Dave Butler Writes

A baobab of any sort is a strange-looking tree, with a really thick trunk and a shallow canopy of branches arrayed at its top like a collection of lilypads on the surface of a pond, each laying parallel to the ground below.  This baobab, the Baobab, is particularly strange.  It has open woody knots all about its barrel chest, and the knots are stained with blood.  Its roots part from its trunk ten feet above the earth and explode down like a skirt of wooden snakes, plunging into the ground only inches apart.  The roots quiver when touched, and only part upon the command of Mab herself.  Which makes the space underneath the Baobab’s trunk a sort of prison cell.

Jim stands in the cell, glaring out at the world.

“Look at that stubborn son of a bitch,” Adrian says.  He means it as a compliment.  “If he just called for his dad, don’t you think he’d be rescued in a heartbeat?  But instead he just stands there wearing pissed off all over his face.”

“That’s rock and roll for you,” Eddie says.  “Arm up.”

Eddie hands out spears from a dried elephant’s foot like an umbrella stand.  That’s smart.  I take one.  Even if I can only use it with one arm, the thing has a sharp point on it, unworked enough that it will poke a hole through any of Mab’s children.

“Mierda,” Mike mutters.  He’s staring at the Baobab.  “Is that thing a tree or a monster?”

“It’s a tree,” I say.  “A tree that eats flesh and can move.”

As if it’s heard me, which it clearly hasn’t, the Baobab’s trunk shudders.

“This is nuts.”

“True,” I admit.  I’m just glad the Baobab isn’t wearing a chain around its trunk.

“Let me see!” Pulse hisses.

“Once.”  I take him out and give him a good long look.

“Hey!” he cracks as I stuff him back inside.  “It’s just about to get really good.”

“Don’t worry,” I say, “you’ll be in the thick of it.”

“You going to bring Oberon over here, then?” Eddie asks.

I look around the edge of the clearing and nod a direction.  “Get as close to the tree as you can,” I tell him, “without getting into trouble.  I’ll bring him to meet you.”

Eddie pumps his boomer.  It looks like he’s holding two spears and stroking one of them.  “What makes you worry I’d get into trouble?” he asks.

I show him a dazzling groupie, though I don’t know how much of it he can see through Adrian’s wards.  “That’s rock and roll for you,” I tell him.

“This is really charming,” Eddie butts in.  “Would you care to explain?”

I sigh, but Pulse leaps right in.

“Once upon a time,” he says, “there were three friends.  Hilarious, slap-each-other-on-the-back friends, all of them Rangers and one of them a King.”

“Oberon,” Adrian says.

“Shush!  And these friends, they did things together that were truly funny.  Fires, and droughts, and plagues, and all the best things to induce a good belly laugh.”

“Ha ha,” Mike says slowly.  He isn’t laughing.  “Cagado.”

“And one day, the King tells his two friends that the Queen has a visitor.  Oh, is it like that? the friends laugh.  No, it isn’t like that, he tells them, she has a fancy important visitor from another court, they’re scheming together big schemy plots, and the King and his Rangers are supposed to arrange a parade, and a chariot.”

“Belial.”  Adrian remembers.

“Belial, very good, one of the biggest Princes of Hell, sits right on the Infernal Council, and he needs a ride because his own beasties don’t travel so well in the Queendom.”

“Because of the light,” Mike guesses.

“Because of the light,” I tell him.  “Some of the folk of hell take it fine.  Others are burned at the touch, like the Baal Zavuv.”

“Stop interrupting me, Pony!” Pulse snaps.  The doll’s smile is fixed and greasy.  “So these three friends plan a little joke, and it’s going to be a good one, because the more people who are upset, and the more important those people are, the funnier the joke.  The chariot’s going to be pulled by six white horses.  Or ponies.  And the King doesn’t have but the one shape, but his two friends can both show horse.”

“I thought you said you were a lemur,” Adrien interrupts.  “Isn’t that like a monkey?  Or a raccoon?”

“I can show a lemur,” Pulse admits.  “And also a big warhorse, a destrier.”

“With a lemur’s tail,” Mike says.

“And proud of it.”

“Not anymore,” I remind him.

“I told you to stop interrupting.  So the King and his two friends have access to the chariot and all the horses, you see?  And they’re Rangers, so they can move around in the Outer Bounds without anyone thinking anything about it.  So the three of them make a quick trip through to the Outside, and they collect beans.  Bushels of beans.”

