Blood & Flowers

by Penny Blubaugh

  So far that consisted of late-night discussions, technical meetings, laments about lighting, and loud moans about costumes. It was taking up an unaccountable amount of our time, but not in a bad way. More as if this was what we’d come to Faerie for all along, and we wanted to mount the best possible show for this new breed of audience.

  Nicholas worried about the portability of lights. Max and Lucia muttered about the computer they’d left behind, and went back to old-style tickets and accounting methods. Floss swore softly about ankle skirts catching in bicycle chains, which I didn’t understand. Why ankle skirts when we didn’t even know who was what? But that was just Floss. Tonio paced and thought, and paced and thought. He’d discarded the “let’s play ourselves” plan on the grounds that it was too predictable and was now trying to come up with something truly memorable.

  “Midsummer Night’s Dream from the fey perspective,” he tried.

  Floss sent one hard look his way and said, “It already is. And no.”

  Tonio paced more.

  I was already at work, but my work was for Bron and Rohan. I’d scoured our little corner of Faerie, looking for book boards and cloths. I’d practiced and discarded most of the bindings I knew how to make and was searching for a way to meet Bron’s main requirement: easy to update. No plastic sleeve was my own requirement. Plastic is not good for birds, beasts, or menus.

  Bron himself came and hovered over my shoulder so often that I finally said, “I feel like I have a wayward guardian angel,” which made Rohan laugh and say, “Guardian something, perhaps, but I think you missed the mark with angel.”

  Bron only said, “Feel however you like. Just make me menus.”

  I flipped my latest attempt onto its stomach and rapped its back with my knuckles. It flopped down on the table, flat, like an obedient dog playing dead. I looked at it in surprise, then said, “Well. That seems to work.”

  Bron reached a long arm over my head. He turned the book over, then closed, opened, and closed it with a snap. “And how do you update, change the specials? I refuse to add those little extra sheets that get lost and dropped and trampled underfoot.”

  “No. Look.” I was excited. “You pull these.” I slipped the thick silver—real silver—pins from the spine. “And voilà! Add what you need, take out what you don’t, and push in the pins….” I held it up, all together again, and beamed at Bron.

  He fiddled with my book for a few more seconds. “Persia, this is so much better than what we have. It’s genius. And so are you.”

  I grinned. “Did everyone hear that? Genius.”

  Floss snorted, but she smiled at the same time.

  El Jeffery, who’d been busy modeling those ankle skirts for Floss said, “Impressive.”

  Tonio said, “Of course you are, darling. We all knew,” and paced back to the other side of the room.

  Max, who was obviously involved in other things, said, “What about a slide rule?” and Lucia said, “Max, I don’t know a thing about slide rules. But if you do, it’ll at least work here. We’d never have to worry about electricity.”

  A much better reaction came from Nicholas, and it was also the sweetest. He leaned over, kissed me on the nose, then moved down and bussed me on the cheek. “Brilliant” was all he said, but I felt like I was ten years old and had been given a pony.

  We may not have had a play, but we did have bicycles, two slick silver purple things that gleamed like summer rain. And we had one flat, gray, ratty unicycle that didn’t gleam at all and looked as if it never had.

  El Jeffery, of all people, showed up on the unicycle the afternoon after my triumph with the menus. He was followed by Fred, riding one bicycle and leading the other. Or maybe “leading” wasn’t quite the right word. It was more that the second bicycle trailed him like a puppy learning to heel.

  The first words out of Floss’s mouth were, “Do they know you took them?”

  Fred apparently didn’t need to ask who “they” were. “They don’t even have any idea you’re here as far as I can tell. They’re not tuned into you like El Jeffery and I are.”

  Floss snorted. “They’re not tuned into me at all.”

