War for the Oaks (31 page)

Stuart was gone, the roof and the street and the traffic, all gone, and she hung above the trees of Loring Park like a kite. She saw the orange globes of the park lights, and the dark glitter of the lake, patterned over with the fluttering brocade of the tree branches.

The phouka lay on the lakeshore. He was asleep, lying on his side with his knees drawn up a little and his head on his arms. His dark skin seemed almost luminous under the moon and lamplight. He looked young and fragile, not at all like the wretched nuisance he was
when awake. She felt a deep pain somewhere under her breastbone at the sight of him.

Then she looked down and saw the gray shaft quivering in her chest, the blood welling dark and staining the cloth around it. The archer stepped out of the shadow of the park building, his skin the gray of his arrow, his staring eyes milky white, a grin baring his many sharp teeth. The phouka was not asleep. He was dead, and so was she.

. . . Which brought her wide-eyed awake with her heart banging against her ribs. She rolled over and looked at the clock. Nine
A.M
. Too early to get up, especially when she could remember most of the hours of the night. But her thoughts rattled like a teletype and wouldn't let her sleep. She flung the covers back finally and grabbed her robe. She would go out to the kitchen, get something to drink. Then she would be able to sleep. And if the phouka asked her what she was doing up so early, well, she'd tell him to drop—she'd tell him to shut up.

The light slanted strangely through the living room windows. It was strange to her, anyway; she was so rarely up when the sun was still low. She didn't see the phouka at first. Then she found him, in dogshape, asleep in front of the door to the hall. His pointed black ears flicked forward, as if acknowledging her presence, but his eyes stayed closed.
At least somebody gets to sleep in this morning
, she thought. For a moment she watched his sides rise and fall with his breathing. Then she turned back toward the kitchen.

She heard a creak, as if from a cupboard door, and a soft, rhythmic thumping. Eddi crossed the room softly and inched forward until she could peer around the kitchen door.

Above the sink, a dish towel writhed across the surface of a plate. The plate then skimmed toward the open cupboard like a frisbee, and Eddi clenched her teeth. It slowed and settled on the stack with a faint click. By that time, the towel was at work on a glass.

Her largest bowl wobbled on the counter, rocked by the fury of the spoon flailing the batter inside. The carafe from the coffeemaker skidded across the countertop and ducked under a stream of cold water from the kitchen tap. The sponge mop drag-raced down the floor. The curtains shook themselves vigorously, and the resulting dust gathered itself up and puffed out through the kitchen window.

In the midst of it all was Hairy Meg. She was naked, bandy-legged, profoundly ugly, and full of a deep and obvious contentment. Her pose
was martial: arms crossed over her breasts, long chin thrust out, long knobby nose pointing like a finger wherever she turned her head.

Mickey Mouse in
Fantasia,
with all those brooms
, Eddi thought. She watched in awe, forgetting that she was in hiding. When she remembered, she wasn't sure what to do next. She could clear her throat . . . no. That seemed like a good way to get the coffee carafe broken. Perhaps it would be better just to sneak back to the bedroom. She leaned slowly back, away from the kitchen door. . . .

And bumped into something hard and soft at once, and warm. Surprise pushed the air out of her lungs and made a squeak of it, the tiniest little sound. In the kitchen, there was sudden, earsplitting silence.

"Shhh!" said the phouka, next to her ear. That, too, was probably audible in the kitchen. He was in human form again, blue-jeaned and bare-chested, his hands clasped behind him and a grin on his handsome dark face.

"You could have tapped me on the shoulder or something."

"You would have jumped and squeaked," he said smugly. "Just as you did, in fact."

"You—you little—"

The phouka looked over her shoulder. Warily, she looked behind her.

Hairy Meg stood in the kitchen door, her martial look fixed on Eddi and the phouka.

"Lover's quarrel," the phouka told her.

"I will
not
hit you," Eddi muttered, glaring at him. "It is beneath my dignity."

Meg looked unimpressed. "I'll no' be spied at. Come in, or be about tha business." Then she turned and stomped back into the kitchen.

The noises began again. Eddi shrugged and went to stick her head in the doorway. She hesitated to do more than that. She watched a box of currants hurl itself like a suicide from a cupboard shelf, stop with a lurch above the mixing bowl, and dump its contents into the dough.

