War for the Oaks

Prologue By day, the Nicollet Mall winds through Minneapolis like a paved canal. People flow between its banks, eddying at the doors of office towers and department stores. The big red-and-white city buses roar at every corner. On the many-globed lampposts, banners advertising a museum exhibit flap in the wind that the tallest buildings snatch out of the sky. The skyway system vaults the mall with its covered bridges of steel and glass, and they, too, are full of people, color, motion. But late at night, there's a change in the Nicollet Mall. The street lamp globes hang like myriad moons, and light glows in the empty bus shelters like nebulae. Down through the silent business district the mall twists, the silver zipper in a patchwork coat of many dark colors. The sound of traffic from Hennepin Avenue, one block over, might be the grating of the World-Worm's scales over stone. Near the south end of the mall, in front of Orchestra Hall, Peavey Plaza beckons: a reflecting pool, and a cascade that descends from towering chrome cylinders to a sunken walk-in maze of stone blocks and pillars for which "fountain" is an inadequate name. In the moonlight, it is black and silver, gray and white, full of an elusive play of shape and contrast. On that night, there were voices in Peavey Plaza. One was like the susurrus of the fountain itself, sometimes hissing, sometimes with the little-bell sound of a water drop striking. The other was deep and rough; if the concrete were an animal, it would have this voice. "Tell me," said the water voice, "what you have found." The deep voice replied. "There is a woman who will do, I think." When water hits a hot griddle, it sizzles; the water-voice sounded like that. "You are our eyes and legs in this, Dog. That should not interfere with your tongue. Tell me!" A low, growling laugh, then: "She makes music, the kind that moves heart and body. In another time, we would have found her long before, for that alone. We grow fat and slow in this easy life," the rough voice said, as if it meant to say something very different. The water made a fierce sound, but the rough voice laughed again, and went on. "She is like flowering moss, delicate and fair, but proof against frosts and trampling feet. Her hair is the color of an elm leaf before it falls, her eyes the gray of the storm that brings it down. She does not offend the eye. She seems strong enough, and I think she is clever. Shall I bring her to show to you?" "Can you?" "B'lieve I can. But we should rather askwill she do what she's to do?" The water-voice's laughter was like sleet on a window. "With all the Court against her if she refuses? Oh, if we fancy her, Dog, she'll do. Pity her if she tries to stand against us." And the rough voice said quietly, "I shall." Chapter 1 Another Magic Moment in Showbiz The University Bar was not, in the grand scheme of the city, close to the university. Nor was its clientele collegiate. They worked the assembly lines and warehouses, and wanted uncomplicated entertainment. The club boasted a jukebox stocked by the rental company and two old arcade games. It was small and smoky and smelled vaguely bad. But InKline Plain, the most misspelled band in Minneapolis, was there, playing the first night of a two-night gig with a sort of weary desperation. The promise of fifty dollars per band member kept them going; it was more than they'd made last week. Eddi McCandry stared bleakly at the dim little stage with its red-and-black flocked wallpaper. The band's equipment threatened to overflow it. SBull, Emma is the author of 'War for the Oaks', published 2004 under ISBN 9780765349156 and ISBN 0765349159.