Tad Williams - The War of the Flowers

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THE WAR OF THE FLOWERS

Tad Williams

DAW Books, Inc. Donald A. Wollheim, Founder 375 Hudson Street, New York, NY

Elizabeth R. Wollheim Sheila E. Gilbert Publishers www.dawbooks.com

in cooperation with SEATTLE BOOK COMPANY www.seattlebook.com Produced by RosettaMachine

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Jacket art by Michael Whelan. For color prints of Michael Whelan's paintings, please contact: Glass

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DAW Book Collectors No. 1225. DAW Books is distributed by Penguin Group (USA) Inc.

Microsoft LIT edition ISBN: 0-7420-9316-6 Adobe PDF edition ISBN: 0-7420-9318-2 Palm PDB

edition ISBN: 0-7420-9319-0 MobiPocket edition ISBN: 0-7420-9317-

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All characters and events in this book are fictitious. Any resemblance to persons living or dead is strictly

coincidental.

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Electronic format made available by arrangement with

DAW Books, Inc. www.dawbooks.com Elizabeth R. Wollheim Sheila E. Gilbert Publishers

Palm Digital Media www.palm.com/ebooks

DAW BOOKS PRESENTS THE FINEST IN IMAGINATIVE FICTION BY Tad Williams

Tailchaser's Song The War of the Flowers Shadowmarch*

MEMORY, SORROW, AND THORN The Dragonbone Chair Stone of Farewell To Green Angel Tower

OTHERLAND City of Golden Shadow River of Blue Fire Mountain of Black Glass Sea of Silver Light

*coming soon from DAW Books

This book is dedicated with great love to my wife, Deborah Beale, who makes my life worth living in

more ways than I can count, let alone list here.

A good marriage and a loving family may not be the easiest things in the world to create, but I find it

hard to believe there is anything more worth the effort. It is a Great Adventure, and I share mine with a

wonderful woman.

Deb, you are my personal fairy-tale ending.

This book didn't have quite as many midwives as some of my others, but it still wouldn't have made it

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into the world without a lot of help.

I have again received support and useful feedback in too many ways to list from my wonderful agent

Matt Bialer and my British editor Tim Holman, and my German editor Ulrike Killler. My brilliant wife

Deborah Beale as always provided words of wisdom at many stages, both as a reader full of useful

comments and because of her literary and publishing acumen. My thanks to all of them — I'm a very

lucky writer. And of course, profound gratitude to my most excellent American publishers (and primary

editors of this book) Betsy Wollheim and Sheila Gilbert, along with all the folks at DAW Books, for

helping me to see another wild idea from conception to its emergence into the world, and for their

constant exercise of creative patience. I couldn't do it without them.

Blessings on you all.

AUTHOR'S NOTE

Readers may notice a certain uncomfortable resonance in parts of this book to events around the terrorist

attacks on New York and Washington, D.C., of September 11, 2001. The part of the story that most

closely parallels things that happened on that horrible day was actually part of the planned book since

the beginning — while preparing to write this note I found it mentioned prominently in an outline

written in January of 2000.

I have modified those sections slightly so that they echo the real events a little less closely, but it was too

central an event in the story to take out entirely. I hope anyone disturbed by the similarity will accept my

apology for discomfort caused, and understand that this was a case of leaving in something already

planned and important to the story rather than adding something after the fact to try to gain some cheap

thrills out of a tragedy that was international in scope but also personal for very many people.

