War for the Oaks

by Emma Bull

  “No, you don’t,” the phouka shouted in her ear. The first set crowd would have needed warming up. By third set, the audience would be addled with music and dancing and drink, generous and ready for wonders. It would be harder for the Queen of Air and Darkness to dim their vision.

  They wandered through the crowd, seeing nothing more unusual than on any night at First Avenue. There were a few of the polo-shirts-and-chinos crowd, what Carla called “the tourists.” There were women in vintage finery and new-wave splendor, men in antique tail­coats with their braided queues hanging down their backs, and people in the latest from the trendy departments of Dayton’s. Eddi suddenly loved them all, desperately.

  At last she made a stop at the ladies’ room, leaving the phouka to wait on the balcony. The restrooms were the only places in First Av­enue where the lights were bright. The sound of the band was muted there, too, and people came to talk, or repair makeup. Only in the restrooms did the club reveal its earlier life as a bus station; though the stalls had been painted, they were the original ones, as were the old black-and-white tiles and the row of sinks. Eddi bent over one of those to wash her hands, between a woman in pale makeup and red lipstick, and two college women who were doing each other’s hair with setting gel.

  “So, all ready for the big show?” the low voice said behind her, obscenely pleased. Eddi looked up, looked into the mirror, and found the Dark Lady standing behind her. She was dressed in dark gray brocade threaded with silver. She wore her black hair unbound, and it made a cloud down her back. Tiny tendrils of it were spit-curled around her face. There were huge silver disks in her ears, and her lips were the color of strong wine.

  No one else in the room seemed to take special notice of the Dark Queen. To Eddi, however, she wore her uncanny nature like heavy scent, a dark fragrance that made the head spin. She met the queen’s black eyes in the mirror.

  “I’m ready,” she said. “Are you?”

  “I quite look forward to it.” The wine-colored lips curved upward. Eddi swallowed and wished she’d go away.

  Then Eddi saw a bright figure behind the dark one, and spun round in surprise. The Lady was there.

  Other women in the room did notice her. She was hiding her true nature, Eddi realized, but not the fey beauty that was part of it. She was a powerful presence in the room; she commanded it as if by a sword or sceptre.

  Her streaming red hair had been cut, and it curled and frothed over her forehead, sparkling with a dusting of gold. Her white features were too beautiful to be imagined, too perfect to be real. She wore a slender tunic that flashed when she moved, as the light bounced off the pale green spangles and sequins that covered it, the rhinestones (or dia­monds, perhaps) around the high collar. She wore stockings of the same color in some shimmering stuff, and short silver boots.

  The Queen of Air and Darkness looked over her shoulder. Her lips pressed together at the sight of the Lady. “You do not, I take it, come to watch quietly from the shadows.”

  The Lady’s white lips twitched at that. “This would be ill garb for that, certainly. No, cousin, we come to watch our champion fight.”

  Eddi looked swiftly from one to the other. The Dark Queen’s eyes widened as if she’d been struck, until anger replaced surprise. The Lady held out a long hand to Eddi, palm up. It was the same gesture, the same hand, with which she had offered the morsel of Faerie bread, so many weeks ago.

  In her palm lay a pendant, a woven knot of silver and red enamel. No, not red enamel. It was a strand of the Lady’s hair.

  “It is our token,” she said to Eddi, in a voice that made her shiver, “and our pledge. The Seelie Court shall abide by what transpires here; we shall stand or fall with our champion.”

  The Dark Queen’s face was feral and eager. “If I win, then, you agree that these lands are mine.”

  “And if Eddi McCandry wins, you shall forfeit them, yourself and all who bow to you. It shall be so for seventy times seven years, and any who would defy that banishment shall be cast out of Faerie.”

  The Dark Lady showed white teeth. “Which applies equally on both sides, of course. Yes, this gives the evening a great deal of spice.”

  Eddi reached out and took the pendant from the Lady’s hand. It shone a little more brightly than she thought it should, but she felt no great power in it. It was not a weapon—only a symbol, as the Lady had said. She slid the chain over her head and let the token fall against her chest.

