Тэд Уильямс - The War of the Flowers

"Welcome, Theo Vilmos. It is good of you to come. I had feared you would not be well enough, and this would be a poor farewell feast without the most important guest."

"But… well, to be honest, I'm not a hundred percent certain I'm going back."

"Ah." Button sat down and directed one of the goblins next to him to pour tea for Theo. The person in question looked more like a warrior than a servant, but he did as he was asked.

When Theo had taken a few sips for courtesy's sake and allowed his dish to be piled with various savories — he had a quick if covert look to make sure none of them were field mouse-based — he leaned forward. "Where are Primrose and the others?"

"Caradenus is in mourning," Button explained. "He begged to be excused."

"He must have loved his sister very much."

Button looked at him for a long moment, then nodded. "Yes. He did."

Theo said, "I'm amazed to be alive. I'm surprised so many of us are. Did you know it would work this way?"

For the first time, Button showed a little of his old, sly self. "If I told you I did, would you promise to tell that story to all who ask you? Then history will remember me as a genius of tactics — another Lord Rose. But to be truthful, hem , no. I hoped. Primrose and I made the best plan we could. We knew the goblins would fight after the stick was broken — that my people's anger was too hot to be contained once the treaty was ended. But did we know for certain that others would come out, that the streets would be full of discontent and rage? No. We could only do what was best and hope."

"But you did know that grims could kill dragons."

Again, Button smiled. "I knew that they could, yes, but even that was what might be called a gamble, and everyone knows that although we goblins love gambling, we are not always good at it." He turned to the goblin on his left, whose costume bristled with feathers and beadwork jewelry. "Otter, when you lived in the hills you killed a dragon, yes?"

The goblin looked at Theo, then rubbed his long nose. "Yes. My people called me 'Wormslayer.' "

"How big was it?" Button asked.

The one called Otter thought for a moment, then spread his arms wide. "Wings like this," he said. "One of the big ones." He went back to his solemn chewing.

"That would mean Otter's famous trophy was… hem … about ten or twelve feet long." Button laughed. "So you see, even the grims had little experience with the great worms. Again, we could only hope that arrows steeped in poison in their eyes and soft throats would have the same effect that they did on the monsters' much smaller cousins."

"My God! They were trying that for the first time?"

"War is often that way," said Button. "Now, eat. I would ask you more questions about what you heard and saw, what happened to you. Particularly of the Remover. The little I have heard is very surprising."

"But you're not eating."

"I am fasting," the goblin explained. "But the food is very good. Eat. You have been a long time asleep and I think you need it."

Theo really was very hungry, and although many of the tastes were unfamiliar, the food was good. As he answered Button's questions, struggling to remember the order in which things had happened, having to backtrack several times when he realized he had left out an important detail, he realized that goblin food and goblin music, just to name two unquestionably foreign things, were beginning to seem almost ordinary to him.

"So you yourself were the key," Button said at last.

"Just a tool."

"No. That was Hellebore's great error. He thought of you that way, but it was your mind and your heart that broke him. Now I will ask you a question, just as you asked me. Did you know that the irrha would take the child if it could not take you?"

Theo shrugged. "Like you said yourself — I hoped. I didn't have much time to think about it, really. I just remembered Dowd saying something about how a changeling and the mortal child he gets switched with have some kind of bond. I didn't really understand it, but there weren't a lot of other options. Also, I suddenly realized that I'd rather have one of those water-women get me than that thing."

"It would have been a quick death by fire or a slow death beneath the water," Button said thoughtfully. "They say that those taken by water-spirits come to love their captors before they die." He went silent for a moment and then shook his head. "There has been too much talk about death. Tell me more about your world. This is a feast, after all! I have been too much in the company of my own people lately, however much I love them. Tell me tales of your world, which has so recently escaped a terrible fate that it likely did not even know existed."

"I hope so — I'd hate to go back and find myself in the middle of the new Dark Ages or something." Theo paused. "Just one more question for you, if you don't mind — something I still don't understand. You said the goblins were ready to fight back, and it seems like the only thing keeping them under the thumb of those Flower lords was the treaty stick. Why hadn't anyone broken it before? Why were you the first?"

Button gave him a quizzical look. "Do you really want another goblin tale? Very well — I cannot refuse you tonight. I will try to make it a swift one. The answer is deceptively simple, Theo. First of all, most goblins did not know where the stick was kept. We supposed it would be hidden in some deep and well-guarded vault. It did not occur to us that the Flower lords knew so little about us, or cared so little for the danger we posed to them, that they did not understand only our sacred word bound us to them — our ancestors' promise in the form of the treaty stick. Primrose himself told me where it was. It was, hem , merely a curiosity to him, something he had stumbled across in the dusty back rooms of the Parliamentary Museum as he pursued his studies in justice and history. When he mentioned it to me, years after he had seen it, I realized exactly what it was and began to plan."

"But somebody must have known — there must have been goblin janitors or somebody . Why didn't anyone ever take it before? Why were you the one who broke it?"

Button was silent for a moment. "I suppose it is a bit shameful, in a way, that no one before me dared to do this thing. Yes, there may have been some that knew, but it was also true that no one wanted to face the death that would result from breaking that treaty."

Theo didn't understand. The goblins seemed a bit more gung-ho than that: it was hard to imagine them enduring servitude merely out of fear that many of them would die in a rebellion. He would never forget the wild warriors he had seen in Strawflower Square, calmly stringing their bows as the flailing black shadows came down on them from the sky.

"Enough of this," Button said suddenly. "I invoke my privilege as guest of honor. Tell me the tales of your world, Theo. Tell me of your life. Make me laugh."

"I'll do my best." He shrugged off the thoughts of war and worms, tried to think of the things he missed about the world to which it seemed he would soon be returning. He wondered if Button would understand why Johnny Battistini trying to parallel park a stolen ice cream wagon while ripped out of his mind on mushrooms was funny.

He told him the story. Button understood, or seemed to.

It seemed to be nearly midnight when he finally got up to say goodbye. Button also rose, and hugged him, a strange, wiry embrace that was not quite like anything Theo had experienced.

"I will miss you, Theo. It has been good to know you."

"Well, don't change my address in your Rolodex quite yet. I'm still thinking it over."

"Ah." Button took his hand for a moment, fixed him with those slotted yellow eyes. "I feel sure that whatever you do, you will, hem , take a little goblin music with you always." He let go of Theo's hand. "Go safely, Theo Vilmos."