CONTENTS

Prologue Part One GOODNIGHT NOBODY

Clouds 2 The Silent Primrose Maiden 3 Descent 4 The Hungry Thing 5 Book 6 A Corruption of

Moonlight 7 Woods 8 Runaway Capacitor 9 Visitors

Part Two LAST EXIT TO FAIRYLAND

Larkspur's Land 11 A Disturbance in The Forcing Shed 12 The Hollyhock Chest 13 A Change in the

Weather 14 Penumbra Station 15 The Plains of Great Rowan 16 Poppy 17 The Hothouse 18 Sidewalks

of New Erewhon 19 A Holiday Visit 20 Among the Creepers 21 In Thornapple House 22 Status Quo

Ante 23 The Shadow on the Tower Part Three FLOWER WAR

The Bus Stop on Pentacle Street 25 A Million Sparks 26 Losing a Friend 27 Button's Bridge 28 Goblin

Jazz Bandwagon 29 The Hole in the Story 30 Family Matters 31 In the Bloom Years 32 Trendy Fungus

33 The Last Breath They Took Part Four THE LOST CHILD

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Interlude with Van Gogh Stars 35 A Sort of Reunion 36 Changelings 37 The Ebony Box 38 The Broken

Stick 39 Stepchild 40 Strawflower Square 41 The Cathedral

Part Five FAIRYTALE ENDING

Farewell Feast 43 The Limits of Magic

Index of People, Places, and Things

PROLOGUE

A single flower, a hellebore, stood in a vase of volcanic glass in the middle of the huge desk, glowing

almost radioactively white in the pool of a small, artful spotlight. In other great houses the image of such

a deceptively fragile-looking bloom would have been embroidered on a banner covering most of the

wall behind the seat of power, but there was no need for such things here. No one could reach the

innermost chambers of this monstrous bone-colored building and not know where they were and who

ruled in this place.

In the mortal world the hellebore is sometimes called the Christmas Rose because of an old tale that says

it sprouted where a little girl who had no gift for the Christ Child wept into the snow outside the stable in

Bethlehem. Both snow and the flower itself were unlikely to have been found in the Holy Land in those

days, but that has never hurt the story's popularity.

In Greece of the old myths, Melampus of Pylos used hellebore to save the daughters of the king of

Argos from a Dionysian madness that had set them running naked through the city, weeping and

screaming and laughing.

There are many stories about hellebore. Most of them have tears in them.

The Remover of Inconvenient Obstacles was no stranger to silence — in fact, he swam in it like a fish.

He stared at the spotlit flower, letting his thoughts wander down some of the darker tracks of his

labyrinthine mind, and waited, patient as stone, for the figure behind the desk to speak. The pause was a

long one.

The person on the other side of the desk, who had apparently been pursuing some internal quarry of his

own, stirred at last. Slowly, almost lazily, he extended an arm to touch the flower on his desk. His

spidersilk suit whispered so faintly only a bat or the creature sitting across from him could hear. His long

finger, only a little less white than the flower, touched a petal and made it quiver.

There were no windows here in the heart of the building, but the Remover of Inconvenient Obstacles

knew that it was raining hard outside, the drops spattering and hissing on the pavement, coach tires

spitting. Here the air was as still as if he and his host sat inside a velvet-lined jewel casket.

The shape in the beautiful, shimmering blue-black suit gently prodded the flower again. "War is

coming," he said at last. His voice was deep and musical. Mortal women who had only heard him speak,

waking to discover him warm and invisible in their rooms in the middle of the night, had fallen so

deeply in love with that voice that they had foresworn all human suitors, giving up the chance of sunlit

happiness forever in the futile hope he would return to them, would let them live again that one delirious

midnight hour.

"War is coming," agreed the Remover.

"The child of whom we spoke before. It must not live."

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A long breath — was it a sigh? "It will not."

"You will receive the usual fee."

The Remover nodded, distracted by his own thoughts. He had very little fear that anyone, even this most

powerful personage, would neglect to pay him. With war coming they would need him again. He was

the specialist of specialists, totally discreet and terrifyingly effective. He also made a very bad enemy.

"Now?" he asked.

"As soon as you can. If you wait too long, someone might notice. Also we don't want the risk. The

Clover Effect is still not perfectly understood. You might not get a second chance."

The Remover stood. "I have never yet needed such a thing."

He was gone from the inner room so quickly he might have been a shadow flitting across the dark walls.

