War for the Oaks

by Emma Bull

  The creature wiped its mouth with the back of one hand, a sharp and sudden gesture. Then it launched itself, landed on the table in front of the phouka, and crouched there. It glared inquiringly up at him.

  The phouka’s lips moved, though Eddi could hear nothing, not even the occasional sibilance of a whisper. Still, the little creature winced. Or at least, Eddi corrected herself, it looked like a wince. She could no more interpret this thing’s expressions than she could those of a bird. The phouka sat perfectly motionless as he spoke to it.

  At last the creature curled its lips at him and flung itself into the air and out the window. The phouka blew an audible breath, and his body shuddered back to life.

  Eddi closed the door as slowly as she’d opened it.

  “Jesus,” said Carla, looking at the bedroom door.

  “What do you suppose it was?” Eddi wondered.

  “Well, it wasn’t Tinkerbell, honey. I’m never gonna watch Peter Pan again.”

  “I don’t know. It was . . . beautiful, in a creepy sort of way.”

  “The way it scarfed up that. . . Jesus.” Carla twitched her shoul­ders. “What was going on out there?”

  Eddi decided to make that a smaller question than Carla had meant it to be. “It has something to do with motorcycles.”

  “Motorcycles?” Carla repeated faintly.

  “He’s decided I should buy one.”

  “What the hell does that have to do with motorcycles?”

  “I’m not sure,” Eddi replied. “I think he’s sent that critter off to find one.”

  Carla shuddered. “Thank you, but I’ll use the want ads.”

  Eddi patted her hand and grinned. “Maybe we should have told him about ‘em.” There, she thought, now let’s pretend to forget about all that and go on.

  “What about your band business?” Eddi asked finally. The band, at least, was a purely mortal concern, something of Eddi’s that her magical allies couldn’t control. “The Beast said something about a gig?”

  “The b—oh, you mean Rover.” Carla grinned. “Right. Wanna play at the reception for the senior show at MCAD?”

  “Good grief! How did you do this, with a new band and no demo tape?”

  “I called in a favor,” Carla said smugly. Eddi raised an eyebrow. “Yes, I did, don’t look at me like that. Turned out it wasn’t that hard to get, either.” Carla leaned forward and poked her finger at Eddi. “Do you have any idea what people think of you?”

  “Jeez, I’d rather not know.”

  “I told the guy who books MCAD events that I had a band he was sure to like. I told him who was in it. And he offered us the gig.”

  “He recognized Dan’s name,” Eddi suggested.

  “Of course he did, but he’s no fool, kid. He wanted to know who was fronting the band—Danny’s not that sort of performer, and neither am I. I gave him your name, and he gave us the job.”

  “Maybe he wants to make a pass at me.”

  “He’s the boyfriend of a guy I took drum lessons from.”

  “Oh.” Eddi found it pleasantly unnerving that someone she didn’t know would recognize her name.

  “So, do we take the job?”

  The Minneapolis College of Art and Design would be a good place to launch the band. Some of the best progressive and art rock bands in town had started at MCAD receptions and openings. It was an informal, low-pressure setting, and the audience would be appreciative and possibly influential. “We’d have to rent a PA,” Eddi said finally.

  “So we rent a PA. Yes?”

  “Yes. In fact, I’m so impressed that I’ve decided to make you busi­ness manager.”

  “Hell, I knew that. You don’t like to do it, and Danny can’t do it, with his mind off in the Van Allen Belts somewhere. And Hedge and Willy are unknown quantities. That leaves petite moi.” Carla drew her knees up under her chin and shot Eddi a sideways glance. “Speaking of unknown quantities . . .”

  Eddi hadn’t actually jumped at the mention of Willy—at least, she thought she hadn’t. But she knew that look in Carla’s eye. “What about ‘em?”

  “Did you, ah, get home all right last night?”

  “Yeah,” Eddi said slowly, and Carla began to fidget so obviously that Eddi laughed and relented. “Willy and I walked back here,” she told Carla, “and I invited him up.”

  “Lawsy me, girl, what done got into you? That’s pretty sudden.”