  Fred shrugged and seemed to know there wasn’t anything else to say. He and his two bicycles had stopped directly in front of Dau Hermanos. The riderless one stood at attention behind Fred’s rear wheel. Magic. I watched it enviously. I couldn’t stand that straight on two feet, and I was beginning to feel tested in the worst way by the magical things all around me. Balancing bicycles, for example. It was like the air in Faerie was extra-ionized, making anything possible. It made me feel as if I should be doing something strange and wonderful. I wondered briefly just what that thing might be, then let it go. The something would either show itself or it wouldn’t. I didn’t think I could force it.

  Then Floss asked, “What about Feron?”

  “Our beloved brother? You expect him to be paying attention to you?” Fred laughed with no humor. “You’ve been gone longer than I thought, then. Think about it. Fer is, and always has been, only concerned with Fer. You don’t need to worry about him.”

  “On the contrary. I haven’t been gone that long, and I don’t expect him to know about me. I just don’t know if he has spies. And I always worry about him. It’s smart to worry about the people you don’t trust. It keeps them in the front of your mind so that you recognize it right away if they try something sneaky.”

  Fred shook his head. “No spies as far as I know. And he’s hardly been around for months. I don’t know where he has been, but it’s not here. Leave him out of the equation.”

  Floss didn’t look convinced, but all she did was say “Hmm.”

  The exchange made me wonder again about their family, the one that ruled things. Since this was something I’d mulled over on and off ever since Floss had said that ruling was their job, I decided to go ahead and try to find out more. I said, very carefully, “Floss, your family might be happy to see you.”

  Even as the words came out of my mouth I wasn’t sure I was saying something true. I thought of my own family and what my answer would be if someone said this to me. Still, there was something so intriguing about the mystery of Fred and Floss and those parents. And now there was the brother to add to the mix.

  Fred winced at my statement, and his follow-me bike crashed to the ground. El Jeffery swung off his unicycle with more grace than any griffin should have been able to master and built a protection around Floss that was almost visible. Lucia said, “Think, Persia. You’re in the same position,” which made me wish I’d kept my mouth shut more than anything else had.

  But Nicholas said, “It’s a fair question, actually.”

  Fred sighed, but he agreed. “It actually is, you know.”

  Floss growled. Floss glowered. Then Tonio slid an arm around her shoulders. “If you tell them, they all will quit asking. And it might exorcise the demons. Look at me and Major.”

  “I don’t have another hidey-hole,” Floss muttered. “I lost that.”

  That seemed like a sideways statement until I noticed that Tonio was looking straight at Floss. Just looking and breathing deep, calming breaths. He breathed and he waited until Floss blushed and stared at her toes. Then he said, “We all lost it. And it wasn’t our fault. But we also all knew where we stood and we dealt with it together.”

  “Maybe I don’t want to deal with it together.”

  “Does it affect our work here? Our existence?” That was Max.

  Floss turned her eyes on him and stayed that way for a long time. The rest of us seemed to hold our collective breaths. When she said, “It might. Possibly,” the words seemed to be dragged out of her throat.

  “Maybe we all need to sit down and chat,” Fred said in a soft voice, and Floss sighed one more long breath and nodded.

  WHAT’S GOING ON IN FLOSS AND

  FRED’S FAMILY

  Rulers aren’t always fair or just. Example: The last town that didn’t follow royal directives and instead
ran their own candidate in the regional election was moved to another corner of Faerie. Far, far away.

  Floss has taken exception, since she was tiny, to the we’re-better-than-you style of ruling practiced by her family. Example: At Floss’s fourth birthday party she was given a gift that wasn’t on the “suggested” list written by her mother. The child who gave the gift was told to never associate with Floss again. “She was one of my best friends,” Floss said. She seemed far away when she added, “And I did so love that stuffed werecreature.”

  Both Fred and Floss believe that their mother is responsible for much of the bad style of rule that affects their world because…

  Both know that their father is more involved in grand issues than small ones. “He doesn’t pay attention,” Floss said, and her frustration was evident. Example: A 0.01 percent increase in taxes seems like such a small thing that it almost gets lost in the record-keeping shuffle. Do it every year, though, and the money becomes significant. Because it’s easy to hide, it’s also easy to keep. Floss’s mother has always kept it. Floss’s father has never seemed to notice.

