War for the Oaks

by Emma Bull

  The phouka’s growl shook Eddi’s collar.

  Something like an animated tree limb, twisted and vivid green as moss, lashed out of the water, and the glaistig’s face filled with dismay and rage. She arced up like a leaping fish, like a waterspout, and fell upon it. They disappeared beneath the surface. Eddi saw the turbu­lence subside as the current and the phouka surged on.

  Something blocked her view of the sky, and they stopped moving. She put out her hands, found slippery stone under them, and hung on.

  “Bridge,” the phouka said softly. “We may rest here, though not for long—they, too, have taken to the water, it seems. Would you mind holding on to me for a moment? I swim fairly well in this shape, but I tread water badly, and if I stop paddling long enough to change, the current will have me halfway to the river.”

  Eddi put an arm around his neck and back. “Shut up and change.”

  She found herself holding on to something not quite solid, that prickled even through her jacket and sweater like a series of small static shocks. Then the phouka’s human head was in the crook of her arm, his thick black curls sleek with water.

  She hadn’t realized, when he’d been in dog form, that she’d end up hugging his human shape against her, or that his face would be so close to hers. Moonlight reflected off the water and into his eyes, and they seemed deeper than the creek. Eddi knew she should let go of him, maybe say something. But the moment when she could have done that went past. He opened his mouth to speak, shut it again, and shivered under her arm. “Ah, well,” he whispered, with a little catch in his voice.

  Then he pulled away and ducked under the water. His head broke the surface again and he shook the water out of his hair with a snap. “I’m a fool,” he said calmly. “Come along, my nemesis. If we stay here, we’ll freeze to death. Or perhaps worse.” He let the current pull him away from the bridge piling, and Eddi, after a moment, did the same.

  The creek diverged suddenly, and they held to the right-hand fork, where a gravel bank promised shallows and safe footing. The phouka scrambled to shore and stood still for a moment, listening to the sounds of fighting on the far bank. He shook his head as Eddi came out of the water.

  “I wish I knew who was getting the worst of it,” he said. “If they’ve taken the bridges and are on this side, then the issue is as good as decided. We could go home and lick our wounds.” He pushed the wet hair out of his eyes and winced when his fingers hit the gash on his temple. His hand came away with a little blood on it, and he stared at it for a second. “The wages of folly,” he said.

  “What do you mean?”

  He shrugged. “I showed myself to the enemy, and the enemy showed their appreciation. There’s folly, surely.”

  “Oh, of course. A smart guy would have sat quiet and watched the other side sneak up and slaughter his buddies.”

  “I had no right to endanger you.”

  Eddi snorted. “The only stupidity I’ve seen out of you tonight has been right here on this bank. Come on, let’s find out where we are.” And she stalked off up the path.

  She was annoyed beyond all logic, and she was grateful for it. It kept her from puzzling over the phouka’s behavior, and it enabled her to ignore the cold. Her hands were stiff with it, her feet felt like blocks of wood, and her wet clothes were like an ice pack around her. She stamped down the trail to bring the feeling back into her toes.

  Suddenly she stopped. The phouka bumped into her. “What is it?” he said softly.

  “I don’t. . . know.” Nothing moved ahead of them except the trail­ing fronds of the willow on the creek bank. The wind made a weary soughing through its new leaves. But there wasn’t that much wind.

  The phouka grabbed her arm and pulled her off the path behind a rocky outcropping, away from the creek. “There’s an answer to my question,” he hissed. “They may not have crossed the water, but their magic has.”

  “The wind?”

  “That wasn’t wind. The willows are walking.”

  Eddi heard a shrill squeaking at the creek’s edge. The phouka moved to stop her, but she peered over the top of the boulder in time to see one of the willow tendrils swing up from the bank, coiled around what might have been a muskrat. It struggled and squealed, and another drooping branch rose and twined around its neck. Muskrat fur bulged on either side of the coils. After a moment, the animal stopped moving.

