War for the Oaks

by Emma Bull

  It was her turn to look away. On the sidewalk, she saw a spark of reflected light. She picked the bright thing up. For long moments, she couldn’t tell what she was holding. It was the color of mica-flecked stone, but smooth as metal, heavier than it looked, and burning cold. A little shorter than one of her finger joints, it was an elongated cone, flattened at the narrow end. Then she realized what it must be: an arrow point.

  “Elf-shot,” said the phouka, his voice colorless. “Had it found its mark, you would have felt a bursting pain in your head, and never a thing more.”

  There was a buzzing in her palm. With a single sharp, sweet note, the little point shattered in her hand, and all three of them jumped. Nothing was left of it but gray dust.

  “Now, sweet,” the phouka sighed, “will you come away? Or will you wait until they send another message of good will, and see if I can stop that one, too?”

  They went back to the car. On the way, the phouka paused long enough to break a green twig off a locust tree in front of the oriental grocery. “Not as much as I could wish,” Eddi heard him mutter, “but it will help.” He tucked it jauntily over his ear. “And what,” he said to Eddi, “are you staring at?”

  “What is that for?”

  He looked haughty. “Do you tell me everything?”

  She smiled a little and shook her head, and climbed into the pas­senger’s seat.

  As they pulled out onto Cedar, Eddi spotted a police car cruising slowly toward them. “Get down!” she hissed at the phouka.

  “What?”

  Eddi reached back and pushed his head below the level of the win­dows. The car went past and pulled up in front of the Riverside.

  As she turned onto the freeway, Carla pointed out, “They wouldn’t have stopped the car even if they saw him. Domestic violence, y’know.”

  “Domestic, hell,” Eddi sighed, slumping down in the seat. “For all I know, half the people in the Riverside are prepared to file an assault charge.”

  They rode in silence until Carla reached the Hennepin-Lyndale exit. Then the phouka said, “Do you still want gainful employment?”

  “If I don’t find some gainful something, I won’t be eating in six weeks.”

  “Hmm. And if I remain in your company, I will suffer a like fate. Something must be done.” Eddi could hear the amusement in his voice. “You have to make money, and I have to stay by your side. Now, how can both imperatives be satisfied?”

  “You can rob liquor stores and take me along as a hostage.”

  “Interesting. No, I have a better idea.” He paused. “Why don’t you start a band?”

  “Haven’t I heard that before?” Carla said.

  “Oh, shit,” said Eddi.

  chapter 5 – You Can’t Always Get What You Want

  The boulevard trees moved restlessly overhead, strobing the streetlights across the windshield. The air smelled like ozone. “You want to come up?” Eddi asked Carla as they turned onto Oak Grove.

  “That’s why I’m looking for a parking space.”

  “Two of ‘em, for the Queen Mary here.”

  “Hemph,” said Carla cheerfully, and swung into the curb near the creamy-gray front of the Loring Park Office Building.

  The phouka sprang onto the sidewalk before Carla turned the engine off, and stood brushing imaginary dust off his trousers. “I feel I ought to warn you,” he said, “that it’s going to rain. You’ll have a long, wet walk back to your car if you leave it here.”

  “Yeah, but the scenery makes it all worthwhile.” Across the street, where Carla pointed, the undulating bowl of Loring Park was dotted with the orange globes of its post lamps, faceless jack o’lanterns that gleamed on the sidewalks and reflected in the ruffled pond. From somewhere beyond the footbridge, a dove called nervously and fell silent.

  “Yes,” the phouka said softly, “I can see that it might.” Then, as if to break the mood, he pulled the sprig of locust from the black curls behind his ear and presented it to Eddi with a flourish.

  At the door to her apartment, the phouka held out his hand for her keys. Eddi drew back and frowned at him. “Why?” she said.

  His smile was brilliant and dangerous. “I want to see if you’ve had uninvited guests. Don’t you think I should, before I let you go in?”

  She pictured something gray and toothy in her living room, waiting. Carla put a hand on Eddi’s shoulder and squeezed comfortingly; then she took the keys out of Eddi’s hand and gave them to the phouka.

