Guardian of the Green Hill Page 3

“It’s not bad. It doesn’t ooze much anymore.”

  Meg turned abruptly away, vague, hopeful visions shattered by revulsion. Yes, it was Finn, after all.

  “I know you can’t take me to the Green Hill, but we can go looking for Moll together, if you like.”

  She stammered out something negative and dashed away like a hare. She couldn’t bear to have him look at her. She had to be in the woods.

  When the boughs closed over her head, she calmed again, and as her skin dappled with golden evening light filtered through the oak leaves she actually became capable of coherent thought. She thought—she couldn’t help herself—about Finn.

  He was vile. Selfish. Conceited. Arrogant. If she hadn’t taken him to the Green Hill once, he would never have given up the eggs that held Rowan’s and Bran’s life forces, and they would have died. That made him practically a murderer. No, she amended, that wasn’t fair to Finn. She herself was the only one of them who had actually proved capable of murder.

  All right, she thought, Finn was all things wretched and contemptible. Then why did she feel compelled to look at him all the time? Why did he creep into her thoughts when she least expected it? True, he had blue eyes (well, eye) and silky black hair. He was tall and confident and practically as handsome as the Seelie prince. But what was that compared with the myriad faults in his character?

  He didn’t even like her. Why would he? She was plain and awkward. That was how she saw herself anyway. If you looked at her, you would be charmed by her clear, bright, compassionate hazel eyes. You would admire the dark brown glossiness of her hair even when, as now, it was tied in a knot at the nape of her neck and had bits of fern fronds in it. She was slim and graceful, and weeks of tramping through the woods and practicing archery had made her strong. She always knew the right thing to do, even if she didn’t do it or it took her a while to work up enough courage. She was really quite remarkable. But all she saw when she pictured herself was a gawky tongue-tied indecisive girl with freckles.

  She sighed, and turned toward the Green Hill. Probably Phyllida had already found Moll and was even now making up a bed for her in one of the guest rooms, feeding her broth and tea with whiskey. The sun would be down soon, and the wind was picking up. It would rain any minute, and she would be soaked before she could get home. What was she doing out here? Then that dizzy, vaguely disoriented feeling returned and she rubbed her eyes. When she set out again, she was heading not back to the Rookery but deeper into the woods.

  The wind was whipping now, tossing the treetops in a vigorous, swaying dance. At the forest floor it was more sheltered, but the wind still plucked strands of hair loose from their knot and lashed them across her eyes. She heard a faint sound beneath the rustling roar overhead—a small hollow ringing, like bamboo bells. A moment later she came to a glen that had caught the day’s last sunlight. She thought it was a pond at first, an azure field that rippled and tinkled a melodious tune. But no, it was not water but masses of bluebells carpeting the hollow so thickly she could hardly see the green beneath them. And in the middle of that sea, a hunched, bobbing form like a coracle—a man on a folding stool. She gasped, and he turned at the sound. It was the man she’d seen on the way to Moll’s, and there was an easel before him. A large reddish goat lounged at his side, chewing thoughtfully on a sprig of bluebells.

  Meg didn’t know, and Phyllida hadn’t thought to tell her, that no good can come of a bluebell wood. Phyllida, thorough in all things (until recently) hadn’t bothered to warn Meg and the others away from bluebells for the very simple reason that they were supposed to have finished blooming in April, before the children arrived in England. From late March onward, in the mottled shade under scattered beeches just putting on their spring finery after shivering naked through the winter, bluebells sprout their nodding clusters and call the fairies to play. Humans, too, are tempted to sport among blue petals and pollen, but many’s the young couple who spend an evening, or a night, in a bluebell wood and find their lives changed evermore.

  Woe to he who hears the bluebells ring! You may run joyously to their sweet clarion call, but remember, if you can hear the bells, so can other things, and they are coming just as eagerly. Never trust anyone you meet among the bluebells.

  Poor Meg didn’t know this, but as a properly brought-up American girl, she automatically distrusted strangers. Odd then—isn’t it?—that she didn’t feel the least desire to flee upon seeing this man.

  “Hello,” he said, smiling pleasantly. “Look what I have for you.” He leaned his cadaverous body to the side, revealing a watercolor portrait of a girl. She was lovely, her eyes large and melancholy, looking as though she yearned for something but didn’t quite know what. Meg stared at it for a long time before she realized it was a picture of her.