  “I know.” Eddi raised her chin a little. “But I don’t regret it. Yet.”

  “Mmm. Can’t imagine why. I mean, he’s the best-looking man I’ve ever seen, he plays guitar better than God, and he doesn’t act like an asshole. Now, I don’t know what he’s like when you get him alone . . .”

  “I do.”

  “. . . but honey, the boy’s clearly too good for you.”

  Eddi looked at her more closely. “Are you . . . I don’t know how to put this. Are you jealous? I mean, did I—”

  “Dummy,” Carla giggled, and shook her head. “No. He’s not my type. It’s sort of like seeing a famous painting, and really liking it—but not wanting it in your living room. Too much responsibility or something. I like comfortable men.”

  “Like who?” Eddi prodded.

  “Nobody particular,” Carla said, fixing her attention on rolling down the cuffs of her socks. Then she leaned back against Eddi’s headboard and grinned. “And anyway, he was paying attention to you from the minute he walked in.”

  “What? Who?”

  Carla sighed. “Willy, dear.”

  “He was?”

  “What were you paying attention to?”

  “Hah. He knew I was the one he had to impress to get into the band.”

  “Ladies,” said the phouka’s voice from the other side of the door, “my business is concluded, if you’d prefer the living room.”

  “Anything more you want to say in private?” Eddi asked softly.

  Carla bit her lip. “Well. . .”

  “Out in a minute!” Eddi called to the phouka.

  “Now it’s my turn to worry about how to say this,” Carla grumbled. “What. . . what happened to house arrest?”

  “What?”

  “Him,” Carla said, with an impatient nod at the bedroom door. “The Shadow. Where was he last night?”

  “I don’t know.”

  “After all that hoopla, he just disappears for the night? They could have killed you!”

  Eddi shrugged. “He said it was all right. That I would be pro­tected.” Why am I jumping to defend him? she thought.

  Carla might have heard that thought, to judge from her next words. “He’s not as bad as he used to be, is he?”

  “The phouka?”

  “Yeah. He doesn’t throw his weight around as much. He’s even—God, dare I say it?—fun sometimes.”

  “Careful,” Eddi said, “don’t get carried away.”

  “Mmm. But are you . . . I mean, okay? Is all this getting to you?”

  What could she say? Yes and no? She was used to living alone, and she hadn’t been really alone now for weeks. Her life was in danger. And yet. . .

  “No, Eddi said. “I’m in good shape. Come on, kid, let’s go keep the pooch company.”

  The phouka was standing in what passed for a casual pose, staring out the living room window. Then he turned, and the look he gave Eddi stopped her at the threshold. It was a delicate curl of a smile and a raised eyebrow. Just the sort of expression he would use if he knew they’d been spying at the door. Eddi shrugged at him.

  The phouka favored Carla with his most adorable grin. “Might I ask a favor of you, in the interest of sparing you such favors in future?”

  “That sounds mysterious.”

  “I always am.”

  “What do you want?”

  “A ride, for the two of us,” and he gestured at Eddi, “to the north side of St. Paul.” So the creature had found the phouka his motorcycle, in whatever way such things were done. Carla was watching her, wait­ing for her t
o second the phouka’s request. “Yes,” Eddi told her, “St. Paul it is.”

  Her reward was the relief in the phouka’s face.

  It was a black Triumph Bonneville, a street bike of dignified pedigree. Eddi immediately ached to ride it. It was parked next to a metal shed behind a tall, sway-backed house. Eddi looked reluctantly toward the sagging back porch. “D’you suppose we should tell someone we’re here?”

  The phouka shook his head. “Wait for him to come to us, and when he does, let me speak to him.”

  To Eddi’s amazement, he reached into a pocket and pulled out a pair of blackout sunglasses.

  “Why? I’m the one who knows—”

  “Hey!” said a voice from the alley. A girl of perhaps eight or ten, her features and coloring marking her as Native American, sat on her heels in the brown weeds by the shed. She shook tangled black bangs out of her eyes with a quick motion. “You gonna buy that?”