The master of the House of Hellebore could see much that others could not, but even he had trouble

marking the exact progress of the Remover's self-deletion.

It would not be good to have to guard against that one, he thought to himself. He must be kept sweet, or

he must become ashes in the Well of Forgetting. Either way, he must never again work for one of the

other houses. The master of the house stroked the pale flower on his desk again, considering.

Another curiosity of the hellebore is that its bloom can be frozen solid in the deepest winter snows, but

when the ice melts away, dripping from the petals like tears, the flower beneath is still alive, still supple.

Hellebore is strong and patient.

The tall, lean figure in the spidersilk suit pressed a button on the side of his desk and spoke into the air.

The winds of Faerie carried his words to all those who needed to hear them, throughout the great city

and all across the troubled land, summoning his allies and tributaries to the first council of the next war

of the Flowers.

Part One

GOODNIGHT NOBODY

1 CLOUDS

Theo felt a small flutter of guilt as he turned the cell phone back on, especially when he noticed he'd left

it off for more than two hours, and was relieved to see that there were no messages. He'd only meant to

flick it off for a few minutes, just to make sure there were no interruptions while they were tuning — the

young guys, especially Kris, the guitarist, got really pissy about that — but things had started happening

and he'd forgotten.

Johnny stepped over the guitar cases spread across the living room rug like discarded cocoons and slid

open the door to join him outside. The fog had come down the hill while they had been practicing; the

fenced patio seemed an island in a cold, misty sea.

Jesus, San Francisco in March. He should have brought his jacket out. Might as well be in Minnesota.

"Hey," he asked Johnny, "got a smoke?"

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The drummer made a face and patted his shirt pocket, then his pants pockets. He was small but he had

long, strong arms. With his paunch and his shaggy but balding head, the chest hair climbing out of his T-

shirt collars, he always made Theo think of the soulful chimpanzees in that Englishwoman's

documentaries.

When Johnny found the pack at last, he shook out one for Theo, then one for himself and lit it. "Man,

you never have your own."

"Never buy any. I only smoke when I'm playing."

Johnny shook his head. "That's so typical, Vilmos — you always get the easy road. I'm an addict, you

only smoke when you want to — like, when you're around me. I'll probably be the one who gets cancer,

too."

"Probably." Theo considered calling home, but he was going to be leaving in a few minutes anyway.

Still, Cat was very deep into I'm-pregnant-and-I-want-to-know-where-you-are mode… He felt another

ripple of guilt and couldn't decide what to do. He stared at the phone, as perplexed as if it were an

artifact of a vanished civilization.

"Your old lady leave a message?" Johnny was the only one in the band who was Theo's age but he

talked like he was even older, unashamedly using words like "chicks" and "hip." Theo had actually

heard him say "out of sight" once, but he had sworn later he was being ironic. Johnny was also the only

one who'd even understand something as archaic as phoning home. Kris and Dano and Morgan were in

that early-twenties stage where they just paged their girlfriends to announce when they were dropping by

after practice to have sex.

"Nah. I gotta get going, anyway."

Johnny flipped his cigarette over the fence and out into the street, a tiny shooting star. "Just listen to the

playback on 'Feast,' first. You don't want Kris's asshole to get any more puckered than it already is, do

you?" He smiled deep in his beard and started peeling off the athletic tape he wrapped around his

knuckles before playing because he bashed them against the rims so hard. Theo thought that he'd rather

have scars than the pink, hairless patches that striped Johnny's hairy hands, but Johnny was a seemingly

permanently single guy who hadn't had a date in months, so he didn't worry much about things like that.

Theo did. He was seriously considering whether it was time to cut his moderately long brown hair. It

was bad enough to have turned thirty and still be singing in garage bands without looking like an aging

stoner, too.

As it turned out, Theo spent at least another half an hour listening to the demo tracks they had recorded

for "Feast of Fools," a sort of high-Goth processional that Kris had written, and over which the guitarist

fussed like a neurotic chef preparing for an important dinner party. He had more than a few irritating

things to say about Theo's vocal, wanting more rasp in it, more of an air of menace, the kind of

melodrama that Theo didn't much like.