  The phouka tapped her shoulder and pointed up the steep incline away from the path. They scrabbled up the rocks slippery with lime­stone mud, trying for silence. Just like nightmares, Eddi thought. There’s something behind you, but you can’t move fast enough, and you’re afraid to look back. She kept listening for the sound of wind in leaves.

  About twenty feet up from the path, they turned parallel to it, making their way back toward the Falls. In places, harder rock jutted out through the limestone in a smooth outcrop, forcing them over or under it. At last they reached a stretch of nearly vertical slope, where the footing was crumbling and treacherous.

  “The path again, then,” the phouka whispered.

  Eddi started down the hill crab-fashion, half-sitting, using her hands to hold herself back. Her feet still skidded from each outcropping, and she was glad when a deadfall braced against two living trees stopped her slide. She paused for breath and to nurse her scraped palms. Then she heard a volley of curses below her. She ducked under the dead trunk and found a clear view of the path below.

  There were three figures, one backed to the edge of the retaining wall where the creek churned by. The two with their backs to Eddi were gray-skinned, their form a distorted parody of humanity. It was a familiar distortion, she realized—and knew from where, when one of them turned its head a little. The elongated jaw, the many sharp, dis­colored teeth, the milky eyes like cataracts—these were creatures like the one that had tried to kill her outside the New Riverside Cafe.

  Her mouth was dry. She recognized their intended victim, too. It was the brownie, Hairy Meg, who was backed against the lip of the wall. She was spitting inventive epithets at them in her broad Scots accent, and shaking an outsized brown fist whenever they came close. But the two gray creatures had long knives.

  Then a dripping green-gray hand shot out from beyond the retain­ing wall and grabbed the brownie’s ankle. Meg gave a despairing wail and bent to claw at it, while her other two attackers closed in.

  Eddi grabbed the trunk of the dead sapling and yanked, and the rotted wood broke loose from between the two bracing trees. She pinned it under her arm like a battering ram and leaped down the hill much too fast.

  This, too, was like a dream: flying over treacherous ground and by some miracle not falling; those gray faces turning, one at a time, to fix their clouded eyes on her and raise their long knives. Everything seemed to be moving so slowly. Surely her target would step aside, and she would fall into the creek, into the green arms of whatever was in the water.

  With a shock that wrenched her arms and buffeted her ribs, the end of the tree trunk slammed into a gray belly. The thing went backward over the wall. The green hand freed Meg’s ankle and whipped snakelike out of sight. Water frothed on the surface of the creek.

  Eddi swung her tree trunk at the second gray demon, and it stum­bled backward into the phouka’s grip. The phouka flung that one, too, over the retaining wall.

  For a moment, no one moved or spoke. Then the phouka sat down hard in the middle of the path and sank his face into both hands.

  “That,” he said at last, “was what is called an unnecessary risk. If you continue like this I shall be the first immortal to die of heart failure.”

  Eddi, who was nursing a hand full of splinters and a pair of quaking legs, did not dignify that with an answer.

  Hairy Meg’s black eyes darted between the phouka and Eddi. She snuffled rudely at last and wiped her enormous nose with a knobby brown knuckle. “Tha’s no so ill done,” she said grudgingly to Eddi. Then she cackled and loped off down the path.

  The phouk
a unfolded and tried to brush some of the mud off him­self. “You could have waited for me before you made your charge, you know.”

  Eddi meant to shrug, but shivered instead. “I guess I knew how she felt.”

  The phouka nodded. Then he lifted his head sharply. “A curse on this!” he spat after a moment. “Come, my sweet, this is the last leg, and I’m afraid we must run it all. Can you do it?”

  She felt tired enough to lie down and die without help from any outside agency. “No. But I will.”

  If the previous scenes had been from nightmares, then what followed was hell itself. Eddi pretended that her aching legs belonged to some­one else; it was the only way she could keep running. After a moment, she, too, heard pounding feet and shouting and the clash of fighting behind them. After a few moments more, all she could hear was her own heart. Trees and path and night sky seemed to fly by on all sides, regardless of up or down.

