He tried to think of a reply but couldn't. This new dream, this nightmare, was defeating him. "Did Applecore know about this?"
"Not as far as I know. It only came up after Lady Aemilia saw the test results. Anyway, your friend doesn't seem like the type who'd keep her mouth shut about something important."
Theo had dozens more questions, but Cumber Sedge had very few answers. Tests could not show who his real parents were. The ferisher knew of no famously missing children, nor as far as he could tell did Lady Aemilia — Theo's original identity was a mystery. Switching babies with mortals had been very common in the past but was almost unheard of these days, largely because of the Clover Effect.
Theo felt like he wanted to cry, but at the same time he felt like he was drifting in a vacuum, unable to touch or even to remember the normal life he had been leading until moments earlier. Even in the midst of such abnormal events as he had experienced lately, he had still felt himself to be a very ordinary person. That was gone now: he literally had no idea of who or what he was. He sat for a while in silence, full of anger and confusion.
At last, he let out a deep, shuddering breath. "Listen, I appreciate you telling me this and everything, and someday I'll probably thank you — but for now could you get the hell out? I'd like to be on my own."
"Certainly. I understand." Cumber got to his feet, not entirely steady. "I'm sorry, but I thought you should know."
"Right." He showed him to the door, tried to find something else to say as the ferisher stood awkwardly in the hallway outside, but couldn't. It was only after he slammed the door that he realized he'd sent away the only light.
He groped back to the bed and lay there in the dark, his mind a flurry of fragmentary images that did not ever quite coalesce into sense — his childhood, his mother's dying, the crazy things he had seen here, even Cat's angry, pale face. It went on for hours, or seemed to, a helpless roller-coaster ride through seemingly unending confusion.
What am I? Where did I come from? Is my whole life just a stupid, made-up story?
A sudden, ugly thought, alone in a lightless room in a strange land: Is that what the dream's about? That thing inside me, looking out through my eyes? Maybe I've got some kind of evil-fairy side and now it's starting to come out.
Mom said she couldn't love me the way she should have, he suddenly remembered. Because I didn't seem right. Wasn't that what she said? She knew.
She knew.
The power was still off when he finally fell asleep, a transition from one helpless darkness to another.
Daffodil Comb was in a barnlike structure underneath the main tower, a vast room that resembled a high school gymnasium. The power had come back but the overhead lights in the huge room were dim and there were enough small flying people in the air to make details hard to discern, so Theo could only guess at its original purpose.
Do these people even play sports? he wondered. Normal ones? It was depressing how little he knew about the world in which he was presently forced to live — and worse, how little he knew about these creatures who were apparently his own kind. He couldn't think about that just now, though — it was like his whole mind was an aching bruise. Easier to concentrate on things that didn't matter.
Poor, snobby Rufinus had said something about being on a fencing team — that was the reason he had thought himself capable of handling the hollow-men. He had been horribly wrong, of course. So this world had fencing, but what else? It was hard to imagine fairies playing field hockey or football. In fact, the ruling class seemed more like an entire nation of country club tennis players — much easier to picture them sipping drinks on the patio after a match, expensive sweaters draped across their shoulders, than getting into a sweaty half-court basketball game…
"Hey, giant feet, you want tae watch where you're going," shrilled a thickly accented voice. "Or is that how you spend your days off, stravaigin' aboot and crushing innocent people?"
Theo froze and looked down. The floor was as alive with traffic as the air above him, tiny pixies and other small creatures filing in and out of the comb, scurrying across the floor to the propped outer doors of the room in long lines, like mice leaving Hamelin.
"Oh, sweet Jee…" He caught himself. "Sorry! Sorry. I didn't… step on anyone, did I?"
"No, but not because you're bluidy graceful or annythin'."
Theo carefully got down on his knees. The creature standing in front of him was a little larger than Applecore, but a uniform gray-green and covered with bristling spikes; Theo couldn't help thinking he looked like some kind of mascot for the Artichoke Council. He was carrying a toolbox. Oh, my God, Theo suddenly thought. If Cumber's right, this guy's kind of a relative of mine — all these little bugs are. Closer to me than Mom, at least biologically. The thought was yet another in the category of too-big-and-too-strange; he simply couldn't do anything with it. "Hey, I really am sorry, man. I was… I'm new here."
The spiky little person stared at him for a moment, then shrugged. "Aye, it happens."
"Could you help me, maybe? I just need to find someone named Applecore. A sprite. Do you know her?"
"No. Don't like 'em, either. Bluidy wingers think they rule the roost. Hang on." He put two fingers small as the points of sharpened pencils to his mouth and whistled, surprisingly loud — preet, preet, preet! Theo didn't know what he was supposed to say, so he didn't say anything.
An instant later another little person dropped out of the air from somewhere just above Theo's head — a male sprite, as far as he could tell, a handsome, graceful little fellow wearing a sort of toga. The winged man hovered, looking at Theo with only limited curiosity, then shouted down to the creature on the floor, "What do you want, thistlehead?"
"I'm late tae work. This big lummox is luiking for one of yours and he almost stepped on me — some flappy bint, hight Applecore. Ring any chimes?"
The flying man ascended a couple of feet and examined Theo's face with some interest. "I think she's staying in the guest quarters," he called down.
"Fine. You take care of him, then. I have tae go clean the silvertangs for the muckle stoorage battery and I don't have time tae waste on flutterby business." The spiky little man turned and stalked away, joining one of the lines of small creatures snaking toward the outer door.
"Friendly guy," Theo said.
"Those thorns aren't just for show," said the sprite, laughing. "Hogboons are a grumbly lot. But he's all right, as they go. I'll see if I can turn her up. You just stay here. Step on one of those little needlenoses, you probably won't hurt them — they're tough as old leather — but you'll get a nasty prickle in your foot and no mistake." His wings blurred into invisibility and he was off.
Daffodil Comb had its own open-plan cafeteria, as Applecore had told him, in another large room just off what he now thought of as the gym. The smallest tables were the size of a silver dollar, but some were large enough to accommodate half a dozen diners the size of a G.I. Joe doll. This was still a bit small for Theo, however, so he made his way carefully to one edge of the eating area so he could sit down on the floor with his back against the wall. Applecore perched on his knee with her tea and scone. At midmorning there weren't many other people in the cafeteria, but those who were seemed to find the spectacle of the sprite and her monstrous friend quite amusing; they giggled and whispered behind their hands. He felt like he was back in high school, except that even during the worst adolescent traumas of high school he'd never had to worry about whether he was actually human.