  He squatted and studied the lock before he put the key into it and turned it delicately. Then he stood up and rested his head against the door.

  Eddi began, “Is there—”

  He touched his finger to her lips and shook his head. Then he opened the door and slipped through it.

  “D’you get the feeling he’s seen too many Man from U.N.C.L.E. reruns?” Carla whispered.

  “You’re the one who gave him the keys.”

  Carla shrugged. “Hey, if he wants to sneak around your apartment, it’s no skin off our noses.” Then she grinned. “Besides, I can empa­thize. I always wanted to be Emma Peel.”

  “Emma Peel? In a station wagon?”

  “You can’t fit a whole drum kit in a Lotus Elan.”

  “Poor thing.” Eddi smiled. Then she looked at the closed door and shivered. “What’s taking him so long?”

  “Maybe he found a cat to chase.”

  Then the door opened and the phouka was there, bowing low. His jacket had reappeared on him, and he was exquisitely out of place in her shabby apartment. “Enter, my little snowdrop. All is in order.”

  Everything did seem to be all right. The kitschy lamp by the sofa—the one with the copper quarter horse statuette for a base—was on. By its light Eddi could see the magazines neatly stacked on the trunk, and the sofa cushions smooth. “How about the bedroom?” she asked.

  “I checked there, too. You may sleep the sleep of the efficiently protected.”

  “Yeah,” she said, “but did you find anything?”

  “If I told you ‘yes,’ you would be frightened, and if I told you ‘no,’ you would think you didn’t need me. Silence is my wisest course.” He finished with one of his taunting grins, but Eddi thought she’d seen some other expression in his eyes for a moment.

  Carla had headed for the stereo. Now the opening bass riff of the Untouchables’ ”Free Yourself” kicked out of the speakers. “Easy for them to say,” Eddi muttered.

  “You want coffee?” she asked Carla.

  The phouka turned to Eddi. “You make coffee?” His voice was full of longing. “Oh, I love coffee.”

  “Oh, God, just what we need.” Carla sighed. “A mad dog with coffee nerves.”

  Eddi ignored that. “Why didn’t you say something this morning? We could have had it at breakfast.”

  He looked embarrassed. “Yes, well, that was my treat, you see. And I don’t know how to make coffee.”

  “You can make pancakes, and not coffee?”

  “Pancakes, my inquisitive flower, are a profoundly primitive and practically universal item, in one form or another.”

  “So’s coffee,” said Carla.

  “Not,” the phouka said disdainfully, “where I come from.”

  Eddi looked at the phouka’s brown skin and giggled. He raised an eyebrow at her. “I’m gonna go make some now,” she said, and headed for the kitchen.

  The growl of the grinder blotted out the music for a minute; when she turned it off, Rue Nouveau’s “I Was a Witness” was playing. Carla liked it for the artsy drum part. Eddi plugged in the coffeemaker and went back to the living room.

  Carla sat hunched forward on the sofa, her index fingers following Rue Nouveau’s drummer on the edge of the trunk. The phouka was stretched out on the rug on his stomach. He poked his thumb toward the speakers as the lead vocalist began the second verse. “She’s very good.”

  “That’s nice. Why don’t you draft her, and I’ll stay home?”

  The phouka shook
his head and looked uncomfortable.

  Eddi sat down on her heels in front of him. “I’ve asked this before, and you never answer it. Why me?”

  His index finger burrowed a path through the rug, and he seemed to be watching it intently.

  “Was there some particular reason? Or did you just stumble on me, and now that you’ve decided, you can’t throw me back?”

  He looked up at her through his lashes. Ridiculously long and thick, they rimmed his large almond eyes like eyeliner. “Don’t ask me, please,” he said, barely loud enough for her to hear over the stereo, “If you ask me again, I shall tell you, and that would be the wrong thing to do.”

  Eddi heard the appeal in his voice and shrugged angrily. Yet she didn’t repeat the question. “Will you ever be able to tell me? I’d feel better knowing I wasn’t in danger out of sheer dumb luck.”

  “After May Eve—after the battle,” the phouka replied. “If still you want to know, ask me then.”

