War For The Oaks Part 35

At the corner of her vision she saw a familiar silver-gray, and turned quickly to look. One of the long- snouted, many-toothed creatures, a gray-skinned Unseelie fey of the sort she most feared stalked through the throng. No one challenged it; no one spoke to it at all. It continued on toward the other side of the park.

"They're here, too?" Eddi found enough voice to say.

"It is a truce, my primrose. And they are as much of Faerie as I am." But Eddi thought it made him nervous, too.

Then Carla loped toward them out of the crowd, with Dan following behind. "'Bout time!" Carla crowed and hugged her. "You look swell!"

"So do you," Eddi said. Carla wore a red strapless dress that looked splendid with her dark hair and eyes.

Dan had found a black tuxedo somewhere, and a formal white bow tie. He wore them with a Hawaiian s.h.i.+rt. "Funky," Eddi a.s.sured him.

"Not as funky as Rover here," Carla said, eyeing the phouka's face with a little grin.

"Well, I like it," Eddi told her.

"Thank you," the phouka said gravely.

"Hedge is here," Carla said. "And my G.o.d, so is everything else." She turned to Eddi. "Some of these people are... oh, never mind. I guess you already know. But my G.o.d, Eddi-!"

Dan gave Carla's shoulders a squeeze. "She means this is some great s.h.i.+t. Weird, though. It's like there's something in the air-like you could get bombed just from breathing."

He was right, Eddie realized. It was as if the alt.i.tude had changed, as if the air were thinner, purer, intoxicating.

"Have you been here long?" the phouka asked Dan.

"Nah. Long enough to dump the equipment." He pointed at a heap of things under a bush-a remarkably small heap, for Dan. "It won't get ripped off, will it?"

The phouka glanced at Eddi, an almost penitent look. "No. Whatever our temptations, we don't steal from our guests. We also do not steal from each other, so if no one objects, I'll leave the guitar there as well. Then I'll present you to the Lady."

The Queen of Faerie. Eddi remembered her, in all her icy rage, at Minnehaha Falls. The memory sent her hurrying after the phouka. "Do you have to?" she said, softly enough that Carla and Dan wouldn't hear her.

The phouka said gently, "She won't eat you, dear one, truly."

"Says you. The last time I saw her, she was thinking seriously about it."

"Oh, then." He waved the suggestion away. "I've told you, we've no taste for living in the past."

"And you hold a grudge forever."

"Havers, as Meg would say. What if she is still nursing a sense of ill-usage? She'll not do anything about it tonight, sweet. Besides-" He set her guitar case down, turned to her, and put a fingertip under her chin.

"You may attack royalty, or deny its will, but you must never, never ignore it."

"Makes her mad, huh?"

The phouka laughed. "On that heartening note..." He turned to Carla and Dan. "We go to meet the Queen of Faerie. Be polite, circ.u.mspect, and above all, follow my lead."

Carla and Dan raised their eyebrows at each other. "Lead on, boss," Carla said at last.

They threaded their way through the revelers and around the bottom of the hill. They emerged on the side of the park that faced University Avenue. Here the land was flat and open, the gra.s.s still lush even after weeks of summer heat. There was a game of something in progress; two teams of the Folk were engaged in what seemed a cross between horseshoes and field hockey, played with enormous stones.

Yelling was apparently part of the game.

Before them, a crabapple tree stood in a smokelike, fragrant cloud of blossom. A bank of spirea bloomed ghostly white beyond it. "Wait a minute," Carla muttered, "those quit flowering a month ago."

"Sshhh," Eddi warned. The Lady stood beneath the crabapple, flanked by her glittering court. They were watching the game. After one particularly long throw, the queen smiled and made some comment. Clear, breaking-crystal laughter rang out from the group around her. She wore a close-fitting, one-shouldered satin gown, barely tinted the color of new willow leaves. Her blood-red hair was loose, and it fell to her knees. Against that backdrop her shoulders and bare arms were white as new-cut marble. And her face, so inhumanly beautiful in all its curves and angles... w.i.l.l.y's was a copy of it, but a copy several generations removed. A little humanity had slipped into his face, if only in his expressions.

They were perhaps ten feet from the gathered court when the phouka dropped to one knee and bowed his head. Eddi followed him, her dark skirts spreading out around her like water. Carla and Dan, after a moment's surprise, also knelt. Eddi heard the hiss of moving satin. The hem of the queen's gown and the tips of her embroidered shoes appeared at the top of Eddi's vision, but she waited for the lovely, cold voice before she raised her head.

"Eddi McCandry. You are welcome among us."

You couldn't tell it from listening to you, Eddi thought wryly, but only said, "That pleases me, Lady."

Did that white face thaw a bit? "Introduce your companions to us."