On their last listen, as Kris bobbed his close-cropped head to his own music, his expression oddly

combining pleasure and pain, Theo had a sudden flash of insight: He's going to want to do the vocal on

this himself — that's where this is going. And even though I'm a hundred times better, eventually he's

going to get his confidence and want to do all the lead vocals himself. And that'll be it for me with this

band.

He wasn't certain how he felt about that. On the one hand, much as he admired the young guys' playing

and Kris Rolle's musical ideas, it wasn't anything like his ideal band. For a start, he hated the name —

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The Mighty Clouds of Angst. It was clumsy. Worse, it was a joke name, playing off a famous gospel

group, The Mighty Clouds of Joy. Theo believed firmly that joke names equaled joke bands, the Beatles

notwithstanding. Plus, it just irritated him. Kris, Morgan, and Dano weren't even old enough to

remember The Mighty Clouds of Joy, so why pick that as a name to parody? It smacked a little of white

suburban boys making fun of earnest, religious black people, and that made Theo uncomfortable. But if

he ever mentioned it, he knew they'd just show him that fishlike stare they had perfected, the all-purpose

defense against hopelessly uncool parents and teachers, and he would feel even older than he did.

So when did I wind up on the wrong side of that particular line?

He eased on his ancient leather jacket and bummed another smoke off John for the road — or for home,

rather, since it was pretty hard to smoke while wearing a motorcycle helmet. He looked around, feeling

like he was leaving something behind. Lead singers didn't carry much in the way of equipment. The

mikes and PA belonged to Morgan and Kris. Theo could walk away from the Clouds as easily as he was

strolling out the door tonight. If he was good at anything, it was leaving when things got too weird.

If he did get forced out, would Johnny quit too? Theo wasn't sure how he felt about that. This was the

third band he'd played in with Johnny Battistini, following the obligatory should-have-made-it-big

disaster in which they'd met and the horrible cover band in which they'd marked time until hooking up

with Kris and company. Theo wouldn't mind the downtime of looking for another gig, and God knew

Catherine would be happy to have him home some nights, especially with the baby coming, but ol'

Johnny B. didn't have a lot else going on in his life. Besides his record store job and the Clouds, in fact,

John was pretty much the kind of guy advertisers made fun of but who kept their clients in business —

an amiable lump who lived on take-out food, rented porn movies in bunches, and watched wrestling by

himself.

Kris looked up from yet another playing of "Feast of Fools" as Theo reached the door. "You going?" He

sounded irritated. Kris had gray eyes like a sky before a storm, the kind of eyes in which teenage girls

probably saw things that weren't really there at all.

No, Theo wanted to say. No, I'm going to hang around here and stay up all night smoking dope and

marveling at my own brilliance, just like you guys, because I've got nothing better to do and nobody on

my ass about when I come home.

"Can't stay," he said instead. "I've got a pregnant girlfriend, remember?" And for a self-righteous

moment he almost forgot he had left the phone off for two hours.

Kris rolled his eyes, dismissing the entire unimaginably boring subject, then punched the buttons on the

DAT deck with his long fingers, rewinding the tape to listen to his feedback-heavy solo again. Morgan

and Dano bobbed their heads once each in Theo's direction, which he assumed was to save the energy of

waving. John smiled at him, sharing the joke, although unlike Theo he was going to stay and hang out

with these kids a decade younger than himself, sharing bong hits and loose talk about a hypothetical first

album until one or two in the morning. "Stay loose, Thee," he called.

Theo's ancient Yamaha started on the first kick. It seemed like a good sign.

