turned into a thick, queasy heaviness. "I don't care. I don't give a damn about your problems or your riddles." "I had hoped this would go better," the voice in the shadows said after a long pause. "Perhaps I have done a poor job of presenting things. When I anticipated this day, I felt sure we could find some way to speak to each other, since we have so much in common."
"So much in common! Are you joking? You're . . . you're a thing! A murderer, a mercenary kidnapper! You're a traitor even to the bastards who hired you!"
"All those things are probably true, Theo. But I am also the closest thing you have to family and I had hoped we would be able to speak to each other in a civil way."
"What? What are you talking about?"
The Remover cleared his throat with a noise like newspapers blowing in an alleyway. "I am . . . I used to be . . . Eamonn Dowd."
36 CHANGELINGS
"That's a lie! You're dead!" Theo realized what he had just said a moment later. "I mean, Eamonn Dowd is dead." "In a way, yes. In a way, no." The thing in the shadows shifted itself with a noise halfway between a rustle and a squelch. "Believe me, Theo, this is not the way I imagined it. I had hoped our first conversation could be a bit more . . . familial. See here, if I tell the mandragorum to let you go, will you promise not to try to escape until you hear what I have to say? It won't do you any good, anyway — you've seen how fast and strong they are."
Theo wondered why the thing would make such a claim. It didn't seem possible — life in Fairyland was strange, but surely not that strange — but it couldn't hurt to play for time. "All right. Tell it to quit breaking my ribs. I'll stay put." The root slave, responding to some silent command, set him down and then moved quietly back toward the wall to stand next to its twin. "Okay, look, whoever you are, you can't be Eamonn Dowd. For one thing, everyone here says the Remover is very old — ancient. That he's been around longer than anyone can remember."
"And so he has — or at least he had been, before I took his place. In fact, I've often wondered if it was possible that the Remover I ousted had once replaced an earlier version. Perhaps the role of Remover is more title than name, and each one who holds that title eventually has it taken away from him by a younger contender . . . as it were." The sad, dry chuckle issued from nowhere and everywhere. "If so, it's a dubious prize, believe me."
"Go ahead, say what you need to say. But I'll only listen if you promise to let my friend go." "The ferisher? I have no interest in him — I certainly don't want to harm him. But it's in my interests to keep you calm and keep you here, so for now he will remain sleeping peacefully on the floor."
"Why don't you show yourself? I don't like talking to the air." "Do not presume too much, Theo — you're not in a position to dictate to me, even if I have a certain family-feeling toward you. As I said, I am ashamed of how I look, so keep your distance. I can put on a slightly less disturbing form when I go out into the city — nothing pleasant, but with a long coat and hat on I do not attract too much attention if I keep to shadows and back entrances. However, putting on that semblance takes a great deal of energy, a great deal, and I am very tired today. It's been a busy week." The thing rustled again. "I suppose I can't blame you for doubting me."
"If you want me to believe you, then prove it. Tell me something only Eamonn Dowd would know." "Now there's an old chestnut — right out of some radio play, it sounds like. What might such a private something be, Theo? It is not as if I shared your childhood, came to visit you like an ordinary great-uncle, brought you sweets and comic books and exchanged little secrets that we could recall together now. Shall I tell you something written in the notebook? It would prove very little, since I know others beside you have had it — including, if I am correct, your ferisher friend lying there." The Remover seemed to consider. "What else would prove it to you? Shall I list the presidents, Washington to Nixon? That's all I know — I'm a bit blank on American history after the early 1970s, which is understandable when you remember where I've been. Or should we stick with the personal? Do you want me to tell you what was in the letter I sent to your mother, or at least to the woman you thought was your mother? You are eventually going to hear something of why I apologized to her, whether you wish to or not . . ."
He did not want it to be true. "But you . . . but Eamonn Dowd died! I read his obituary!" "You read an obituary written after Eamonn Dowd's body was discovered. Yes, that particular physical envelope is definitely dead now, dust or neardust. Do you think if I still had it available to me, however old and infirm, I would choose to live like this? Hiding in the shadows, solitary as a spider, so terrifying that even the children of trolls and goblins run from me, shrieking?" For the first time Theo could hear pain in the voice, real and powerful.
But maybe he's just a good actor. They're tricky, these fairies. Who knows what one of them might do to weasel answers out of me, if what I know is really so damn important? "Just keep talking."
"I presume you read the notebook so I won't bother to reiterate the early part of my story. I came here to New Erewhon and grew attached to the place. I made a sort of life for myself. All well and good, and no different than the story of many other mortals who found their way to Faerie and then never wanted to leave again. I even fell in love.