  Eddi found herself searching the girl’s face for some sign of elfin blood. She seemed more fairylike than the phouka; she squatted com­fortably in the weeds as if she’d materialized there. “Don’t know yet,” Eddi said at last. “Do you know whose it is?”

  The girl made another quick head motion; this one pointed her chin at the house and moved her hair, too. Eddi admired her economy.

  “He’s a a-hole,” the girl said. “You wanna watch it, he mighta ripped off that bike.”

  Eddi raised her eyebrows at the phouka.

  “Do you really think that’s likely?” he asked the girl, sounding rather pleased.

  She shrugged. “He ripped off some socket wrenches from my ma’s boyfriend. He said he didn’t have ‘em, but he was lyin’. An’ he threw a bottle at me once, when I was on my bike.”

  “Tsk,” the phouka murmured. The girl unfolded from the tall grass and went to pace her way around the Triumph, studying it as seriously as any customer.

  Then Eddi heard the adult’s voice she’d expected earlier, from the direction of the house. It was not the speech she’d thought to hear.

  “Get the fuck away from that bike, you hear me?”

  The man coming down the walk was large, and probably strong, but no one could suggest he was in good shape. His T-shirt strained across his middle, and struggled to meet the tooled belt that held up his jeans.

  He was scowling over Eddi’s shoulder. She turned to see the girl disappearing behind the garage across the alley. The phouka leaned a proprietary hand on the motorcycle.

  “Sorry ‘bout that,” the man said, and wiped a hand on his T-shirt before extending it to Eddi. She shook it limply. “Them Indians steal anything that ain’t nailed down.”

  Eddi tried to imagine a ten-year-old girl making off with several hundred pounds of motorcycle, and failed.

  The man looked at the phouka and frowned. The phouka smiled and inclined his head in lordly condescension. His costume contributed to the effect: gold-and-black frock coat, black ruffled shirt, skin-tight black pants and high-heeled boots.

  The man didn’t offer to shake hands with him. Instead, he returned his attention to Eddi. “So, honey, you lookin’ for a bike?”

  Before she had a chance to ask him not to call her “honey,” the phouka spoke.

  “Ms. McCandry would like to test drive your vehicle.” He looked to Eddi as if for confirmation. The dark glasses were wonderfully en­igmatic. She wanted to laugh at him; she managed to nod instead.

  The big man rubbed his nose. “You know how to ride one of these, honey?” His eyes went quickly to the phouka, then back to Eddi. She knew that look; club managers would do it when they wanted to hustle her and were wondering if Stuart would object.

  Eddi gave the man a warning stare, and let it stay on him until she was certain he didn’t understand it. “I can ride a motorcycle,” she said.

  “The key,” said the phouka, and held out a languid hand.

  The man ignored him. Grinning down at Eddi, he said, “Maybe I oughta go with you, to make sure.”

  The phouka stepped forward. He was shorter than the bike’s owner, and possibly a hundred pounds lighter. But he moved the dark glasses down his nose just enough to look over them, and the larger man stopped grinning.

  He produced a key on a wire ring. “Take her ‘round the block, sugar,” he said. “You know how to start one of these?”

  Eddi clenched her teeth on the reply that tempted her most. “Can I borrow a helmet?”

  “Ain’t got one.”

  That didn’t surprise her. She straddled the bike and rocked it off the stand, then went through the start-up checks. With a last glare at the owner, she folded out the kick-start lever, jumped down, jumped again, and the engine fired.

  The Triumph ran splendidly. Eddi took a route that included a stretch of highway, and delighted in the lash of the wind against her face. She could hear and feel the steady firing of the engine (what had the phouka said, about explosions contained in iron?), and the clean shifting of the gears.

  Then, on a residential street, she braked so suddenly that the back wheel skittered. She stopped at the curb, turning one thought over and over.

  She was alone.

  She looked around, half expecting to see a dreadful thing or two converging on her. Nothing appeared; the bike’s rough purring was the only break in the neighborhood’s peace.