  Almost everyone Floss cares about is well out of the ruling class and their struggles—unnecessary ones, she believes—drive her crazy. Example: El Jeffery’s family has been living on the edge forever. Griffin families are large. There’s never enough money or anything else, and those taxes keep rising. So she left. Fred, who feels much like Floss, stayed and tried to fix things at home. Neither approach has made much of a difference.

  Brother and sister still see change as inevitable, but inevitable seems to be getting further away all the time. Example: Their father is gone more and more, for longer periods of time, serving the Group Council in ever-increasing positions of responsibility. His wife encourages him to run for those responsible positions in each election, and she also makes sure that he gets the votes he needs to win. Fred is continually treading a line of subversion that seems very thin. Example: Last year he quietly campaigned for his father’s opponent. It made no difference in the election outcome, but Fred felt like he was being watched all the time. He still occasionally feels like he’s treading on very swampy ground.

  Floss will not be welcomed home with open arms. Example: Three years ago she tried to talk to her mother about her concerns and was nearly banished from Faerie.

  No one knows where Feron stands on any issue that doesn’t involve him, but on all issues that do involve him, it’s Feron first, last, and always. Example: Feron was the first person to suggest permanent banishment for Floss as punishment for speaking out against the family rule. Later, El Jeffery overheard Feron saying that if Floss were gone, there would be that much more for him to inherit.

  “So,” Floss finished in a swirl of understatement, “it becomes complicated.”

  I nodded because she was completely right.

  Tonio said, “Not so much like Major after all.”

  “Much more internal,” Max agreed. “Bigger and smaller at the same time.”

  What more could we say? Quiet covered us like a soft, wooly blanket. Until El Jeffery, like a savior, said, “Do you need music for this production? Because, fetching as I am in ankle skirts of variegated hues, I think my talents would be better employed in providing the musical theme.”

  Floss grinned. “And what would that be?”

  “What would the production be?” he asked. “If someone can answer that I think we might start to coalesce.”

  Tonio coughed just enough to make us all look in his direction. “I keep turning the old fairy tales around and around. They’ve worked for us before, and here it should be a slam dunk. What if we did something with Mr. Fox? You know. The bold bridegroom, the doomed brides. It could become an allegory. Mr. Fox is the ruling class. The brides are commoners who keep losing to the ruler. Then the one bride who can beat him comes along and ends up victorious. And the ruling class tumbles.”

  “Ouch,” said Fred.

  “Hmm,” said Floss.

  “Maybe,” said El Jeffery.

  “How do we do it?” I asked.

  “The silver road glowing in the moonlight,” Nicholas said. “I could rig lights to make a road that sort of fades into the distance.”

  “Mr. Fox brings his newest bride to the house on a bicycle,” sang Max.

  “He lights the way with a lantern hanging from the handlebars,” said Nicholas.

  “Dead wife puppets,” said Floss, getting into the spirit of the thing. “I can do that. Glow in the dark.”

  “The wife is in white,” said Lucia. “She unicycles everywhere until she meets him, and then she’s tamed to a bicycle.”

  “There are your ankle skirts, Floss,” said El Jeffery, while Tonio repeated, “‘Tamed to a bicycle.’ Nice phrase for a crackdown by the ruling class.”

  “And the house,” I said. “The house can open and close like a giant book. A puppet-book house.”

  Fred shuffled his feet and looked uncomfortable. El Jeffery patted him on the arm with little pancake paw pats. But Floss said, “Let’s try it. Let’s see what happens.” She looked at Fred. “It might be exactly what we’ve been looking for.”

  “It’s a little more in-your-face than I was after,” Fred said carefully.

  “Sometimes it has to be,” she said. “Anyway, they’ll probably never even know.”

  “If they won’t know, why push it that hard?” Fred asked.

