Blood & Flowers Read online

  The tension around us lifted like laundry floating in the air on a stiff breeze. Lucia dropped to the floor and breathed out the breath she must have been holding since Major walked in, and Nicholas, with wonder in his voice said, “What was that, exactly?”

  Tonio sighed. It sounded like the wind in a hollow cave. He didn’t look at Max, but it was obvious that he was asking him when he said, “Should I tell them?”

  “You probably have to, after a cryptic question like that.” Max was by Tonio now, not Major, and his demeanor changed to match the situation. “It’s not,” he added in a very gentle tone, “going to change anyone’s opinion on anything.”

  Tonio sighed again. “That, Nicholas,” he said, “was my ex-lover.”

  VII

  “Faerie’s an amazing place. You should go sometime.”

  We were back at Tonio and Max’s apartment. The room was filled with questions, but Nicholas was the only one chasing the answers.

  “That much animosity over a broken affair?” he asked. “There’s got to be something more.” Nicholas had been saying the same thing, with variations, since we’d locked the chocolate factory and started the long walk home through streets greasy with skimmed rain, streets that matched the way we all felt: flat, slippery, and grungy with odd thoughts instead of old oil.

  Tonio sighed. “There’s also the fact that he’s power hungry like no one I’ve ever seen, but in this case I really do think it was the fact that I left him. I don’t think he’d ever been left before. I think, instead, he always did the leaving. It was probably,” he finished, in what I was sure was an understatement, “something of a shock.”

  Floss, apparently fed up with Nicholas and possibly the rest of us as well, said, “For Mab’s sake, Nicholas. Think your age. Spurned love is one of the greatest reasons for wars, killings, displacements….” She stopped. She looked at us all in turn. “That’s true here, right? It certainly is in Faerie, so I just assumed…” She stopped talking again and looked uncertain. Uncertainty was a look that I rarely saw on Floss’s face.

  “Of course it is,” Tonio answered, interrupting her stumbled statement. “Read some history, Nicholas. Get your head out of those law books.”

  “He’s right, though,” I said, loyal to Nicholas. “I mean, getting you arrested? Giving you a record? Sending you to prison? Just because you don’t want to go out anymore?” I shook my head, amazed. “Then he throws an attack at Max. Even more then, he tries to get Floss in trouble about magic, which certainly wasn’t going to win him any points or make her succumb to his charms.”

  “Of which he has none,” Floss muttered. “And he wasn’t truly interested in me. I would have just been a way to get at Tonio.”

  “It just all sounds so extreme,” I continued.

  “Helen of Troy,” Floss said.

  “You know about her?” I asked.

  Floss rolled her eyes, a very exaggerated roll. “Persia, please. She was fey, after all.”

  “I knew about some others, but not her,” Lucia said. “You’re sure about Helen?”

  “I just said,” Floss growled. “But if you think about it, you’ll see I’m right. What mortal could do what she did?” And she nodded her head as if she’d just laid down a red royal flush.

  “Wait. That’s really interesting.” Nicholas was obviously intrigued. “Is there anyone else from Faerie who’s famous?”

  Floss shrugged. “Oh, Titiana and Ariel, but you probably already guessed that, they’re so obvious. Shakespeare loved us. Queen Elizabeth, the first one. But fey from here?” She thought for a minute. “Hmmm. Well, Susan B. Anthony. Abraham Lincoln. John Wilkes Booth, too, but he played for the other side.”

  “You have got to be kidding,” Nicholas said.

  Floss shook her head. “Lots of actors, writers, painters, too, from everywhere. Arty folks. Monet. Gauguin. I’ve always suspected Beethoven, myself. Definitely Andy Warhol. Cheap Trick. The Beatles. Well, at least John and Paul. Neil Gaiman.”

  “Okay, I’ll buy the historical figures because who can prove it isn’t true?” Nicholas nodded, then added, “And because it makes sense, actually. But the Beatles and Gaiman? Cheap Trick? Contemporary people, famous people who fly the fey flag? Kind of dangerous, no?”