Mike snickers.

“Hell,” Eddie curses.  “You’re like children.”

“Bean, beans, the musical fruit,” Adrian chuckles.  “You know…”

Eddie snorts.  “I’m surrounded.”

“And when the chariot team is eating, to get their strength up, an hour or so before the chariot ride, the friends make good and sure that the team eat lots and lots of beans.  And their stomachs aren’t used to beans, naturally.”

“Naturally,” I say.

“Why not?” Mike asks.

“Because they’re not Mexican fairies,” Adrian sneers a bit.

“Lots of people eat beans.”  Mike looks annoyed.

“Yes,” I agree.  “But not fairies.  Beans are a human food, like maize, or Twinkies.  The Queendom doesn’t have such innovations.  Mab’s subjects mostly eat fruit, and nuts, and meat.”

Eddie laughs sourly.  “You’re all paleo.”

Pulse laughs with audible glee.  “We were paleo before there was a paleolithic!  And so we meet him at the Crossroads and carry him across the Queendom, and right there, on the Avenue of Stones leading to the main gate of the Shadowless Palace, it happens.”

“Trumpets,” I say.  I don’t mean to, but I chuckle a bit.  It’s funny, after all.

“Trumpets!”  Pulse yells.  “Great blasting farts from bellies unable to handle legumes, all aimed at blobby, tentacle-faced Belial, and the horses can’t even turn away to be discreet about it, because they’re all in harness, and me and my friend Pony here right in the back, right in front of the Infernal, hooting away!”

He cackles.  I laugh, too.  It’s hilarious.  I guess we laugh too long, because Eddie Guitar cuts us off.

“Then what?” he asks.

Pulse is silent for a moment.  “Show him.”

“You sure?”

Pulse says nothing.  Then he snaps.  “What?  I nodded yes, didn’t I?”

“No,” I say, “you didn’t nod.  You can’t nod anymore, remember?”

I pull apart the stitching at the back of the doll’s head.  It’s tricky work with just one hand, but I do it, and then I reach inside and pull out stuffing, so I can remove Pulse from his container.

Pulse is just a skull.  A smallish skull, like a child’s, though a human scholar would puzzle over it, note its lemur-like snout and front teeth, and pronounce it a new species of pseudo-hominid, and congratulations to Charles Darwin.  That funny old man gets credit for us all the time.

“Carajo,” Mike says.

“What happened,” Pulse continues the story, his jaw not moving at all as the sound of his voice clearly emanates from the bone, “is that Belial blasted me.”

“Aves repello!” I hear Adrian shout.

That sounds like a good idea, I think, but only for a second.  If I thought the Push was bad, the buffeting blow that whips off Adrian as he casts his spell makes it look like nothing.  I am punched skyward, along with all the Mockers.  The rooftop of the shack and the yard around it are cleared of bird life, out to a spherical perimeter marked at ground level by the tombstone fence.  This means the chickens, too, and I almost laugh to see them hurled out like blown dandelion spores.  They’re so little, they keep sailing out past the fence and into the forest, and some of them get stuck in the Spanish Moss.

The Mockers and I flap our wings and shriek in protest.

Hyoo-hyoo-hyoo-repello!

I can more or less watch the action unfold, forty feet directly below me.  Adrian struggles at the window.  He’s holding up his candle and the Eye, and trying to get off a spell, but he keeps catching himself against the side of the building.  He’s falling asleep.

Eddie steps into the shack, firing a blast off with his boomer at each step.  Buzzard Betsy shrieks and flings aside the child in her hands, a girl in a nightdress.  Mike fires several bolts with his shooter and then he rushes in, running to grab the girl.

The other two children scream in the cage.  I can’t see the doll.

I flap my wings but achieve nothing.

Adrian drags himself fully erect against the side of the house and gets off another spell.  I don’t hear the words over the shrieking of the Mockers and the gunfire, but I see the cage spring open.  The children come spilling out.

Mike grabs the girl at the side of the room and practically throws her out the window.  Then he sees something and stops.

Betsy swoops down on Mike, jaws gaping.  Eddie’s boomer flashes fire into her side, but she ignores it, grabs Mike Bass and clamps her vast mouth down around him.

Mike screams.  It’s a very high-pitched sound, considering how big Mike is.