  I could head for the highway, drive like hell, and be in Wisconsin in an hour, she thought. Unless the Unseelie Court caught me first. The phouka would be furious. So, for that matter, would the owner of the bike, who would call the police. What’s the penalty for auto theft? It’d almost be worth it—I’d like to see the Seelie Court break me out of the Ramsey County jail for their damn war.

  The phouka would be in a towering rage if she ran. (Funny—she’d never seen him in a rage, but she was certain he was capable of one.) She wondered if he’d be a little sad, too. She imagined him standing in that square of weedy grass and mud, waiting restlessly, anxiously—and realizing that she wasn’t coming back. He would know long before the big coarse man who waited with him. And when the big man threatened to call the cops, the phouka would walk away. . . . No, she would never know what he’d do. She wouldn’t be there, after all. . . .

  She put the bike in gear and headed for the sagging house.

  The phouka was leaning against the shed, the picture of disreputable ease. The black-lensed glasses almost hid his expression. Only a one­sided quirk of his lips hinted at amusement, and relief. The owner of the motorcycle stood several paces away from him, rubbing his palms against his pantlegs. Eddi wondered what the phouka had done to torment him.

  “Well?” the phouka said when she switched the engine off.

  “It’ll do.”

  The phouka nodded.

  “So,” said the owner, “c’mon in the house, have a beer, and let’s deal.”

  The phouka seemed to think over a selection of responses. Then he shrugged and said baldly, “We would not be comfortable in your house. We’ll conduct our business where we are.”

  The bike’s owner turned white, then red. “You too good to come into my house and drink my beer?”

  “I didn’t say that.”

  The big man’s eyes narrowed, and his jaw worked around some particularly fine insult. “I don’t haveta take shit from no faggot nigger,” he said at last, and smiled.

  The phouka fingered the frames of his sunglasses, as if threatening to lower them again. “Ah, but it won’t bother you at all to take my money, will it? How much do you want for the motorcycle?”

  Eddi watched anger and greed quarrel in the big man’s face. “Eleven-fifty,” he said smoothly.

  The phouka tilted his head and put his hands behind his back. There, where the other man couldn’t see, he tapped his thumb against each fingertip, one, two, three. . . . Eddi understood. She reached over as if to examine the bike, and brushed seven of his fingers lightly with her own.

  “Now, now,” he said. “Seven hundred.”

  �
��I ain’t gonna bargain with you. I know what this bike is worth.” Then the big man showed his teeth. “But I might let you have it for a thou—‘cause I like the li’l lady.”

  The phouka’s mouth became a hard line, and one of his hands bunched inside the other. “That’s your last offer?” he said with frost in his voice.

  “Yeah.”

  The phouka turned toward the alley. Eddi followed after him, won­dering how they were going to get home. Then he turned back.

  “Here’s my last,” he said. “Eight hundred.” He paused before he added, “Cash,” and smiled so fiercely that Eddi expected to see his dog-fangs.

  For a few moments the big man stared at them. Then he shrugged.

  The phouka reached into his coat, drew out a slim leather folder, and flicked it open. He licked the tip of a finger delicately and counted out eight hundred-dollar bills. He held them up casually, fanned to display them to best advantage. “Anything else?”

  The man scowled, licked his lips, and shook his head.

  “Title,” said Eddi.

  He curled his lip at her. “His money and your bike, huh?” He shook his head and went back to the house to get the title.

  The papers were filled out, and the eight bills left the phouka’s hand. “Nice doin’ business with you,” the big man said, crumpling the money in his fist. The weight of his steps as he went back to the house made the mud splatter.

  The phouka shivered like a dog shedding water.

  “Well!” Eddi sighed. “You said you wanted to find someone des­picable to buy a motorcycle from. If I’d known you’d do it so well, I wouldn’t have come.”

  “I’m not certain I would have,” he replied as he folded up his sunglasses. “Had I been my dog-self, I would have bitten him.”

  “Let’s put some distance between him and us.” Eddi kick-started the bike and beckoned to the phouka with a nod of her head. He looked at the half of the seat behind her. “Come on,” she said, “or you’ll have to run behind the whole way home.”