"Ah. I see that you know something about that. You have heard the gossip, perhaps? Or the propaganda of her family, the lies of the Primrose clan? Because that is who I fell in love with — Erephine Primrose, youngest daughter of that great house."
"They . . . they say you kidnapped her." Whether the story was true or not seemed to make little difference just now: Theo needed his invisible captor to go on talking until he figured out how to free himself. Even if this thing was somehow what was left of his great-uncle, he had all but admitted he was working for Hellebore. Still, Theo's earlier certainty that the Remover was lying about his true identity was definitely weakening.
"They say that, do they, that I kidnapped her? Well, they're right — up to a point. But I am no
t ready to tell that part of the story yet. Trust me, Theo, if you are patient the whole sordid, wretched mess will come out."
"Go on." He stole a glance at Cumber. The film over his face obscured his features but his chest was still moving regularly. Would he never wake up as long as that caul thing was on him? What if you had to perform some fairy magic to get it off? It would be hard enough to escape the two swift and powerful root slaves on his own, let alone while carrying the dead weight of Cumber Sedge.
"I met her at one of Tertius Stock's house-parties. She thought I was an amusing freak, at first, but I waited her out as patiently as one of her own kind, because she was . . . she was . . ." He made a kind of strangled noise, anger or grief. "No, there is no use telling you what I felt for Erephine or trying to describe our time together. If you have been in love that way, you know. If you haven't, no words will make it sound like anything but craziness. When her family browbeat Parliament into doing what they wanted — the Primroses were one of the Seven Families, you know, the lords of New Erewhon — and my banishment was proclaimed, my life was effectively over. They would have done me a kindness simply to kill me. As it turns out, they would have done themselves a kindness as well." A sudden icy edge in the Remover's voice brought up goose pimples on Theo's skin. "Instead I was cast out of the Garden of Eden and back into the world of mortals, alone, miserable . . . no, more than miserable. Bereft. Insane with grief."
"See? You can't be Eamonn Dowd because you've got the details wrong. Dowd never left this world — Primrose told me that his sister was kidnapped after Dowd's banishment was supposed to have gone down. So he dodged it somehow. If there's one thing everyone knows for certain, it's that, what's it called, Clover Effect. No one can come here, leave, and then come back again, so if you say you did, you're not him. Quid pro quo."
The dry laugh gusted through the room again, but there wasn't much mirth in it. "What you want to say is 'Q.E.D.' — Quod Erat Demonstrandum, 'to be demonstrated' — not quid pro quo, which basically means 'tit for tat'."
Theo was far too frightened and angry to be embarrassed. "So sue me. You know what I mean. You say you went to the mortal world but Eamonn Dowd couldn't have done that."
"Theo, Theo." He could almost imagine the thing in the dark corner shaking its head, although he saw no motion in the shadows to indicate it. "Don't wave the Clover Effect at me of all people. What you don't know about the way Faerie works — in fact, what most of the fairies themselves don't know about it — is staggering to contemplate. So why don't you shut your mouth for a while and listen?
"I was sentenced to banishment. I was going to be forcefully removed from New Erewhon. There were three days of legal formality before the banishment took effect — these Flower fairies are as bad as the British or even the Russian apparatchiks when it comes to meaningless paperstamping and standing in line for no good reason. Erephine had been taken away from me and hauled back to her family's country house, which was more or less a fortress. I knew that I could not reach her there without being killed, and yet I honestly thought about it, considered whether dying on her lawn might not be a better choice than simply letting her family and their tame members in Parliament boot me out. I was not a well man, Theo. I loved her — I would have sold my immortal soul without a moment's thought to be with her . . ."
"Oh my God." Theo's skin was tingling, and something tightened inside his gut until he felt quite ill. "Oh my God, you really are him. You really are Eamonn Dowd."
"I knew that already," the Remover said. "Why do you suddenly believe me?" "On top of all the other things, it was the way you just said you'd have sold your soul. The way a person would, an ordinary human person, even if they didn't believe they had one. The human-type fairies don't think about souls, any of that stuff. It's not just that they don't believe in them, they don't even seem to have considered it. The few times I've asked about it, it was like I'd asked them if they thought they had tentacles — something anyone could see they didn't have."
"Actually, some of the fairy-folk do have tentacles. You should see some of the deep-sea nixies. Even if you start out looking more or less like a human here, this is a Lamarckian world and a couple of thousand years of intense pressure will do funny things to you."
