War For The Oaks Part 34

"Something wrong?" she asked w.i.l.l.y.

He stopped playing for a moment. "No, not really," he murmured. He began to play again, and she found she knew that song, too.

"There was a battle in the north," she sang softly, and he joined her for the rest of the verse: .

And n.o.bles there were many.

And they have killed Sir Johnny Hay And laid the blame on Geordie.

He shook his head. "Do your people ever write songs about anything besides love and death?" A thread of impatience ran through his voice, side by side with something else.

"Now and then."

"Couldn't prove it by me." His hands were still again, and he looked away, out the window. "And sometimes it seems as if I know them all. Funny, no?"

Eddi studied his profile, sharp as a paper cutout against the lengthening shadows. An earring swung from his left ear-Eddi recognized it as the device on his armor, the three interlaced crescent moons. The silver gleamed like liquid against the dark side of his face.

His shoulders moved with a shrug, or a sigh. Then he turned back to her. "They're in love, aren't they?"

It took her a minute to figure that out. "Carla and Dan?"

He nodded, intent on her answer.

"It looks like it, anyway."

His mouth got tight, and he frowned. "Isn't that enough?"

Eddi began to see what the conversation was about. "It's not that easy, w.i.l.l.y. Only they know if they're in love-and I'll bet that neither of them knows for sure yet if the other is."

w.i.l.l.y stared at her. Then he laughed, as if it was forced out of him. "Oh, Oak and Ash." He looked away again, this time toward the muddle of the band's equipment. "They make each other happy," he said at last.

"It's not that easy, either. They make each other angry and sad, too. If they don't, then it doesn't go as deep as love."

After a long and thoughtful pause, he said, "Were you in love with me?"

"Not... really," she said finally, and knew it was true.

"Well, that's something solid to go on, at least." He laughed again, with barely a lungful of air. "After all those d.a.m.n songs, I thought I ought to understand either love or death. And I'd rather study love."

Eddi wanted to say something comforting, but the conversation made her nervous. She found herself waiting for w.i.l.l.y to suggest they try again, to ask if she couldn't forgive his mistakes and fall into his arms once more. She was completely unprepared for what he actually said.

It was, "And the phouka?"

Eddi stared. "What?"

"Do you love him?"

Her legs had turned either to stone or to Jell-O; the effect was the same. She wanted to stand up and couldn't. And whatever had done it to her legs had affected her mouth as well.

"You tell me that I can't judge by appearances. But if I had to gamble, I'd bet that the phouka is in love with you. And you were very different with me than you are with him." w.i.l.l.y spoke with the intensity so characteristic of him, and his green eyes searched hers as if hunting through them for the truth. "Tell me what all that means."

Her legs did work, after all; she got up and paced to the windows and back. "If you were just a G.o.dd.a.m.n guitarist, I'd tell you to mind your own business."

w.i.l.l.y shrugged. "Maybe you ought to, anyway."

"Well, as long as you're feeling insightful, what should I do about him?" She heard the edge in her voice and regretted it.

"I think... what you did about me."

"Namely?"

His face looked young, innocent, and not at all human. "What you think is right."

The low sun cast hot bars of b.u.t.ter-colored light through the windows. Dust swung slowly through each beam.

"I'll try," Eddi said. She walked across the room to the door, making the dust motes leap and churn.

"Don't forget to lock up."

As she stepped out on the stairs, she heard his guitar begin again on "Geordie."

The phouka stood at the bottom of the stairs, his face turned up to her. His brown skin glowed copper in the late sun, and his eyes were round and dark and enormous. The look in them made her chest ache.

"Nothing amiss?" he said when she was close enough, and he could speak softly.

"I don't know. I don't think so." Which was the truth, after all. She hoped.

It wasn't easy to ride a motorcycle in a great deal of skirt. Eddi had tucked most of it under her knees or sat on it. But the two top layers slipped free, and the night wind caught them, until she and the phouka seemed to be riding in a levitating mist of sheer midnight blue, enhanced by the silver crescent moon and embroidered stars that spangled the chiffon.