  “Because even if they don’t know, the commentary is there.”

  Tonio backed Floss. “You have to start somewhere,” he said, which made me believe that he and Floss had talked about Faerie and rulers much more than I’d ever suspected.

  Fred looked uncomfortable, then said, in the same careful way he’d spoken before, “Maybe you’re right. Maybe so. But for now I think I’ll just let you plan, and I’ll go chat with Bron.” As he faded away both of his bicycles snuggled together like puppies on the grass.

  XVI

  “Puppet karaoke!”

  The upstairs rooms of Dau Hermanos began to resemble Max and Tonio’s apartment. Floss had a room to herself. Most of the time the door was closed, but the bits of cloth and threads that bounced out whenever that door was opened, as well as the smell of glues, let everyone know that Floss was deep in the throes of creation.

  Tonio was hunched over a small table in a room near the top of the stairs. The table was covered with coffee stains, ink smears, and pages of scribbles that I assumed would eventually become our script.

  Max and Lucia sat together and mumbled what sounded like magic words. Magic to me, at least, because I never could get a grasp on accounts payable. They also argued amiably about tickets and box office receipts until Lucia heard El Jeffery calling and went to practice unicycle riding.

  In one corner of the largest upstairs room Nicholas worked with Fred. Fred and Bron had apparently hashed out Fred’s reluctance to be “in-your-face,” and Fred had become an honorary Outlaw. He and Nicholas were working on nonelectrical lighting effects, electricity being something that couldn’t be counted on in Faerie.

  “Maybe too modern?” Fred had suggested when Nicholas snarled over a previously-working-now-not-working-at-all outlet. “We have a long history that took place well before electricity was invented. Some things don’t connect the way they should. Just like the electricity, actually.” He sounded apologetic when he added, “I’m not sure why it comes and goes. It just does.”

  “Useless,” Nicholas muttered. I was sure he wasn’t talking about Fred because he was pointing at the offending outlet, the one with the new singe mark.

  “We’ll do it another way,” Fred said. Yet another long, meandering discussion on alternate forms of lighting began.

  Since Fred had been recruited less for his knowledge of lights and gels than for his knowledge of Faerie, his answers on electricity seemed not so good until I thought about it. I couldn’t explain how electricity worked outside of Faerie. Why should he be able to explain how it didn’t work inside?

/>   Ideas about electricity aside, I was glad Fred was working with us. His presence made our choice of staging a play here, as well as our choice of material, feel honest and right.

  I’d set myself up in the opposite corner of the room where I could work on various paper projects. It was nice to be near Nicholas, but I had another reason too. Listening to the exchanges between him and Fred, with the occasional visits from Bron, was like getting an abridged history lesson in fey life, past and present. And maybe future.

  SOME OF THE THINGS I NOW KNOW

  ABOUT FAERIE

  Ruling factions fight for dominance just like at home.

  Fey doesn’t mean better than human.

  Fey find humans as fascinating as humans find them.

  Fey are very long-lived. Some are so long-lived they seem to cross centuries, seem to make immortality a truth.

  Magic and fey go together like toast and butter, like science and humans. If it works in our world, chances are good it won’t work in Faerie.

  Fred is sweet and Lucia should go out of her way to get him. (Just a personal observation.)

  If Fred and Floss have their way, this part of Faerie will serve as a model, egalitarian society, but neither of them is sure what that model society will look like.

  Because history is history, the past will always affect the future.

  I was in my little corner working on menus when I smelled burning and heard a pop that sounded like a cork bouncing out of a bottle of something with high levels of carbonation. I looked up and saw both Nicholas and Fred pressed against the wall, staring nervously at the small fire burning at their feet.

  I jumped up, ready to stomp on the flames, when Fred waved his hand in the air, twisted his wrist, and breathed out a small puff of air. The fire died instantly. Fred breathed again, but this breath looked more like relief.

  “I don’t know, Nicholas,” he said. He sounded regretful. “I told you I wasn’t sure about that.”