  No one in the restroom seemed to find anything odd in their words or actions, Eddi found when she looked up. Though the Lady was stared at, no one stayed to do it; there was no crowd gathering.

  “With the stakes so much higher,” said the Queen of Air and Dark­ness, “I would like some guarantee against false dealing.”

  “You have my sworn word,” the Lady said coldly. “You need no better.”

  “Oh, that will bind you, and all your Court. But—forgive me my prejudices—I cannot trust it to bind a mortal.” She directed a dazzling smile at Eddi.

  “You can have my promise, too,” Eddi snapped.

  The Dark Queen looked her up and down, and drawled, “How much is a mortal promise worth?”

  Eddi felt an angry heat shoot through her. The Lady’s pale eyes blazed, and she seemed about to speak. But before she could, the Dark Queen continued. “I’m sure we can find some more tangible symbol of our agreement.” She nodded to Eddi and the Lady, and walked out of the room.

  Eddi closed her hand around the Lady’s token. “Why?” she said finally, hearing despair in her words. “Before, if I won you got what you wanted, and if I lost, you were no worse off than if none of this had happened. Why did you do this?”

  The expression on the Lady’s face sat so oddly there that Eddi barely recognized it. It was sorrow.

  “To be our champion is an honor, Eddi McCandry, and one you have earned. You have shown yourself loyal and beyond reason cou­rageous. You have served the Seelie Court more wisely, perhaps, than I have ruled it. For you to stand against the Queen of Air and Darkness and not bear our blessing—it would be black insult to you, and dis­honor to my house.”

  “I can’t say anything about the dishonor,” Eddi said with a ferocious quiet, “but do you think I give a good goddamn about the insult?”

  “No,” said the Lady fiercely, “I do not. You are free to ignore it, or forgive it. I cannot. We are inflexible, aye, and you have scorned that. Yet that is why we speak naught but the truth, and why our sworn word will bind us though the earth swallow us up. Does that seem such an ill thing to you?”

  Eddi met her burning eyes and finally shook her head.

  When the Lady spoke again, her voice was gentler. “I would deny you this if I could. Were Willy alive, he would try to turn me from my purpose—and even for love of him, or his memory, I could not spare you this. We are a hard people, and we think perhaps overmuch of the weighing of rights and wrongs, of favors and slights. I could not rule Faerie if I did not live by its precepts.” She went to the mirror and stared blindly into it. “So I must mete out your due, for good or ill. Then I shall stand and see the consequences of what I have done, and take them as they come.”

  Eddi rubbed the pendant between her fingers, and studied the Lady’s bleak white face in the mirror. “I’ll do my best,” she said at last. “For both of us.”

  A spasm of pain crossed the alabaster features. “For all of us. Have you not guessed the surety the Dark Lady will demand?”

  Eddi frowned. The pity with which the Lady regarded her finally sank in. “The phouka,” she whispered. “No. She can’t.”

  “She is within her rights to ask a hostage of us. She will ask for him. She holds him, and you, in bitter hatred for freeing Willy. If you lose to her, she will take his life before your eyes, and be revenged on you both.”

  Anger and fear were scrambled in Eddi’s head. When she spoke, she didn’t know which emotion it was from. “When Faerie and my world intersect, does anything good ever come of it
?”

  The Lady gave her a cool glance, one of bitter amusement. “Think on your lover, Daughter of Eve, and answer for yourself.”

  She, too, swept from the room. Eddi was left leaning on the counter, feeling cold and ill.

  When she reached the balcony, only the phouka was there. He knew what had happened; she could tell from his expression. They held each other in silence, and he buried his face in her hair. “Do what you can, my primrose,” he whispered at last. “I love my life better than I ever have, now that it’s at risk. But even so, I love you better still.”

  She strangled on a sob and kissed him. Then he straightened his shoulders and lifted his chin in that familiar way, and walked until the crowd swallowed him.

  She would have run backstage, but the press of people kept her slow. When she reached it, Carla saw her face and stood up with a snap.