  “Who are you?” she asked.

  “Oh, just myself.” He laughed. “That’s what you say in these parts, isn’t it? Well, you don’t look like a fairy, lass … or perhaps you do … but I’ll tell you my name anyway.” He stood and made a little obeisance. “I am Gwidion Thomas, master painter, artist extraordinaire, scholar of sketches and doctor of daubs, at your service!” He held out a hand that was all knuckles and nails, and she shook it, thinking in the back of her mind that there was something she should be doing. Running away, perhaps? Yes, that was it, but why? Oh well, she thought, it must not be important, and she turned her attention to the picture of her, quite literally mesmerized.

  All around her the bluebells were ringing in hushed murmurs, tossing their heads in the stiffening breeze. Meg felt like she was in a fog as she stared into her own eyes.

  “You are Phyllida’s relation,” Gwidion said, or asked, as she stared at herself.

  “Yes,” Meg said. “She’s my great-great-aunt.” Her voice in her own ears sounded like it was coming from very far away, an echo of something she had once heard.

  “And she is the Guardian.”

  “Yes.”

  “And you after her, my pretty pet?”

  “Yes, I think so.”

  “Ah, so not declared yet. I had hopes when I saw the two of you out on your errand today that you’d already been declared her successor, declared and freely accepted. It would have been easy for me then, pretty. Look how you stare at yourself. This is only a quick portrait to lure you out here, and already it has almost consumed you. You cannot tear your eyes away, can you, pretty? I have you tonight, you are mine, if I want you.” A shudder rattled his bones. “No, Phyllida is my target. She must either abdicate in my favor or declare me her successor. She must return what is mine, by right, by blood. I can control you easily enough with my art, but she will be a tougher nut to crack. You are just my tool to pry her open.”

  Meg listened to all of this absently, without concern. Look at me, she mused, staring into her watercolor eyes. That is me. Then who am I? She felt like she was the portrait, fixed and still, and the painting was the living, feeling thing. She was pleasantly powerless, waiting for the hand of some artist to tell her who she was, what she should feel.

  “Go home now, my pet,” Gwidion said. “Run home, little faun, and forget about this night. Tomorrow I will come to your door, and you will not know me. But you will let me in and do everything in your power to keep me there. You will get Phyllida to sit for me. She will let me paint her portrait. And then, when the final stroke of color is on the canvas, she will do my bidding, and the Rookery, the riches, the Green Hill itself, will be mine. At last, a Thomas man will get what is due him.”

  He turned Meg around by the shoulders, his bony fingers pressing her soft flesh, and gave her a little shove out of the bluebell woods. She moved off as if in a dream. When she was far enough away that her footfalls were lost in the wind’s rush, Gwidion stuffed her portrait into a leather portfolio.

  “A shame the magic doesn’t last longer,” Pazhan said as he chewed bitter bluebells.

  “It is not a question of time, but of purpose,” Gwidion replied. “Each picture can be for one p
recise end, to force one particular emotion, to convince someone of one exact thing. Meg’s picture was to lure her out to the woods. Phyllida’s portrait, my magnum opus, will be to force her to give up the Guardianship. Perhaps there is some magic that would let me seize full control of a person’s entire being, but I have not learned it yet.”

  “Or perhaps if you were a good enough artist to truly capture your subject’s soul…”

  Gwidion twisted his long thin lips into a scowl. “My father could have done it.”

  “Your father had tales and dreams. He put his dreams on paper, on canvas. You try to paint your dreams into the world.”

  “My father had no ambition,” Gwidion said shortly. “He talked every night about the inheritance he should have had, but did nothing to get it back.”

  “The stories made him happy,” Pazhan said, licking petals off his lips with a blue tongue. “The dream and longing were enough, maybe better than any realization. You want the waking dream. Will it make you happy?”

  “As happy as a king!” Gwidion cried.

  “However much that is,” Pazhan mumbled under his breath.

  * * *

  Have you ever walked to school, or to a friend’s house, someplace very familiar, and suddenly looked up to have no idea how you got there? Cars, dogs, ladies in gardening hats and gloves, all passed you by while you walked on autopilot, in a daze, blinded by your own thoughts. Only, when Meg looked around and found herself in the forest, she couldn’t even remember what she’d been thinking about. The residue of magic just made her shrug, get her bearings, and head back for the Rookery, but she was left with a feeling of a gap. It was almost full dark now. Where had the time gone? Or was it only that the clouds had moved in to beat back the sun’s last light? Daydreams, daydreams, she thought as the first raindrop landed on her nose. She broke into a run, and the heavens let loose with a flash and a deep, earth-shaking rumble of thunder.