The bedroom light was out but the television was flickering behind the blinds, which meant Catherine

was probably still up. Even though she hadn't tried to call him, he had a feeling she wouldn't be too

happy with him coming in after midnight. Theo hesitated, then sat down on the porch steps to smoke the

cigarette Johnny had given him. The streetlamps made little pools of light down the sidewalk that ran in

front of the dark houses. It was a quiet neighborhood in the Western Addition, a working neighborhood,

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full of people who watched Letterman or Leno through the opening monologue and then switched off

because they had to be up early. A wind sent leaves rattling and rolling up the street.

I'm dying here, he thought suddenly. I don't belong here.

He had surprised himself. If not here, then where? What was he going to find that was any better? It was

true that he never felt quite alive except when he was singing, making music — he often had the

disturbing feeling that in his job, his conversations, even sometimes being with Cat, he was just going

through the motions — but he felt sure he was past the childish dreams of being a rock star. He would be

happy just to play club dates in front of live human beings every few weeks. No, this was what he

wanted, wasn't it — a house, a grown-up life? It was certainly what Catherine Lillard wanted, and he

wanted her. He'd been with her for almost two years. That was nearly forever, wasn't it? Practically

married, even before they'd received the test results.

Theo walked across the tiny lawn to the sidewalk and flicked his cigarette into the gutter, then went

inside. The television was on, but there was only a tangled blanket in Cat's usual curling-up spot on the

couch.

"Hey, honey? Cat?" The kitchen was dark, but it smelled like she'd been cooking: there was a weird,

spicy scent in the air, something both sweet and a little sickening. The windows were open and it was a

nice March night, but the air inside the small house felt as close as if a thunderstorm were moving in.

"Cat? It's me." He shrugged. Maybe she'd gone to bed and left the television on. He wandered down the

hall and saw that the light was on in the bathroom, but that was nothing unusual — Cat hated fumbling

for the switch when she was half-awake or barking her shin in the dark on something left in the hall. He

took little notice of the bundle on the floor against the far bathroom wall. It was the red smears on the

side of the tub that caught his eye instead, weirdly vivid against the porcelain. He pushed the door all the

way open.

It took perhaps two full seconds to realize what he was seeing, the longest two seconds he had ever

experienced, a sideways lurch of reality as disorienting as a hallucination. Blood was smeared across the

bathroom floor behind the door, too, screamingly scarlet under the fluorescents. Cat's terrycloth

bathrobe, rolled somehow into a huge lump and flung against the wall near the toilet, was soaked in it as

well.

"Oh my God…" he said.

The bathrobe shuddered and rolled over, revealing Catherine's pale face. Her skin was like a white paper

mask except for the bloody fingerprints on both cheeks — her own, as he found out later. But for a

moment he could only stare, his chest clamped in crushing shock, his brain shrilling murder murder

murder over and over.

He was right. But he didn't find that out until later, either. Much later.

Cat's eyes found his face, struggled to focus. A parched whisper: "Theo… ?"

"My God, my God, what happened? Are you… ?"

Her throat convulsed so powerfully he thought she was going to vomit — he had a terrible image of

blood gushing out of her mouth like a fountain. The ragged sound that leaped from her instead was so

horribly raw and ragged that he could not at first understand the words.

"IlostitIlostitIlostit… !"

He was down on his knees in the sopping fingerpainted mess of the bathroom floor, the slick, sticky

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scarlet — where had it all come from, all this red wetness? He was trying to help her up, panicking, an

idiot voice telling him Don't move her, she's an accident victim, but he didn't know what had happened,

what could have possibly have happened, did someone get in… ? Then suddenly he understood.

"I lost it!" she moaned, more clear now that there was almost no air left in the cry. "Oh, Jesus, I lost the

baby!"

He was halfway across the house to the phone when he realized his own cell phone was in his pocket.

He called 911 and gave them the address while simultaneously trying to wrap towels around the outside

of her bathrobe, as though she were some immense wound that needed to be held together. She was

crying, but it made almost no sound.

When he had finished he held her tightly against him, waiting to hear the sound of the paramedics at the

door.

"Where were you?" Her eyes were shut and she was shivering. "Where were you?"