  “What’s wrong?”

  Eddi leaned against the wall and breathed deep and slow. Carla hurried over, took her hand, and Eddi wanted so much to cry, to collapse and let Carla take care of her.

  “They just changed the stakes,” she said finally. Her voice sounded flat in her head.

  “What do you mean?” Carla asked. Dan stood at her shoulder, alarmed, and Hedge looked horrified, as if he’d already guessed what the stakes must be now.

  “If I lose . . . then the Unseelie Court gets the city, and the phouka dies.”

  After a moment, Carla squeezed her shoulder hard. “What do you mean, if you lose? You mean we, girl.” Eddi stared at her, and finally nodded grimly.

  They said things to her after that—even Hedge said something. But she didn’t hear them. She sat down in a corner and put her axe in tune. Boiled in Lead finished their set with a manic, thrash-band ren­dition of “The Gypsy Rover,” their equipment was whisked off the stage, and Eddi and the Fey’s replaced it. When they went down the corridor to the stage, Eddi was still shaking off her mental fog.

  They stood ready at their mikes, while an amplified voice from the sound booth announced their name into the dark room. The crowd cheered—Eddi hadn’t expected that. Were there people out there who’d come to hear them? Carla tapped three beats on the rim of her snare. The fourth fired the stage lights and Hedge’s bass. No turning back now.

  They had ten songs. In ten songs, they had to catch and hold an audience, overthrow a queen, free the phouka, and save the city. Put like that, it was the stupidest thing Eddi had ever heard. So she didn’t think of it that way again.

  They opened with Peter Gabriel’s “In Your Eyes.” Perhaps they should have chosen something louder and faster, something that would grab the dancers right away. She couldn’t see the dance floor past the stage lights, couldn’t tell what was happening. Where was the Queen of Air and Darkness? Where would she position herself, in such a time and place?

  Once Eddi thought to ask the question, the answer was obvious. She raised her head and scanned the VIP balcony.

  The Dark Queen sat watching from a little table, ignoring the drink in front of her. She met Eddi’s eyes and nodded. Behind her the phouka stood, one hand on the railing, his face set and tense. She saw a glimmer of light at his wrist, and squinted. It came from a thin cord of some magical weaving, and it bound his wrist to the top rail. Eddi stumbled over the next chord change and saw the Queen of Air and Darkness smile.

  There were shadows in the sound booth, silhouetted against the second-floor bar. There were shadows on the dance floor. She would be a shadow of a different sort if the Dark Lady won, and Carla and Dan and Hedge with her. Here in this room was what she fought for, this wild human energy, this fast-burning mortality that made so much light. There was a dark cloth laid over it now, dimming, smothering. She could feel it. She could almost see it. Pull it back, shred it, smolder it away with sound and light. . . .

  She lost track of what she was singing. Were they her words? She was driving them up out of the middle of her like flame from a dragon’s mouth—they must be hers. Hedge stood on one side of her, braced as if against a gale, head thrown back, eyes closed. He clawed the Stein­berger with eagle talons, climbing a spiral of bass notes into the hot blue air. Dan danced behind the keyboards, with feet and hands and mouth, mad and swift as a striking snake. Carla summoned up the beat of pounding water and falling stone, rhythms that had not faltered since the universe took shape.

  And still the darkness lay over them all, the Dark Queen’s barrier to light and noise.

  Eddi shot out a hand and plucked the lights from the ceiling, fired all the neon at once. She made it rain flash pots like falling stars. The video screens roiled with color, throbbed with beat, trembled with images that seemed to want to break their surface tension and spill out onto the dance floor.

  The darkness shouldered up to meet them.

  Sparks leaped and spat all over the stage, under Eddi’s fingers, singeing them, bridging the beads of sweat on her face. Current crack­led and arced over the dance floor, around the metal balcony railings. The room glowed blue for an instant, as if struck by lightning.