  The coffeemaker gave the death rattle that meant it had done its job. “Better than a timer,” said Carla.

  “I’ll get it,” the phouka said, and went to the kitchen.

  Carla murmured, “Careful. He may be trying to make up for those first impressions.”

  Eddi plowed her fingers through her hair. “I feel like a Russian dissident under house arrest. And no matter how nice a guy the jailer is, it’s still a jail.”

  “Comforting to hear you say so.”

  Eddi grinned. “What, you thought I was on the rebound from Stu­art?”

  “Maybe. All I know is, this kid’s cuter than Prince, when he wants to be.”

  “Nobody’s cuter than Prince.”

  The phouka came out of the kitchen with three mugs of coffee. He could be a fairly decent—well, human being, for lack of any other description—when it suited him. But he was mercurial, he loved to playact. Were his kindnesses artificial, and all his infuriating ways his true nature?

  “So,” Carla began, having sent the phouka back to the kitchen for cream and sugar, “what kind of a band is this gonna be?”

  Eddi grinned up at her. “It should be a rich and famous band.”

  Carla nodded. “And?”

  “And it should have a recording contract.”

  “That’s part of being rich and famous.”

  “Oh, come on, Carla. I’m joking, for godsake.”

  “I’m not. Okay, maybe you can’t set out to have a rich and famous band. But I do think you can put a band together that no way in hell can ever be rich and famous, no matter how good it is.”

  “You mean, like InKline Plain?”

  Carla wrinkled her nose. “Yeah. So if you say you want to be rich and famous, this automatically means no Top 40 crap, and no country rock bars.”

  Eddi blinked. “Promise?”

  “I get the feeling you’re not going to be a lot of help,” Carla sighed.

  “This is something I have to get used to. By ‘no Top 40 crap,’ do you mean no Top 40, or no crap off the Top 40?”

  “Hmm. I mean, nothing we have to play just because people heard it on their car radios.”

  The phouka came back with the cream and sugar, shaking his head at Carla. “Criminal,” he said solemnly. “Cream is for cats.” He sat down next to Eddi on the rug.

  “Nah. Cream is for chocolate mousse.” Carla doctored her coffee.

  “Chocolate mousse?”

  Carla nodded. “Yep. Trust me. It’s better than sex.” To Eddi’s surprise, the phouka looked quickly away. “Anyway, quit changing the subject. We’re creating a band here.”

  “Eddi should sing practically everything,” the phouka said.

  “Who asked you?” grumbled Eddi.

  “Of course she should,” Carla nodded firmly. “In fact, she should be able to put down her guitar sometimes. This sort of calls for five pieces.”

  “Composed of what?” asked the phouka.

  “Does anyone care what I think?” Eddi said piteously.

  The phouka turned an inquiring look her way. “You don’t agree?”

  “Well. . . yeah—”

  “Good,” said Carla. “Let’s see, someone on sticks—that’s me—and a primo bass player. A good, versatile guitar player with plenty of rock ‘n’ roll savvy. A keyboard player with great hands and electronic imag­ination. Most, if not all, of these people should be able to do backup vocals. Am I missing anything?”

  “Yes,” said Eddi. “Everything between your ears.”

  “Oh, come on. What do you want, a horn section?”

  “No, that’s a great shopping list. Where are you going to find these people?”

  Carla looked smug. “Only need two of ‘em. I already know the keyboard player.”

  “Who?”

  “Danny Rochelle.”

  “Jeez almighty,” Eddi said. She’d heard Dan Rochelle. “But he’s still with Human Rights. Isn’t he?”

  “Nope. LeeAnn and whatsisname moved to Louisiana, and Danny’s out of a job.”

  “D’you think he’d go for this?”

  Carla looked, if possible, even more smug. “We’ll just have to ask him, won’t we?”

  “So,” said the phouka, “that leaves . . . what, a guitarist and a bass player, yes? How does one go about finding them?”

  “Ads, word of mouth. Then you audition people.”

  Eddi sat up straight. “Audition? My God, where? We don’t have any practice space!”

  Carla shrugged. “Now that you’ve put your mind to it, you’ll think of something.”

