Тэд Уильямс - The War of the Flowers

He had only gone a hundred paces or so when a fairy man he did not recognize emerged from the crowd of passersby and fell into step beside him. The newcomer was dark-haired, and of the same human-type as the Flower lords, but otherwise undistinguished. He kept his eyes down as he walked.

"I wanted to say good-bye," the stranger said. "And that I am sorry. I have done terrible things. I have much to think about."

Theo shook his head. Why did everyone know so much about his business? "I'm sorry, do I know you?"

The stranger smiled, still without looking Theo in the face. He had his shoulders hunched, as though he didn't want anyone to notice him, which was odd because he was already almost completely unremarkable. "You turned out to be quite clever, really — I admired what you did with the water-nymph. I don't think that was all just your true heritage coming out, either. There's something to be said for a mortal upbringing, after all — I'm beginning to think we're tougher than the fairies, in some ways. Are you called Theo Violet now, by the way?"

"Wait a second — who are you?" He grabbed the man by the shoulder, spun him around.

The man looked back at him, but even face-to-face he was still unfamiliar. The stranger's posture was that of someone ready to run away, but a sly little smile flickered around the edges of his mouth. "You haven't figured it out yet? Maybe I've given you too much credit."

"Dowd?" It seemed impossible, but suddenly he could hear the suggestion of that soft, strained voice coming from this far more ordinary throat. "But you're dead! I saw you die!"

"Come, Theo, that could have been a speech out of a Flash Gordon comic. You saw that body die. It's happened to me once before, as you know, and I survived it. Since then I've spent years trying to strengthen myself so I could eventually get into another, less… unpleasant… body than the Remover's. As it turned out, I needed every moment of that practice." He held out his arms like someone who had just performed an impressive conjuring trick — which, obviously, he had. "As my body died, I took refuge in one of Hellebore's guards. He wasn't a particularly nice man but I'm still not proud of forcing him out of his own flesh. The body and I were captured on the hilltop after Hellebore and the Terrible Child died — we were running away, of course — but we were let go after a few days. This fellow's been officially rehabilitated, you see, so I'm in the clear. There's no real guilt attached to being a foot soldier in the losing army, or even one of Nidrus Hellebore's private guard. So here I am. I think I'll head out to Ash or Birch, start over. Erephine is dead now, really dead. I have much to think about."

"I should turn you over to Caradenus Primrose — he's just back there. Or kill you myself!" Theo fought the overwhelming sense of unreality: this was the second time he had spoken with Eamonn Dowd, and both times it was after discovering the man was alive beyond all logic. "You helped to kill our baby. Me and Cat."

"There is nothing I can say except that I am sorry. Yes, I assisted Hellebore in delivering the spell. It was a madness that affected all I did, my desperate love and my anger at having been cheated. I think it has passed now. I certainly feel I see things more clearly. But perhaps that is just the effect of having a new body."

"I still can't let you walk away."

"Yes, you can, and in fact you will. Because if you don't, I'll be forced to take someone else's body to escape — not yours, but some innocent's. You won't stop me, no matter what you do. I will leap from body to body if I need to and many will die needlessly."

Theo stared at the stranger's face. He felt weary and sick. "So I have to let you go?"

"Yes, you do. In fact, I'm going now." The dark-haired fairy turned and walked away down a narrow street between rows of ramshackle dwellings, tents and lean-tos, a small thoroughfare crowded with fairy-folk of all shapes and sorts, talking, trading, living their lives. Within moments Eamonn Dowd was lost from sight among all the other refugees.

Poppy wasn't at the tent when Theo got back. He had been full of useful arguments, scads of convincing reasons why she should come with him back to the mortal world, but he suddenly found himself with nothing much to say and no one to say it to. In fact, he was stunned. Things had become altogether too strange. Dowd was dead but had come back. Mud Bug Button was dead and wasn't going to be making any reappearances. There lay the unfairness of life in a single nutshell, and it went pretty much the same way in Faerie as it did in the mortal world.

There's not much difference between the two when it comes to the important stuff — not really.

He sat for a long while in the doorway, staring out at the clouds and the play of light in the sky, listening to the racket of the camp's daily life. There seemed to be more children around than before, or at least they were being allowed to make more noise. Children always sound the same , he thought. No matter where they come from, what language they speak, whether they have fox-ears or yellow goat-eyes or whatever, they always sound the same .

It was a nice sound, he realized.

Good-bye, Button , he thought. I guess this is your epitaph — the sound of children playing. Goblin children, fairy children. There are worse things to leave behind .

Someone made a small sound and he looked up to find three faces looking down at him, one from a very great height. It was the nearest face that startled him, the goblin face, since he had been thinking of Button, but he hadn't seen any of them since he had returned from the lake-bottom and it took him a fraction of a moment to put names back on the familiar expressions.

"Streedy Nettle! And Mistress Twinge and Coathook, too. How are you all?"

The tall, shock-haired fairy did not look any better connected to reality than he had been before the downfall of the old order, but at least he looked calm and happy. He extended a long-fingered hand to help Theo up. "Hello, Theo," he said, and his cheeks colored. "Poppy's here. Not just in my head, but she's here. Every day."

"I know. It's good to see you, Streedy."

"She's nice."

"Yes, she is." He turned to the others. "So we all survived, huh?"

"More or less," said the pooka, then leaned toward him and lowered her voice. "Although eedy-Stray here doesn't know about utton-Bay just yet, if you get what I mean, so watch what you say. It's going to upset him and we want to have a wire around his ankle when he finds out so he's grounded and he doesn't set the whole camp on fire or turn us all into butterflies or something." She straightened up again. "Anyway, Coathook had something he needed to talk to you about and me and Streedy thought we'd tag along and say hello. So how's it hangin', roommate? I hear you've been pretty busy."

Theo shrugged. "Not by choice. Actually, almost none of it was by choice."

"Even so, the grapevine says you met the Big Guy himself."

"Big Guy… ?" For a moment he thought of Button, small slender Button handing him that card at the bus stop, and had to swallow hard. "Sorry, who would that be?"

Mistress Twinge took a moment to reply, applying a flame from her fingertip to an ugly turd-colored cigar. "The Big Guy!" she said through a cloud of foul smoke. "Robin Goodfellow, of course. He's pretty much the hero of my folk. The king's right-hand man, he used to be. Most famous pooka that ever lived. What was he like?"

Theo tried to remember, but much had happened since those moments on the black boat. "Sad. Wise, I guess, as far as I could tell. Kind of funny, too. He didn't like Hellebore much."

Mistress Twinge nodded happily. "A man of the people. I wonder where he is."