  At the back of the room, near the balcony stairs, the Lady stood pale and shining. Oberycum was beside her, tall and knightly, gleaming in green and gold and his hair like bleached wheat. In that flash of blue he nodded to Eddi, the solemn salute of equals, but she had no time to nod back.

  She hammered down on three chords, repeated them, heard Carla roll sticks across the snare like a forest fire. Hedge screamed down his low E string, the sound of a descent into hell, and they began “For It All.” The neon lashed the ceiling again, and Eddi saw the light-dyed faces of the dancers turned up to her, flowers following the sun. She demanded their minds, then insisted that they think for themselves; stole their ears and made them fight to get them back. Their dancing bodies she did not take by force—those she sought humbly, and each one given to her was a treasure. She felt their sweat running down her skin, felt their arms cutting shapes in the air around her, her muscles aching with the motion of their dance. Darkness and light ran together around them like confluent rivers, like braided streaming hair, black and red, like tangled patterns of cloud and sky.

  Her guitar was gone; she didn’t know where. She thought her mike was in front of her, but she couldn’t see it, hadn’t the attention to spare to sing into it. She took a breath, then let her voice spill out:

  Fire coming down the sky

  On a horse of wind

  Beckons to the naked eye

  And who can see?

  Carla backed the words with the thunder of deep drums, Hedge with the rolling voice of his bass, Dan with wild flying piano like flocks of birds.

  Those who look up,

  Hearts that hurt for height and heaven,

  Those who look up see

  What never falls to earth.

  The music grumbled under her voice like something large coming closer to them all, approaching swiftly through the earth toward the surface. Carla and Dan and Hedge sang up a net of light behind her, a veil of sun and shadow that trembled with the deep instruments.

  On the balcony, the Dark Lady was a pillar of black fire, hands clenched on the balcony rail, face turned upward. A devouring silence roiled where she stood, pressed outward. But a powerful wave of music was rising against her.

  Armies hurled against the hall

  Cannot breach the outer wall

  The castle built of thundercloud

  Will only yield

  To those who look up

  Hands held out aloft and empty. . . .

  She pointed and the dancers all turned to see it, laughing with delight when it did look like a castle.

  Thunder boiled up, from Carla’s drums and the air above them. Ozone smelled bright and mind-clearing and sounded like Dan’s syn­thesizer. Eddi pointed again to the tarnished silver sky, where the thun­derheads raced toward them like flying mountains.

  Tall ship on the hungry sea

  An ark, a savior sent to free

  Those who see the ladder t
ossed

  And jump, and catch, and climb aloft. . . .

  The thunderhead was low, low in the sky, and the rain would come soon. They had better take the cloud itself and ride above the storm. She leaped into the air, legs tucked up. Was that a tugging at her ankles? Gravity, or pulling hands? A laughable bond, weakening with each second. She kicked it off. When her feet came down they hit the cool mounded white top of the cloud, and it crunched like snow. The dancers laughed and yelled, sprang aboard without missing a beat. In the dark blue altitudes it was easier to dance, easier to whip through the thin air. They would never be tired now. Even gravity, with its dark shrouding hands, had slipped off them. Eddi pulled the wind into her lungs and laughed, felt tears pouring down her face. They were the dancers’ tears, too, who cried with joy because there was too much of everything. She wept fiercely and her voice never wavered with it. Whatever was coming up from underneath, whatever made the growing thunder, was almost upon them. Dan and Hedge and Carla opened up the golden net they’d made and let it through.

  Ears tuned to the sounding stars,

  Wings stretched to catch the wind,

  Here comes the jet to cut the clouds,

  To take us home.

  Silver flashing up from beneath, through the whiteness—so fast, but not too fast to reach out and touch. They all did, brushing their fingers against the cold, wet metal in wonder. Eddi’s face burned with the salt on her cheeks.

  The song was free, rising above them as they rose. It filled every­thing with its roaring, it pushed the walls down around them and walls for as far as thoughts could range. The silver shape above them changed, widened, climbed through blackness and the unshuttered stars on a pillar of fire. The cloud was gone, but they didn’t need it now.