"May I ask you a question?" Eddi said, with caution.

Hairy Meg made a horrible face, but said nothing. Eddi decided at last that this was not meant to be discouraging.

"I won't, if it would offend you, or if it's bad manners," Eddi added. "The only things I know about . . . your people are from the phouka.
And I don't think he's a good example." She stole a look back over her shoulder, but didn't see him.

Meg snorted. "Proper amaudhan, that 'n'." Eddi, having no notion what that was, did not reply. "Tha'll get nobbut nonsense out o' him, for all he means nae ill."

Eddi watched the mixing bowl tip over on a floured countertop. The dough wriggled and stretched out a little; then it folded over onto itself and stretched again, and folded, on and on.

Would she truly get nothing but nonsense out of the phouka? She couldn't be sure, but she didn't think his explanation of matters in the Seelie Court was nonsense. On other subjects, perhaps—but he was so changeable, how could she tell? He showed her a multitude of faces. Were any of them true?

"Nay, never mind, lass," said Hairy Meg gruffly. "Th' had summat to ask, then."

Eddi looked quickly into that wrinkled brown face. Meg was scowling at the counter, where the dough was dividing itself into eight neat ovals. "It's not really important, I guess. But . . ."

Meg tapped her foot.

"I don't . . . I don't knock things off the counter anymore. Carla came over to dinner last week, and I drained the pasta without spilling it all down the sink. She tried the sauce and asked if I'd sent out for it. I used to burn myself in this kitchen maybe twice a week, and it hasn't happened for the longest time." Eddi took a deep breath. "Is that on account of you?"

By the end of that speech, Meg was staring at her, and the lumps of dough sat still. "A' course it's tae my account, ye great ninny," Meg said at last. "I'm a
brownie."

"That's . . . what brownies do?"

"Nay, lass, we hang arse-up in gorse bushes, whistlin' pop'lar songs. Whisht, now, take tha speiring tae yon silly phouka, he's a fancy for it. I've work tae do."

"Yes, ma'am," Eddi said meekly, and backed out of the kitchen. As she did, the little mounds of currant-studded dough rolled onto a baking sheet, like children rolling down a hill.

The phouka was sitting on the couch, slid low down with his feet on the trunk. He smiled at Eddi and patted the cushion beside him. It seemed like an intimate gesture, to sit next to him. She sat on the couch and tried to pretend that she hadn't thought about it first.

"Did you know it was Meg?" she asked him.

"Your brownie?"

Eddi shrugged off a little irritation. "She's not mine."

"And why not?"

"Because she doesn't belong to me, for heaven's sake!"

"Oh, but she does, in the sense that she would use the word. Or perhaps 'belong with' would express it better." The phouka smiled, as if at a thought that pleased him. "It's the custom of brownies, in the common way of things, to attach themselves to a household or a person. Of course, your situation cannot be called quite in the common way. But the effect remains the same."

Eddi frowned at the floor. "Do you mean she thinks she owes me this? I saved her life, maybe, but I didn't buy her."

He didn't answer, and she looked up at him. He was wearing another of his inscrutable faces. "All of this is more amusing than you can know, sweet," he said at last. "No, you've not bought her, though the Folk understand fair exchange, and we've an obsession with paying our debts to the penny, meeting the obligations of favors and barter. What we're bad at is gratitude. It is a cultural phenomenon of many parts, some of them contradictory. In a world where each word is powerful, still the words 'thank you' are not thought sufficient to cancel a debt. We have no concept of giving without thought or need of return."

The phouka fell silent. He seemed absorbed, as if his explanation continued in his head and he was listening to it.

"What does this have to do with Meg?" Eddi asked him, but gently.

"Ah. We've lived close to humankind for long and long. Things of which we cannot conceive sometimes become part of us anyway. Sometimes we find ourselves with an obligation that has no clear value, with a dreadful itchy feeling of indebtedness that cannot be bartered away. We feel
grateful
. And having no reliance on those two precious human words, we each deal with that feeling in whatever way suits best." He smiled then. "I believe Meg is dealing with hers."