Eddie was sure she knew their names already. "Carla DiAmato, Lady, an old friend and my favorite drummer. And Dan Roch.e.l.le, keyboard player for Eddi and the Fey."

The queen's lips thinned a little at that. "Presumptuous, certainly, to name yourselves so."

"We didn't intend any disrespect, Lady," Eddi said. In the face of the queen's opposition, she was suddenly delighted with the band's name. "And even w.i.l.l.y didn't seem to think there was anything wrong with it."

"w.i.l.l.y Silver," the queen said gently, looking down her perfect nose, "has not always conducted himself as we would like."

The phouka moved a little at Eddi's side; she couldn't tell if it was impatience or nerves. "Lady," Eddi began, "if you mean losing the horse, he-"

"This is too solemn a topic for a festive night. We shall have dancing soon-may we ask that you and your friends lead off the music, Eddi McCandry?"

"We'd be pleased to," Eddi said, since there was no real reason to refuse.

"Very well." The queen turned one white hand up, managing to indicate the entire park with the gesture. "Partake freely of all that pleases you here, and let your friends do likewise."

Eddi swallowed a "thank you," and said simply, "We will."

The phouka rose, and offered a hand to help her up. "Back up three paces and bow," he whispered in her ear. She shot a quick warning look at Dan and Carla, and stepped backward. It might not have mat- tered; the queen had turned away. But her attendants still watched, if surrept.i.tiously.

Whatever they did, it must have been good enough. After the three paces, they might not have existed, for all the attention the queen's court paid them. They headed back the way they came.

"Holy s.h.i.+t," Carla whispered. "That really was the Queen of Faerie. Wasn't it?"

The phouka shushed her. His face was full of wicked delight.

"What are you so pleased about?" Eddi grumbled under her breath.

"Later, my sweet. No, don't look daggers at me, I promise to tell you, but later. For now, I'd like a bit of refreshment. Courtliness is dry work."

In a grove of honeysuckle they found the beer, dark and creamy-headed as stout, in a tapped wooden keg. There was red wine, too, with a sharp, smoky fragrance; mead the color of amber; and other things that Eddi resolved to ask the phouka about later. He produced four silver cups from, apparently, nowhere, and Eddi filled hers with the beer.

"Common folk's refreshment," he teased her.

"Well, when all's said and done I'm pretty common."

"You don't look it. And I didn't mean to raise your hackles. I don't, in fact, mean to raise them at all tonight, though I may have set myself a hopeless task."

She swallowed some beer. It was bittersweet, rich enough to make a meal of, and dark in the bottom of the silver cup. Dark as the phouka's eyes. The notion startled her and she looked up, to find those eyes on her.

"Mortals were warned against this, once upon a tiine," he said softly. "Take no food or drink from Faerie hands. If you do, no other food will please you, and you will pine away for it and perish."

"Is it true?"

"You trust me for the truth, don't you?" He wore a curious twist of a smile. "Strange. And not entirely pleasant. To answer your question then, no, not literally, but there may be some poetic truth in it. What will you do, a.s.suming you live through all of this, when our war is done and we withdraw from your life?"

Eddi took a deep breath and couldn't, for a moment, let it out. "I... hadn't thought about it."

"How odd. When first you made my acquaintance, you could think of nothing else."

He turned his cup in both hands, but didn't seem to be looking at it. The eldritch light of magic and the moon polished his hair and face, and brought the garden in his brocade coat to life.

"That was a while ago," Eddi said, feeling strangled.

He raised his eyes, and the mischief was back in them. "Time flies when you're having fun."

"Jerk." She swallowed some beer, and it helped break up the last of the lump in her throat. "Now what were you so pleased about, earlier?"

"After your audience with the Lady?"

Eddi nodded.

"Well, my sweet. Remember what pa.s.sed, and tell me whom she chose to talk to." He let her think that over for a moment before he said, "Once she would have spoken almost solely to me. Low though my rank may be, I'm at least fey. Tonight she spoke to you, as she might to the emissary of another ruler, and I do not think she knew it herself. But those around her marked it, you may be sure."

Eddi frowned at him. "Which means what?"

"That the Queen of Faerie recognizes you as a power, and has spoken to you with respect. Others will follow her lead."

"Huh. That and a quarter will buy me a gumball." But she was impressed. She turned to look for Carla and Dan, and didn't find them.

"They've gone, I think, to unpack instruments," he said in response to her look. "There's a dancing mood growing on us all, and they may have felt it."

"And do you feel like dancing, too?"

"Oh," he said, raising an eyebrow, "I might."

The phouka offered her his arm, and they headed down the slope toward the unlit bonfire.