  “What flag do I fly, then?” Floss’s voice was cold and flat as a fresh ice floe.

  Nicholas shrugged. “What I said, and what I said wasn’t anything against you. You know that. But look at us. Outlaw Puppet Troupe. Why have we been running for so long if everything was fine?”

  Floss made a noncommittal noise.

  “Probably if you’re really famous and you’re fey you’ve got some kind of magical protection to keep you safe,” I said. “And probably you don’t flaunt it.”

  Floss grinned at me like I’d correctly identified the phrase from a game of hangman with only three letters on the board. “Exactly,” she said.

  Max and Tonio were huddled in a corner paying no attention to us, but Lucia had obviously been following the famous-fey conversation. “Faerie’s an amazing place. You should go sometime. Floss could take you—could take all of us.”

  Nicholas and I looked at each other. Max stopped talking to Tonio. Tonio looked at Lucia. Then everyone turned to Floss.

  Max spoke in slow measured words. “A hidey-hole if we need one. That’s not a bad idea.”

  Tonio jiggled his shoulders.

  Lucia seemed pleased with her suggestion.

  Nicholas said simply, “Aarugh,” which made him sound like he was a comic book character in dire circumstances.

  And I looked straight at Floss and asked, “Could you really do that? Take us”—and here I waved my hand around the room, sort of figuratively pulling us together—“across just like that?” (Finger snap.)

  “I could.” But I thought she sounded put-upon. Or grudging. She confirmed that when she said, “But in spite of Lucia’s views, Faerie may not be where you need to go.”

  I remembered Floss’s oblique comments when she came back from scouting locations. Blood. Holes in the bridges. I remembered her remark about how her family, “ruled things.” And I thought that maybe she wasn’t put-upon. Maybe she was right.

  “We don’t have to decide right now, do we?” I let my eyes travel around the room. “We don’t really have to do anything right now. We just have to wait and see if we have to do something.”

  When no one answered I nodded in an encouraging way and said, “Right?”

  “Right,” Floss said, stevedore voice loud and fine. “Persia’s right. Let’s just wait and see.”

  “The show’s just starting to roll,” Tonio said, and he sounded strong and sure.

  Max said, “Absolutely,” and he sounded as strong as Tonio.

  Lucia looked embarrassed. “I didn’t mean to say a wrong thing,” she whispered.

  Floss draped an arm around her shoulders. “You didn’t. It’s always good to examine the possibilities.”

  And Nicholas? He just shook his head and said, “Go to Faerie. Good hell. What an idea.”

  But the way he said the last sentence was almost a question, and I wondered what he was really thinking.

  VIII

  “You’ve been listening to the street talk, right?”

  The review for The Bastard and the Beauty came out in Nighttimes on Wednesday. Comments like “flat story line,” “uninspired acting,” “magic too real to be safe,” and “forgettable costumes” were laughable, especially when we compared them with those from the other theater critics. From them we got things like “brilliant set design and costuming,” “beautiful magical impressions,” “moralism without didacticism,” and “enjoyable acting.”

  “Makes you wonder just how long he thinks he’ll hold on to his job this time,” Tonio said, and he laughed a laugh that held just as much wickedness as humor.

  “He didn’t lose it last time,” Max pointed out. “He just left.”

  “He would have lost it if he’d stayed,” T
onio said.

  Max glanced up from the salad he was mixing. Pears and walnuts and blue cheese. “So you say,” he said.

  “But it’s ridiculous,” Nicholas said from where he was sprawled over the papers. “Uninspired acting? Please. I thought I was brilliant.”

  “So you say.” I repeated Max’s line and nudged Nicholas’s foot with my own. Lucia giggled. But Nicholas knew I was kidding because, truth be told, I’d thought he was brilliant too. And not just his acting. Although you might say I was biased.