Hospitals were like T. S. Eliot poems, somehow — well-lit wastelands, places of quiet talk that could

not quite hide the terrible things going on behind the doors. Even when he went out to the lobby to

stretch his legs, to walk off some of the horrible, helpless tension, he felt like he was pacing through a

mausoleum.

Cat's blood loss had not been as mortal as Theo had felt it must be. Some of the mess had been amniotic

fluid and splashed water from the hot bath she had taken when the cramps first started becoming painful.

The doctors talked calmly to him of premature rupture of membranes, of possible uterine abnormalities,

but it might have been Byzantine religious ritual for all his poleaxed brain could make of it. Catherine

Lillard slept most of the first ten hours, face pale as a picture-book princess, IVs jacked into both arms.

When she opened her eyes at last, she seemed like a stranger.

"Honey, I'm so sorry," he said. "It wasn't your fault. These things happen."

She did not even waste her strength responding to such vacuities. She turned her face away and stared

toward the dark television screen angled out from the wall.

He went through Cat's phone book. Her mother was there by breakfast, unhappy that Theo hadn't called

earlier; her best friend Laney showed up just after. Both women wore jeans and work shirts, as though

they were planning to roll up their sleeves and cook a church dinner or help build a barn. They seemed

to draw a sort of curtain around his pale, silent girlfriend, an exclusionary barrier Theo could not cross.

After an hour of manufacturing errands for himself, fetching coffee and magazines from downstairs, he

told Catherine that he was going to go home and try to get a little sleep. Cat didn't say anything, but her

mother agreed that was probably a good idea.

He was only able to sleep three hours, tired as he was. When he got up, he realized he hadn't called

anyone in his own circle of friends and family. It was hard to imagine who to call. Johnny? Theo knew

what his friend's response would be, could even imagine the exact tone: "Oh, Thee, wow. That's such a

bummer, man." He would run out of things to say in moments and then the inadequate guy-talk would

hang, lame and awkward. Johnny would be sincere in his sorrow, of course — he really was a good guy

— but calling him just seemed so pointless. And the idea of telling any of the other guys in the band was

ludicrous. In fact, he needed to pass the news to Johnny at some point just so the drummer would do that

for him, so that Theo didn't have to watch Kris and the other two pretend like they gave a shit, if they

even bothered.

Who else should he call? How could you lose a baby — his baby, too, he had to keep reminding himself,

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half his, not just Catherine's — and not tell anyone? Had it really come down to this, thirty years old and

nobody in his life who he needed or wanted to talk to about the miscarriage?

Where are my friends? I used to have people around me all the time. But who were they, those people?

It had seemed exciting at the time — the girls who had flocked to his gigs, the guys who had wanted to

manage him — but now he could hardly remember any of them. Friends? No, just people, and people

didn't seem as interested in him these days.

He wound up calling his mother, although he hadn't spoken to her since just after the beginning of

February. It seemed unfair, to wait four weeks or so and then call up to deliver this sort of news, but he

didn't know what else to do.

She answered before the second ring, as usual. It was unnerving, the way she always did that — as

though she was never out of arm's reach of the phone. Surely her life wasn't that empty since Dad had

died? It wasn't like the two of them had been party monsters or anything in the first place.

"Hi, Mom."

"Hello, Theo." Nothing else, no "It's been a long time," or "How are you?"

"I just… I've got some bad news, Mom. Catherine lost the baby."

The pause was long even by Anna Vilmos standards. "That's very sad, Theo. I'm sorry to hear it."

"She had a miscarriage. I came home and found her on the bathroom floor. It was pretty awful. Blood

everywhere." He realized he was telling it already like a story, not like something that had really

happened to him. "She's okay, but I think she's pretty depressed."

"What was the cause, Theo? They must know."

They. Mom always talked about the people in power, any kind of power, as if they were a single all-

knowing, all-powerful group. "No, actually they don't. It was just kind of… kind of a spontaneous thing.