Dan had brought a Casio CZ series portable and an amp to play it through. Carla had a koba.s.sa. "It's the only hand percussion in the house," she said ruefully. She gave it a quick slap-and-slide, rattle-and-hiss across her hand. "I could have brought the snare, I guess, but that just makes me wish for the whole kit."

Eddi shook her head. "Violent Femmes used to use a washtub."

"I don't have a washtub. Maybe I'll beat on your head, instead."

"It's a thought. I'm not using it for anything."

Carla looked curious, but Eddi turned quickly to unpack her guitar. Dan gave her an E to tune to. Now why did I say that? she wondered. I didn't mean it. Did I? She remembered suddenly, unbidden, the phouka saying that love made mortals stupid. d.a.m.n phouka.

She looked up to find Hedge standing beside her. He wore a black T-s.h.i.+rt and clean black jeans- dressed up, for him. At his side was a big-bellied acoustic ba.s.s guitar. The finish was dark with age, the fret-board worn, and she knew that this was the instrument that had taught him to draw such fearsome music out of the Steinberger. She smiled at him. He seemed surprised by that; cautiously, he smiled back.

"Only one short, then," Eddi said. "Where's w.i.l.l.y?"

Carla shrugged. "I haven't seen him, but that doesn't mean he's not here."

Eddi looked at the phouka, but he, too, shrugged. "Well, never mind. If he's here, he'll show up when the music starts."

As they moved closer to the bonfire, Eddi muttered to the phouka, "Any idea what might be keeping him?"

The phouka's expression was indecipherable. "None."

"If he's still sulking in the rehearsal s.p.a.ce..."

"Is that what he was doing this afternoon? No, never mind. That's no business of mine." His brows drew down for a moment, then his face was impa.s.sive again.

"He wasn't sulking. That wasn't fair of me. He's pretty confused right now, and he's not used to it, that's all."

The phouka walked with his hands in his pockets, unnecessarily interested in the turf. "I know you haven't... been keeping company with him. Not since May Day."

She wanted to laugh, though she wasn't amused; she wanted to snap at him, though she wasn't angry.

Balanced between extremes, her voice ended up with nothing much in it. "That's over. We're both content to leave it that way."

Beyond a quick, sharp look, he made no reply. But she found she felt better for having said it out loud.

Then she realized she was at one end of a roughly sketched semicircle of the Folk, with the wood for the bonfire at its center. As she watched, a man and woman of the Sidhe approached the piled branches.

The woman was one of the queen's attendants, the one with the white-blond veil of hair. The two caught each other's hands across the unlit wood, right hand to right, left to left, and drew them close together in an interlaced knot of flesh and bone. Then, slowly, they lowered their joined hands. Magic gathered in them-Eddi could feel it, could hear the throbbing silence of it.

They touched the wood. Blue-white fire ran the length of each branch and leaped up. Cheering split the silence, from every fey throat in the circle.

Across the fire the Queen of Faerie turned toward her. In the light of the flames, her face looked warmer, softer, more beautiful still. The Lady nodded, and Eddi knew they were requested to play.

With her eyes, she gathered Hedge and Dan and Carla. She set nervous fingers to the neck of her guitar, and launched them all into a song.

She played the wailing, sliding opening notes of Dire Straits'"Solid Rock," and Carla smacked the koba.s.sa against her hand in half time. Then Dan pounded piano out of the Casio, Carla put the rhythm into high gear, and Hedge walked a ba.s.s line with gorgeous style. The circle became ragged almost immediately with the motion of the dance.

As the lyrics rolled off her lips, Eddi almost laughed aloud. They were about living for things that were solid and true. Around her, fantasies and illusions circled and stamped and spun, in glimpses of flying hair around uncanny faces, extravagant motion of inhuman arms and legs. She threw words at them as if daring them to ignore her.

Dan bounded out of the last chord into the opening riff of Men Without Hats' "The Safety Dance." A figure broke free of the dancers, a thin, foxy, red-haired boy. He pushed a large flat drum and a two- headed stick into Carla's hands, and disappeared into the mob again. "A bodhran!" Carla squeaked, and took up the beat happily, weaving the low thrumming voice of the drum into Hedge's ba.s.s.

It was the thin, intoxicating air; it was the moonlight, or the strong beer. Whatever it was, Eddi stood in the heart of the music and the night, and she knew it. She clapped out the beat, and watched her dancers pick it up. Hers. She pushed the guitar behind her and began to work them. She brought power up from her lungs, her diaphragm, put it in her voice, and sent that into every vibrating thing in the park.

"And we can act like we come from out of this world / Leave the real one far behind." She formed her lips and tongue and teeth around the words, made them mercilessly clear and full of meaning. "We can dance if we want to / We've got all your life and mine." Her mortal life and, now, theirs. There were worse things to do with a life than dance it away. She felt feverish, her head light and her skin p.r.i.c.kly.