  However Major’s review helped or hindered his career, it didn’t affect our crowds. We were playing to sold-out houses now. We had a waiting list. Max even had to get a new computer program to manage ticket sales, and the computer to go with it. Lucia went shopping with him. They went to Omar’s Office Emporium and swung an incredible deal.

  When they brought home the bags of boxes, stuffed full of equipment and loads of twisty little wires, I said, “Lucia, how do you know what goes with what?” and waggled my fingers at the stacks and piles on the dining room table.

  Lucia looked up from where she was sorting a few hundred cables. “Persia, what are you talking about? This is easy. It’ll all be ready to go in half an hour.” She looked at me, head down and eyes up, and made a “tsk” sound before she went back to work.

  I “tsked” myself and went to make more pass-around programs. No computer necessary. All nice, comfy handwork. My originals were wearing, and the nightly crowds were getting too large for three books to make their way through it before intermission. I was beginning to look at loss analysis, and I assumed, purely by the law of either 1) averages or 2) supply and demand, that I was going to come out at least one program short one of these evenings.

  On my way out the door to get supplies at Knobbe’s, I passed Floss in the living room. She was wrapped in mastic, stalking through feathers and old newspapers and muttering, “Chickens just don’t last the way they’re supposed to.”

  I was very happy.

  “Hello, Knobbe Three,” I sang out as I walked into the store.

  The face he turned toward me was worried. “Persia,” he said with care. “How’s the play going? I saw it early on.”

  “You didn’t tell me,” I said. “I would have made a fuss. And a special program, just for you.”

  “Exactly why.”

  I sighed and Knobbe III actually grinned. “I liked it. Cutting without being stupid or cloying. Good social commentary. Great puppets. Good-feeling magic.”

  I beamed at him. “Knobbe Three, thank you.”

  He tilted his head, a small nod, but he was back to looking worried.

  “You’ve been listening to the street talk, right?” He dropped his question in the air on a delicate exhale.

  I fanned some pieces of backing board. “Not so much, really. I’ve been pretty busy, after all.”

  “Maybe you should start.”

  My hands stopped moving. My eyes stopped scanning decorative cover papers. And I said, “Okay, I’ll bite. Why should I start listening to what’s being said on the street?”

  “Some bad stuff circulating around out there.”

  “Well, sure. There always is.”

  “About the play,” he added.

  “What are you talking about? We’re selling out. We’ve got a waiting list for tickets. We had to buy a new computer, for Mab’s sake.” I’d adopted Floss’s line and found it to be continually useful.

  “That may well be,” Knobbe III said. “But I’ve been hearing rumors. Pixie dust everywhere you look, courtesy of the Outlaws. Lots of drinks, most of them pink, but some of them red. Both of those guaranteed to make you wake up with no idea of where you’ve been or how you got there. Special effects that reek of a fey hand.” He watched me, his eyes digging in deep, and added, “Too fey. Too illegal. Too scary.”

  I pulled out the middle comment. “There are degrees of legality? Isn’t something either legal or not?” I asked, but really, I wasn’t waiting for an answer. I was thinking about people versus fey and wondering what Knobbe’s views were on the subject. It wasn’t something we’d ever talked about, but I knew that didn’t mean that he had no opinion. Everyone had an opinion.

  PREVALENT VIEWS ON THE FEY KINGDOM

  Members of Faerie are aberrations. We don’t want them here, mixing with our own.

  Everything in Faerie is love and flowers. (Sometimes I worry more about these people than the previous ones.)

  Magic is evil; its practitioners are worse. There are laws about this, and laws are here to protect us.

  We’re all descended from the fey; we just need to tap into our hidden powers.

  They’re people, just like everyone else, with the same foibles and problems. They just happen to be able to do magic.

  Knobbe III could fall anywhere on the continuum. Just because he’d said he liked the magic in B&B didn’t mean he liked magic, or the fey.