She found herself looking into his black eyes, unnervingly close. A stillness fell over her, and over him as well, it seemed; the smile slid from his lips, and she saw the quick motion of his chest as he drew a breath.

Eddi remembered another such moment, under a bridge at Minnehaha Falls. She found herself wanting to ask,
And how do you deal
with your gratitude?
The answer that occurred to her was good and logical, at least by the crackbrained logic the phouka swore by. Why should such a clever insight be so depressing?

She stood up abruptly, and was careful not to look at the phouka as she did it. "I have to call Carla," she said. It was too early in the day to call her, but she didn't think the phouka knew it.

So she told Carla's answering machine that Carla should call her back. Then she hung up the phone, and stood for a moment with her hand on the receiver. The mood in the room had changed.
I ought to say something. We should iron it out now
. She went to the bedroom to get dressed instead.

She put on jeans and a sweatshirt, and brushed her hair. Her face looked pale and unfinished in the bathroom mirror. "Tough," she told it. "Nobody you have to impress."

She sat on the bed and stared out the window. Then she took the Hoffman from its stand and cradled it in her lap, put it in tune, and played a few careful, random chords.
So these are the hands that make people dance. Hah
. An arpeggio spilled from her fingers, as if of its own volition. She followed the notes around for a while, until she realized that she was staying in a minor key.

Why should it bother you if he's playing at being in love? God knows he does it better than Willy did. Hell, he does a better job than Stuart, and for a while at least, Stuart really was in love
. She chopped out a flurry of barre chords down the neck.
Is it that you wish he weren't playing?

She put the guitar down and left the bedroom.

The phouka was leaning by the window. Something in his pose said that it was only a rest from pacing.

All that was left of Meg were the currant buns in the kitchen wrapped for warmth in a cotton towel; a pot of coffee; and a drainer full of clean dishes. Or at least, that was all of Meg that Eddi could see. Did she leave the apartment? If so, she didn't seem to do it by the front door.

Eddi gathered up plates, the buns, and the butter dish, and took them out to the table. The phouka stayed at the window. After another trip to the kitchen for the coffee, she sat down and began to butter a bun. "Breakfast," she said.

He sat down across from her, but ignored the food. Instead he studied the ceiling, both hands braced lightly against the table edge. "It may be," he said, "that you
should
have a new guard dog."

Eddi found herself staring at the butter knife in her hand. She set it down on the edge of her plate; it made a little ringing sound on the china. "Why?" she said.

"I've done what I meant to do," he replied, quite calm. "I've brought you as far as this, and given you all the advantages I can. Perhaps it's time you had a more . . . comfortable bodyguard."

"Comfortable. You have someone in mind?"

He looked at her warily, possibly warned by her tone. "Nooo. But there are denizens of Faerie who are less provoking than I am, if only a little."

They stared at each other across the table. "I suppose, if there's someplace you'd rather be . . ." Eddi said carefully.

"One place is much like another," he said, but she saw him bite his lip before he spoke.

After a long, uncomfortable moment, Eddi asked him, "Do you
want
to leave?"

He closed his eyes. "No."

A little knot of tension untied itself in her shoulders. "Then shut up and eat," she said, and handed him a currant bun.

He took it from her as if it was part of some private, solemn joke.

Eddi turned off Twenty-fifth onto Garfield and pulled up to the curb.

"Pleasant," the phouka said, looking around at the boulevard trees, the bits of lawn, and the shabby-genteel old houses. "More so, I regret to say, than your neighborhood." He must have noticed the set of her lips, because he added quickly, "But I'm very fond of your neighborhood, certainly."

"Well, good, because I can't afford this one."

The phouka smoothed back his wind-tossed hair with both hands. "Does Carla have more money than you do?"

"She drives cabs part-time."

The phouka frowned and cocked his head. "Cabs?"

"Cabs are . . . cars you pay somebody else to drive you around in."

"Oh. When I think of cabs, I think of horse-drawn conveyances for hire."

"You do?" Eddi said.

"I do."

"How old
are
you?"

The question startled him. "Earth and Air. There are times when
you are no more comfortable a companion than I am. The answer to that serves no conceivable purpose, and I refuse to give it to you."