"Okay, okay, you win — you really are my great-uncle. I don't need to hear the whole story, I need to help my friend Applecore — and this friend here." He pointed at Cumber. "So what are you going to do? Help me? Or sell me to those murdering creeps Hellebore and Thornapple?"
"I told you, you must listen to . . ."
"No! I have responsibilities!" There was a long silence. When Dowd broke it, his voice had taken on a new quality, cold and precise, which Theo had not heard before and didn't much like. "You are not to interrupt me, whatever claims you may have on my conscience. I have waited a long time and the situation is complicated. I will tell you my story . . ."
"But . . ."
"I will tell you my story. After that, we will see what is to be done." Theo lowered his head. He might not be related by actual blood to this man, but even with no more of him to judge from than his voice, Theo could recognize a family resemblance to his mother, that chilly disaffection that could sweep down suddenly in the middle of an apparently insignificant argument, transmuting it to something painful, and against which there was no more sense arguing than there was value in waving your arms at a hurricane to turn it aside. "So talk," he said at last.
"Very well." The chill abated a little. "As I said, Theo, I was desperate. I was a condemned man, waiting for something I feared more than death — not merely being sent away from the woman I loved, but being sent across a barrier that I could never cross again. I had appealed to the few allies I had among the high houses, Stocks, Violets, Daffodils, but none of them were willing to support me against Parliament and especially against the Primroses, who were frequently allies of theirs in the fierce struggles among the highest houses for dominance. The Flower war that until recently everyone called 'the last Flower War' was just beginning, so allegiances were even more delicate and crucially important. In fact, things had grown worse than I knew, as I found out later. So I turned instead to the only person I had heard of who might know more about that barrier than the Seven Families and their tame wizards — or 'scientists,' as they are called here. The day before the banishment was to be carried out I went to the one known as the Remover of Inconvenient Obstacles.
"Yes, I came here to this desolate place, just as you did, and probably feeling many of the same things — terror, hopelessness, rage over what had been done to me and those I loved. I was desperate. I was willing to do anything.
"The old Remover was a creature of infinite subtlety and malice, but he never bothered to waste his energies against those who had done him no personal harm unless he stood to gain something from their suffering, so I was safe enough . . . at least at first. Still, he liked to be entertained, so he let me wander for hours in the maze outside this room before he let me in."
"I didn't see a maze." "No, you didn't. And he was also less reticent than I am about showing himself to supplicants. When I was finally admitted into his presence it was all I could do not to run away again, but my need was greater than any horror or nausea and I forced myself to look at him as I begged for his assistance. I told him I would pay nearly any price for it.
"He could help me, he said at last, but he needed something from me in return — a mortal child to give to one of the most powerful families, who had developed a sudden and serious need for one. Even in my madness and despair I was not so far gone that I was willing to give an infant up to torture or murder, so I demanded to know the purpose and who would get the child. He would not reveal which house, but he swore — invoking certain powers in whose names it is a very bad idea to swear falsely, as he and I knew — that the child would be treated as a member of that family and raised by them, that no hurt would be done to it. This was true, it turned out, but in a rather horrid way . . ."
Theo suddenly thought he felt things fitting together. "Was . . . was that me? Is that what you did — why you apologized to my mother in that letter?" But somehow the details remained confusingly wrong.
"Good lord," Dowd said in disgust. "I can understand not knowing 'Q.E.D.' but can you not use logic at all? What have they done to the schools since I was a boy?" The dark shape rustled and twitched in the corner shadows. Despite the weirdness of the setting, the life or death matters, Theo had a momentary taste of what it would have been like to grow up with a cross old great-uncle. "Think, boy! If you were a mortal child taken from your parents and brought here, then how did you wind up spending your entire life until now in the mortal world? How would that make sense?"
"All right, all right, I didn't work it through — but this does have something to do with me, doesn't it?"
"Of course it does, if you'll let me tell it without interrupting." Dowd took a moment to reorder his thoughts. "So the Remover made a bargain with me. Swearing by the same oaths he used to proclaim the safety of the child I would steal, he promised that if I would secure a mortal child for him before the first sunrise after my return, he would help to bring me back to Faerie, despite the Clover Effect — something that no one but the Remover himself even thought possible. There was more to his scheme, of course, but I hadn't learned that yet.
"So I went away from this place on my last night in Faerie, still miserable — still almost mad with grief, really — but also with a little hope that I might not be separated from my beloved Erephine forever. I returned to my house in Forenoon to pack up those few things I planned to take back with me . . ."