"Where did you find this enchanting whimsy?" the phouka said at a stoplight, staring bemused at a drift of skirt across his knee.

"D'you like it?"

"Very much."

"You could try it on."

"Pestilent flower," he smiled.

"I found it at a vintage clothing store. I think it must have come from a dance company or something."

She was pleased that he liked it, and embarra.s.sed that she was pleased. "You said I should wear something I can dance in."

"Not precisely. I said you should wear something you like to dance in. I think highly of this velvet thing you're wearing on top, too." At that point the light changed, and it wasn't until the next stop sign that he could add, "But the low back-unfair of you, my primrose, decidedly. And me with one arm around your waist, and the other around your guitar."

She let the clutch out a little too fast, and the bike leaped away from the stop sign. "I beg your pardon, I do." He laughed next to her ear. "You needn't toss me into the street. I shall behave."

"Hah!" Eddi replied, but she wasn't sure he heard.

They were past the university campus, very close to Tower Hill Park. Something like stage fright scrabbled across Eddi's stomach. She had shared a battlefield with the creatures of Faerie, but nothing else.

She was the Angel of Death. What possible place could she have in their celebrating?

Tower Hill rose up from the middle of the park like a gem from its setting. Green-fire lace edged the sidewalk and the curbing. Inside that barrier Eddi could see lights in subtle hues, and mist like colored veiling lit from within. Each tree was outlined in luminous gold; each leaf was a pale green lamp. At the summit the witch-hat tower that gave the park its name rose against the night-blue sky, and each of the arched, gla.s.sless windows around the top gleamed with faint silver.

"Good... G.o.d," Eddi gasped. She found she'd pulled over and stopped the bike, which was probably wise. "What the h.e.l.l do the neighbors think?"

The phouka laughed. "Silly primrose. The hill is dark and quiet tonight-not even lovers abroad. And if any should venture by, the place will have no appeal for them."

"And I can see it all." She turned suddenly to the phouka. "Or is all of that illusion?"

"No. It's quite real. Tonight, the dark is illusion." His voice was charged with something she couldn't identify. She revved the bike and swung out from the curb, toward the glittering hill.

Eddi pulled in to the curb on Malcolm Avenue between the park and an old school. "Can we cross that?" she asked, nodding at the green border.

"Come and see," the phouka replied. She followed him across the sidewalk.

Now that she was closer, Eddi saw that the barrier of light was not the same as the one that had circled Minnehaha Falls. That one had been a curtain of deep emerald. These were dancing flames of delicate golden green, with faint lavender showing at the edges. The phouka set down her guitar case and dropped to one knee before the barrier. With a murmured word, he touched a stone that lay just outside the line.

The blaze sank and drew back, like courtiers bowing and withdrawing before a king. They stood at the foot of a path that climbed the hill in front of them.

"O most admir'd of mortals," the phouka said, grinning up at her. "If it please you?"

"Silly nit," she said. She took his hand and pulled him to his feet, and inside the barrier of light. It leaped up again behind him.

He looked shy suddenly, which made her feel, unaccountably, the same. His hand was warm in hers, the skin very smooth. She let go of it. "So," she said quickly, "you said you'd change when we got here."

"What would you like me to become?" he said, blandly innocent.

"Hah hah. Dressed up."

"Ah. Turn your back then, my sweet."

After a moment, she did. The taffeta layer of her skirt whispered coolly against her calves in the night breeze, and strands of her hair patted her face. Moonlight lit the slope before her, and streetlights, and a certain lambency of the gra.s.s blades themselves. She felt weightless.

"Very well," the phouka said carefully, and she turned around.

He stood across the path from her, his chin up, his hands playing unconsciously with a blade of gra.s.s.

He was transformed. No, he was still himself. But to say only that he'd changed his clothes-it wouldn't explain his air of elegance, or his sudden reserve.