  I knew Floss, and I knew her magic. I knew she wasn’t evil, and I knew she wasn’t a saint. Because of this I thought of the fey as being more like good old Uncle Mike, or Great-Aunt Honey: normal, with normal ups and downs. But with all these conflicting ideas living in my town, with crazies trying to pass laws about the “separation of us and them,” I didn’t talk about Faerie with just anyone. Knobbe III didn’t exactly fall into the category of just anyone, but I was still smart enough to walk carefully. “You believe what you hear?” I was standing by his counter now, close enough to touch him.

  Knobbe III looked at me, really looked for the first time, I think, since I’d known him. Eyes straight into my soul, it felt like. “I believe you’re probably using magic, and I don’t care at all. Other people might not feel the same way. Pixie dust and colored drinks? That I don’t believe a word of. You’re all too smart to play around with the kind of people, or fey, who’d be involved in that kind of junk.” There was a pause, then he added, “But there’s more dust and more drink floating around than there’s ever been. Don’t act like you haven’t noticed. It’s like an epidemic.”

  He was right about that. Just today, on my way over here, I’d passed two people between Max’s and Knobbe’s who were shaky, wobbly, and aimless. Not scary really, but you could never be sure how things might spin. I could only agree with Knobbe, so I nodded. Then, in case it wasn’t clear what I was agreeing with, I added, “But dust and drink—none of that’s coming from us.”

  “I just said I knew it wasn’t. Pay attention. That doesn’t mean you can ignore the chatter.”

  “What am I supposed to do about rumors?”

  He coughed once and shook his head. “Persia, you’re intelligent. You’re street-smart. And you’re artistic, which means you’ve got imagination. Put that all to work and then you can tell me what I mean.”

  I got it then. Of course I did. I probably had before and just hadn’t wanted to admit it.

  “I should tell Tonio to watch his back,” I said. “I should tell Floss, too, just to be safe.”

  Knobbe III snorted. “Not just the two of them. Remember the idea of guilt by association. If they get him the way they got him before, you may all go along for the ride.”

  “How much do you know about what happened before?”

  Knobbe III shrugged. “Enough to know that you could all get hurt,” he said.

  I winced. Guilt by association was a real worry. In our city, just like in the rest of the country, people were being judged more and more by who they knew, rather than by what they did. Knobbe III was right. If Tonio’s past caught up with him, if it caused a problem for him now, we could all be in trouble.

  I left without buying one single thing.

  IX

  “…this forlorn piece of inflammatory speech.”

  I wandered in the direction of Max and Tonio’s, I just didn’t wander straight. At one point I noticed that I was walking down Keating, of all streets, and I didn’t even blink. Everyone knows that Keating is the place to be if you really want the hard stuff, and th
e street shows it. Burned-out buildings, vacant lots, and houses that all lean a bit to the east, with high rusty fences and scratchy grass. I walked right down the middle of a sidewalk that was breaking into pieces almost before my eyes, and I skipped all the cracks, but I did it on automatic. Cracks were the last thing on my mind. I must have looked formidable because I didn’t get approached by anyone. I saw a few shapes that moved just out of clear vision range, and I heard police sirens twice, but nothing more than that. I wandered, and I thought, and I wandered some more.

  RANDOM THOUGHTS WHILE WANDERING

  Knobbe’s rumors had to be fallout from Major. I doubted that any outlaw would disagree with me on this. I should tell Tonio what Knobbe knew. Which might make him so angry he’d go after Major in a way that could be detrimental to all concerned.

  I should tell Max. But he might just beat Major to the pulpy mass of slime that he was. Nice, but also detrimental.

  I should tell Nicholas. In fact, I probably would tell Nicholas. But I didn’t see how he’d be any more effective than I was, and even putting us together I didn’t see much hope for brilliance.

  I should tell Floss. Floss could take us all away. But would she? And if she did, would everyone pick up and leave, or would the Outlaws dissolve?

  I should not tell Lucia. Lucia was just starting to feel brave and strong. Lucia was putting computers together and looking happy. I couldn’t ruin that, at least not until I knew for sure that it needed to be ruined.

  Damned, stupid guilt by association.