  The path twisted, and before them was a scene lit red with flames: a gently bow-backed stone bridge across the creek bristled with the enemy’s advance. At the end of the bridge, where the path widened, a ragged rear guard of the Seelie Court fought to hold them back. Patches of grass and clumps of dead brush on both banks were blazing, and something draped over the near side of the bridge was also burning brightly. It looked as if it had once been alive. Behind it all was the wild white curtain of Minnehaha Falls, slamming down the cliffside with a sound like angry thunder.

  The phouka paused a moment, and Eddi saw the dismay on his face. Then he shook his head sharply. “Make haste, then, love,” he said. “We must get to the other side of that, and our only hope is speed.”

  He grabbed her hand and plunged forward. On the bridge, an un­holy chorus of voices howled. At the head of that dreadful host was a huge figure, possibly eight feet tall, with girth and shoulders dispro­portionately large even for that. His hair hung tangled to below his waist. He carried a club in one hand and a spear in the other, and from his belt dangled a collection of old severed limbs. He let out a bellow that shook stones from the cliff, and led the attackers in a charge.

  The Seelie Court’s forces met the shock of that charge and held, but barely. Eddi saw one of the Sidhe cavalry at the fore, the one in black and white armor. The white shaft of his lance was dark with blood, and the white leather over his ribs was slashed open down one side. He spurred his horse forward and couched his lance for a thrust at the monstrous enemy captain. But something darted beneath his horse’s belly. The animal reared, and the point of a spear thrust up and took it behind one foreleg. With a near-human scream, the horse crashed sideways.

  Beside her, the phouka made a strangled noise and faltered. A red­cap leaped off the bridge and onto the fallen horse. Eddi couldn’t see the rider, but the redcap surely could, was surely preparing his knife for the rider’s throat. Then the bloody-shafted lance thrust upward, into the redcap’s lower jaw. The redcap rolled backward into the creek.

  The rider pulled himself from under his dead horse. He had lost his helmet. His black hair was in disarray, but the moonlight and fire­light picked out the lock of white that streaked it. There was a smear of mud across the bridge of his perfect nose and down his beautifully sculpted cheek. His teeth were bared in a fierce fighting grin, and his eyes flashed like emeralds. With flawless grace he sprang onto the wall of the bridge and slashed his lance across the enemy captain’s belly, and the creature fell like a shattered tree.

  “. . . Willy?” Eddi heard, in her own voice.

  Perhaps it was coincidence; perhaps some trick of battlefield acous­tics carried her voice. But he turned and met her shocked stare. His pale face grew paler still, his green-fire eyes widened. For a moment longer he stood, while his expression darkened. Then he turned and drew his sword, and plunged back into the fight.

  The phouka pulled her away. Behind them on the path were more of the Unseelie Court, and they could not afford to slow down. Stone stairs twisted up the hill in front of her, apparently forever. Each land­ing offered a scenic view of the falls, and a carrion bird’s view of the fighting at the bridge. The Seelie Court was retreating up the stairs. In the commotion, there was no determining who was alive or dead.

  “Wake up,” said the phouka, and he shook her. “Once you leave the circle, the battle is over, the killing is done for tonight. That’s all the help you can give him now.”

  The fog cleared a little from her vision and mind, and she stumbled up the stairs. A last turning, and she saw the flickering green barrier that edged the landing above. It grew, and grew, and suddenly dis­appeared, and her shoulder struck something hard and cold.

  “That’s my lass,” said the phouka’s voice, weak and ragged. “Come on, on your feet one last time. I’m afraid I haven’t the strength to carry you the rest of the way.”

  She sat up and found the green light dying into the stones at her feet. The quiet around them was frightening—it felt like being deaf, after the sounds of battle. Then Eddi realized that she could still hear the roar of the falls. Far away, across a broad field of trees, a car went by on Hiawatha Avenue. She pulled herself upright.

  After what seemed a long time and several stops to rest, Eddi and the phouka reached the park building. The Triumph sat where they’d left it, untouched, unchanged, her helmet hanging from a handlebar. That seemed so absurd to Eddi that she began to giggle. Then she found that she couldn’t stop.