  Rain began to pat against the windows. “Oops. Looks like Rover was right,” said Carla. “I’m gonna get wet.”

  “I’d offer you the couch,” Eddi said, “but it’s on long-term lease.” She scowled at the phouka.

  “Nah, I’ll run for it.” Carla gave her a hug, and turned to point a finger at the phouka. “Watch your step,” she said.

  The phouka looked busily at both feet.

  When she’d gone, Eddi drifted into the kitchen with the cups. She heard the phouka in the doorway behind her.

  “She would take care of you, if she could,” he said.

  “Anything wrong with that?”

  “No. But she cannot deal with what the Unseelie Court will send.”

  Eddi unplugged the coffeemaker and turned to face him. “Why are you saying this?”

  “Because I want to make certain you know it.” His pose was casual, one shoulder propped against the frame of the doorway. The way he met her eyes was not casual at all.

  “So now I know it.”

  “She’ll want to help you get away from us.”

  Eddi laughed; she couldn’t help it. “Good guess.”

  He closed his eyes and nodded. Then he went into the living room. After a moment, Eddi followed him.

  He turned off the lamp, and stood looking out the rain-streaked window. “I wish . . .” He fell silent, tapping his fingernails on the win­dow glass in irritation, or restlessness, or indecision. At last he said, “I wish she could.”

  “Could what?”

  “Get you away. But the Unseelie Court would be baying at your heels before you could go half far enough.”

  “Why?” Eddi cried. “Why should they stop me from running away from you? Aren’t they better off if I’m gone?”

  “Ah, my primrose, you don’t know them. They know now that you are our choice.” His voice cracked a little on the last word.

  “Yeah, it comes back to that. If it weren’t for you, I wouldn’t be in danger at all.”

  “I know that!” He whirled and spat his words out through his teeth. “I know it all too well, and it does neither of us any good to repeat it. I have led mankind’s nightmares to your door.”

  “Then leave me alone,” Eddi said desperately, “and they’ll go away!”

  “They will not. Yes, we could declare our minds to be changed, withdraw our protection, and leave you be. And the Dark Court, sus­pecting us of treachery, or hungry for a
grisly joke, would murder you. Now that they see we have found you fair, they would like nothing better than to march into battle against us with your head as a stan­dard.” He turned away and began to toy with the cord that worked the blinds.

  Eddi sat down in one of the kitchen chairs, and felt her anger and fear plunge to her stomach and coil there.

  “But we need you,” he said at last, softly. “There is power in a mortal soul that all of Faerie cannot muster, power that comes from mortality itself. We can use that against the Unseelie Court.”

  “Why should I side with you? Why should I care if you win?”

  The phouka raked his fingers through his hair. “You have seen one of them, one of their forms. That is what seeks dominion over every natural thing in this place. We of the Seelie Court are capricious, and not always well disposed toward humankind. But would you hand this city over to the likes of what you saw tonight? That is the Unseelie Court. If we fall, every park, every boulevard tree, every grassy lawn would be their dwelling place.”

  Eddi sighed. “It’s not just for you, it’s for the entire seven-county metro area. Couldn’t we just let them have St. Paul?”

  The phouka made a disgusted noise.

  “All right. What if they did take over? Would we all be eaten in our beds?”

  He shook his head. “There are places,” he began slowly, “that be­long to them. Have you ever passed through some small town, sur­rounded by fertile country and fed by commerce, that seemed to be rotting away even as you watched? Where the houses and the people were faded, and all the storefronts stood empty?” Eddi remembered a few. “Or a city whose new buildings looked tawdry, whose old ones were ramshackle, where the streets were grimy and the wind was never fresh, where money passed from hand to hand to hand yet benefited no one?”

  His words were quicker now. “This city is alive with the best magic of mortal folk. The very light off the skyscrapers and the lakes vibrates with it. If the Unseelie Court takes up residence here, this will be a place where people fear their neighbors, where life drains the living until art and wit are luxuries, where any pleasant thing must be im­ported and soon loses its savor.” He felt silent, as if embarrassed by his own eloquence.