They're doing tests, but they don't know yet."

"So sad." And that seemed to be the end of the conversation. Theo tried to recall what he'd thought when

he called, what he had expected, if it had been anything more than a sort of filial duty — look, Mom,

here's what's gone wrong in my life this month.

It would have been a real baby, he thought suddenly. As real as me. As real as you, Mom. It's not just a

"so sad." But he didn't say it.

"Your uncle Harold is going to be in town next month." His father's younger brother was a retail

executive who lived in Southern California. He had taken on himself the role of family patriarch when

Theo's dad died, which meant that he called Theo's mom on Christmas Eve, and once or twice a year

when he flew up to San Francisco on some other business he took her out to dinner at the Sizzler. "He

would like to see you."

"Yeah, well, I'll call you about that, maybe we can set something up." How quickly it had turned into the

kind of interaction they always had, dry, faintly guilt-ridden. Theo wanted to say something different,

wanted to stop the whole thing and ask her what she really felt, no, what he was supposed to feel about

the terrible thing that had happened to him, but it was useless. It was as though they had to force their

words across some medium less rich than normal air, so that only the simplest, most mundane things

could pass from side to side without disappearing into the empty stillness.

A quick and unclinging good-bye from his mother and Theo was alone with himself again. He called the

hospital, wondering if Catherine was by herself and needed company. Laney picked up the phone and

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told him in a fairly cool manner that Cat was sleeping, that he didn't need to hurry over.

"I took the day off work tomorrow, too," she said. "I'll be here." It sounded more like a threat to him

than a favor to Cat.

"How is she?"

"How do you think?"

"Hey, Jesus, Laney, you're acting like I pushed her down the stairs or something. This was my child,

too."

"I know that, Theo."

"Don't you think I wish I was there when it happened? But I still couldn't have done anything about it.

The doctor said so."

"Nobody's blaming you, Theo."

But it sure didn't sound like that.

He stood in the living room after he had hung up, staring at the clutter untouched since the night before,

the residue of normal lives suddenly interrupted by disaster and entombed like Pompeü. She had been

sitting just there, watching television when the really bad cramps came. She had bumped the table

getting up — a glass was still lying on the floor, a ghost-stain of spilled diet cola visible on the shaggy,

seen-better-days carpet. Was there blood before she reached the bathroom? He started to follow her

track, then caught himself. It was too sick, too horrible. Like examining a murder scene.

Only three hours of sleep, but he was buzzing like he was full of bad speed. He turned the television on.

The images were meaningless.

Where did my life go? How could something so small — it wasn't even really a baby yet, whatever she

says — how could it change everything so much? But what kind of life was it, really, when you were

only alive playing music, but you couldn't ever seem to find the right place to do that, the right people to

do it with?

Things came too easy for you, his mother had told him in a resigned way a few years back. You were so

good at things when you were a little boy, the teachers made so much of you. That's why you never

developed any ambition.

Right now he needed to find something, anything, to keep himself busy. He wished Johnny were around

so he could bum a cigarette off him, several of them, sit and smoke and drink cold beers and talk about

bullshit that didn't matter. But he couldn't bear to call him and have to explain this weird, miserable

thing, not right now.

Cat's face was so pale… ! Like it was her heart that came out of her, not a little dead baby.

He stood up and moved into their bedroom. They had boxes of things stacked there, waiting until he

cleared out the spare bedroom — his practice room, as he sometimes called it, although he could count

on one hand the times he'd actually spent in there with his guitar. The practice room was going to be the

baby's room, and all those things would be the baby's things. Would have been. Now she wouldn't want

to see them when she came back, the first few symbolic baby-clothes purchases, the books and stuffed

toys she had picked up at a garage sale.

"It doesn't count if you buy it used," she had told him, only half-joking. Or maybe not joking at all. "It

doesn't jinx the baby."

But it had. Or something had — Theo felt like he had been the jinx, somehow, although he couldn't say

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Tad Williams - The War of the Flowers

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