  The phouka cradled her face roughly in both hands and shook her a little, and the giggles subsided long enough that she could breathe. Then she began to cry. “Don’t do that,” he whispered, and began to cry himself. They held each other, leaning into the embrace, and it was as much to keep from falling as for comfort.

  chapter 12 – Makes No Sense at All

  Eddi drove home slowly. She was tired, and inclined to doubt both her perceptions and her reactions to them. Briefly she won­dered what time it was; the plunge into the creek must have stopped her watch. The streets were nearly empty. The phouka rode with his arms around her waist and his head on her shoulder, and she suspected that for much of the ride he was half-asleep.

  They reached the apartment building and made their way wearily up the back stairs. The phouka went in the apartment first, as usual, and Eddi propped herself up against the hallway wall to wait for him.

  Then she realized that the door hadn’t closed completely behind him, and that she didn’t hear him moving around the apartment. She stepped out from the wall, feeling like an actor in a particularly silly spy movie, and pushed the door open slowly. The phouka stood with his back to her, just inside—he was watching something in the dim-lit room. She moved to see past him.

  Willy Silver sat in one of the kitchen chairs facing the door, the picture of simulated ease. He wore a black suit and a white T-shirt, and his long legs were crossed and stretched out in front of him, his hands deep in the pockets of his trousers. He shifted his gaze lazily from the phouka to Eddi. She could read nothing in his face, or rather the half of it that she could see well in the lamplight.

  “You’re out of uniform,” Eddi said as she shut the door behind her.

  “It’s awfully conspicuous,” Willy replied.

  And so, of course, was he, even without his black-and-white armor. How had she missed the otherworldliness of him? No one had eyes like that, or that pale, clear skin like porcelain; no human moved with that extraordinary grace.

  But the phouka had given her truth, touched it to her eyes. However she had missed the marks of Faerie before, she couldn’t do it now. “What do you want?” she said finally.

  Willy dropped his head back and laughed. It was not the bright music he made when he was amused. “I don’t know, actually,” he said softly to the ceiling. His voice was calm and frightening. “I know I have something to discuss with our little friend here”—and he fixed that burning green look on the phouka, who lifted his chin—“but I suppose that could have waited. No, I think I came as a favor to you,” he said to Eddi.

/>   “To me?”

  “Mm-hm. So you could say all those things you’re dying to say to me.”

  Eddi let the silence hang between them until it broke of its own weight. “You could have saved yourself a trip.”

  Willy raised his eyebrows.

  “I don’t want to say anything at all to you. Not tonight, anyway. I’m tired. I want to take a shower and go to bed.”

  Willy closed his eyes. “Maybe I should take up my quarrel with the phouka, then.”

  “No,” Eddi said. Willy’s eyes flew open. “He needs a shower and a night’s sleep worse than I do.”

  “And if you will both pardon me, I think I’ll start with the shower,” said the phouka. He headed for the bathroom door, and Eddi wondered how much effort he was expending on holding his head up like that. Willy looked as if he would have liked to call him back, but Eddi stepped between them on the pretext of claiming a chair.

  She stripped off her soggy denim jacket. It had taken more damage than creek water and mud; it was torn in several places, and one arm-hole seam had ripped. Her jeans were in similar shape. One knee was torn, and the skin beneath was scraped raw. When did all this happen? Eddi wondered. You’d think I’d remember the knee, at least.

  Willy was silent. Eddi looked to see why, and found him with his chin on his chest and his eyes closed.

  “You, too, huh?” she said.

  Willy didn’t move. “I’m all right.”

  There was a bruise darkening along his jaw and a scrape across the bridge of his nose. Something at the corners of his mouth and eyes suggested weariness and pain, though Eddi couldn’t have said what. His jacket hung open, and where his T-shirt should have lain smooth over his ribs, there were the ridges of a bandage.

  “We could audition for the Spirit of ‘76,” she said. Willy ignored her.

  She was in the kitchen measuring water for coffee when Willy came and leaned in the doorway. “Do you have any idea what he’s done?” he said in a low voice.