His coat was of dark green brocade, embroidered with flowers and strange creatures in dim, subtle colors. It looked like a garden seen at night. The sleeves had deep turned-back cuffs of black, ornamented with silver b.u.t.tons. He wore it open, over a black waistcoat and tiers of heavy white lace at his throat.

More lace spilled out from under the cuffs and frothed over his fingers, where the silver of rings glittered.

His pants were black satin, close-fitting and embroidered with silver down one outside seam.

He moved his head abruptly, and light flashed off silver in one earlobe. For a moment he seemed some haughty stranger. Then she recognized the nervousness in him, and he was once again her phouka.

"Gorgeous," she said softly, as if he were an animal she didn't want to startle. "If you'd worn that on the way over, we'd have a trail of broken hearts behind us."

He laughed, and ducked his head. "Is that a very long way of saying I'm conspicuous? That's why I waited, you know."

"Since when have you cared about being conspicuous?"

"Well, I don't, then. I'd rather be gorgeous." He offered her his arm. They went up the hill together, through groves of young trees with leaves that rang like windchimes.

The path divided, and they took the lower, right-hand one that circled the hill. Eddie heard voices, laughter, music from around the gra.s.sy shoulder, and all her earlier doubts and suspicions returned. She stopped beside a retaining wall of railroad ties. "Phouka."

She wasn't sure what he'd heard in her voice, but he turned to her immediately and lifted an eyebrow.

"What am I going to find when I get around that corner?"

"There are no nasty surprises lying in wait for you, sweet. We are under a truce."

"I don't mean those kind of surprises. Why should I be invited to this party? How are they"-she nodded up the hill-"going to treat me?"

The phouka sat on the retaining wall. "Are you afraid of them?" he asked her, not as if he believed it.

"No. But if I were one of the Seelie Court, I'd spit in my face. Come on, Phouka," Eddi said, when he continued puzzled, "I'm the girl who makes it possible for them all to die in battle."

"Yes, you are. We sought you out and made you part of Faerie that you might do so." He ran a hand through his hair and smiled at her. "You've set me a devilish task, my primrose. We are never easily ex- plained. We do not live in the past, yet we can hold a grudge for an unimaginably long time. We despise mortals, and we revere them. Is it enough for you if I tell you that it is no more than your right to be here, that no one will think it odd, that you will have a very good time, and that those around you will do likewise?"

She studied his face. He was happy, she decided, happiness unalloyed with worry or mischief or bitterness. Given the circ.u.mstances, she hadn't seen that mood on him lately. "Will you?"

He blinked. "Will I what?"

"Have a good time, dummy. Are you here as a bodyguard, or a guest?"

"Oh, a guest, certainly," he grinned. Then he looked quickly down. "Of course, if you would prefer that I remain near you, I would not object-merely as a courtesy, you understand."

She watched as he nudged a pebble with the toe of one glossy black boot. "Good idea," she said finally.

"I don't know a lot of people here."

He raised his head and gave her a brilliant look, and Eddi decided that neither one of them was fooling the other.

They rounded the shoulder of the hill. The sloping land before them was full of color and soft lights.

Eddie saw pinpoints of brightness like candles in the branches of shrubs and trees. There were the tinted mists she'd seen from the street, too; they were spangled as if with fireflies, and drifted lazily between the tree trunks or tangled in the leaves. The trees themselves shone faintly. There was a bonfire laid and ready to light in the middle of the open area. Around it, and under the trees, the revelers had gathered.

Eddi had forgotten the wild variety of the hosts of Faerie. She saw a tall, spindly figure that might have been a close relative of birch trees; its swallowtail coat was too short for it, and its broad-brimmed hat too large. There was a little creature dressed in a musk ox pelt, or perhaps its own hair. There was a slender naked woman with blue-black skin and white hair to her shoulders, s.h.i.+ning whiteless eyes, and long ears like a fox.

"Someday," Eddi murmured, "you should meet my family."