Eddie lets his boomer drop to his side and pulls out his smaller weapon, a shooter like Mike’s, only it can shoot very, very fast.  He raises it, but Betsy snaps her head forward like a whip, spitting a projectile of Mike in Eddie Guitar’s direction.  Mike and Eddie collapse in a tangle of rock and roll musician and lie still.

“Oberon’s beard!”

The thought of the impact makes me nervous, but I show horse—

and fall.

“Check the wizard’s pockets,” Eddie says.  He delivers the line like an order, but he does the searching himself.  When he finds a thin, sharp bit of iron, like a razor, and shows it to us, I grin and try not to back away.

I remember the Marked Woman leaning over me, pushing such a blade against my throat as the tattoos on her face swirled about, threats and curses.

“Very good.”  I show teeth.  “Now, follow my lead.”

I kick Flit Fox in the belly, and when she sits up, eyes bulging out, I grab her before she can do anything.

“Show your sparrow,” I say, “and my demonic familiar here will kill you.”

Flit’s eyes gape.  For a moment I think I’ve got her.

Then: “That’s no demonic familiar.  It’s just a human, of the kind with lots of pigment!  What kind of idiot do you think I am?”

Well, it was worth a try.  I carefully conceal my disappointment.

Eddie’s boot slams to the tile next to Flit’s head, and suddenly he presses the cold iron up alongside her face.  It’s quick enough, and his snarl is ugly enough, that I’m taken by surprise and feel nervous.  “Show your sparrow,” he growls, “and I’ll kill you anyway.  I’m from Chicago.”

“You’re not thinking of trying to get past Herself, are you?” I ask Jim Throat.

The big guy laughs.  He’s strapping his sword on him like a knight, like you don’t see on the Outside anymore except in pictures and parades.  “We’re late, and out of options.  If you have a better plan, now’s the time to tell me.”

Adrian Keys already has stuff in his pockets, but he’s cramming in more.  There’s the Eye he has no idea how to use, and candles and string and maybe a dead mouse.  And that gum he’s always chewing.

“I don’t think I can think of a better one,” I admit, “but aren’t I allowed to feel sad that our choices are so few?”

“I don’t like the sound of this,” Eddie Guitar grunts.  He’s got stuff in his pockets too, but it isn’t wizard-stuff, no dead mice.  It’s pocketknives and wire and bullets.  In his hands he has the shotgun.  I could tell him that his guns aren’t going to be much use against the denizens of the Mirror Queendom, but I don’t.  It’ll be a fun surprise, this way.  “You mean Mab, I guess?”

“Close,” I say.  I have my fighting sticks, that’s all I need.  We’re all wading through a ruined restaurant and bar, picking up our stuff after taking a serious beating from some of the major Fallen.  Nothing good ever comes of dealing with those things.  “Only much worse.”

“Stop!” says Mike Bass.  He’s the big one, and the way he’s shoving candy bars and booze into his pockets, he plans on getting bigger.  “Just for once, can’t somebody tell me what’s going on ahead of time?”

Jim Throat nods at me.  I guess he’s done speaking, and no wonder, if we’re going to have any stealth in our approach.

“Sure,” I say.  “There’s a road Jim here wants to walk.  We’re going to have to go into the Mirror Queendom to get to it, and once we’re on it, we’ll have to deal with the guardians.  The biggest of the guardians is Herself.  Herself is a sort of reptile.”

“Herself is Rahab the dragon,” Adrian Keys says.

“Dragon?” Mike Bass asks.  “Like Sleeping Beauty?”

“Like Isaiah,” Eddie Guitar mutters.  “Art thou not it that hath cut Rahab, and wounded the dragon?”

“Cagado,” Mike says.  “That sounds bad.”

“Nah,” Adrian tells him, snapping the chewing gum in his mouth, “it’s optimistic.  It’s a dragon who can be wounded.  What’s good for the goose, et cetera.”

“That’s right, big fella,” I say to Adrian.

Mike looks at me with that hurt look, so I show him udders.  It’s funny to see him go all red in the face and confused.

“No, it ain’t,” says Eddie.  He stuffs even more shotgun shells into the pockets of his jacket, which has the sleeves ripped off it.  “Rahab was wounded by the Arm of the Lord.  Which we ain’t got.”

“Thanks,” Mike mumbles.  “That spark of hope I was feeling disoriented me.  I needed someone to kill it.”