  She had never felt a storm like this. It wasn’t the fury—she’d seen thunderstorms in her upstate New York home snap birches in two. No, it was the intimacy. The rain when it struck her face seemed a playful slap aimed at her; the wind wrapped itself around her arms and pulled her this way and that. And the thunder! It got inside her belly and shook her from within, an inquisitive spirit roughly invading her body. She wasn’t particularly alarmed until a bolt of lightning struck the deer path directly in front of her.

  She shrieked (and was immediately ashamed of herself for shrieking) and jumped back, the hairs along her forearms tingling with the electricity in the air. A creature stood before her, as high as her waist and made of light, arcing and sparking.

  She made a little motion with the fingers of her left hand, a gesture of dubious efficacy Phyllida had taught her to ward off evil, which any Italian grandmother can show you. The creature, which was slowly evolving eyes in a semblance of a face, looked at the gesture quizzically, then formed a hand of sorts and made it back at her, taking it for a greeting.

  “We are the Ani Yuntikwalaski,” it said. “We thank you for waking us.”

  “I … I woke you?”

  “You shed the blood. You ended the life and returned the life. It is a big thing, as big as the earth, as big as the sky. We slept in the clouds, but you have awakened us.”

  “I don’t understand,” Meg said, backing away as the electrical charge became more pronounced and she smelled singed hair.

  “We go now. You are not particularly flammable, but you conduct electricity too well for us to stay. We leave you a gift and our thanks.”

  The glowing figure of light beamed upward in a blinding flash, a fractal pattern of reverse lightning from the ground to the sky.

  Something glinted on the grass where the creature had stood. Meg picked it up gingerly, a little afraid of electric shock, but it was only a cool, hard, translucent stone, dark milky blue and charcoal, like gathering thunderheads, with veins of red and gold fire. It vibrated in her palm, and when she held it to her ear, she heard a low, growling rumble from within.

  She got home well after dark. No one had noticed her absence, and no one had waited up for her, except the somewhat disheveled butler, Wooster, who scurried out to meet her with an umbrella, which he dropped in a puddle. He took her muddy shoes and made her stand on a towel in the hall until the worst of the rain had dripped off her. Still clutching her gift from the Ani Yuntikwalaski, she dragged herself upstairs to bed. She fell asleep quickly—few people know how wearying it is to be controlled by a magic spell—but before she did, she had time to wonder just who the lightning creature was and what on earth it meant by thanking her for waking it up.

  There’s Something Stirring in the Earth

  MEG STAGGERED DOWN late for breakfast. Finn was arguing with Phyllida about why he couldn’t have any coffee.

  “You let us have tea, and that’s the same thing.”

  “No, it isn’t. Coffee will stunt your growth. Tea is healthy, full of antioxidants.”

  “But I always drink coffee at home.” It was true. His parents hardly paid attention to anything he did, and the revolving staff of maids and nannies charged with his upbringing would yield to almost any demand to keep him quiet. All things considered, it was surprising Finn hadn’t turned out even worse.

  Meg put her stone in the center of the table, where it was promptly grabbed by Silly, then Rowan, and almost dropped in the struggle. This morning the stone was sapphire blue with milky swirls.

  “What is it?”

  “Where’d you get it?”

  “May I see it?” This last was from Dickie, who was too polite to snatch the stone himself. Lysander plucked it out of Rowan’s hands, examined it through his half spectacles, and handed it to Dickie.

  “Do you know what it is?” Meg asked her great-great-uncle.

  “I know precisely what it is,” he said, looking very wise. They waited, on tenterhooks. “It is a rock. A pretty one at that.”

  They groaned and growled, then a sinuous form uncoiled itself from Dickie’s shoulder and hissed inquisitively.

  “I have seen such a stone before,” the Wyrm said. “But not for many years. It was in my travels to the colonies.”

  “The colonies?” Meg asked.

  “Your homeland. I believe it became known as Amerigo, or something of the sort.” He scratched his head with the tip of his scaly tail, much as an old professor might scratch his skull in bafflement. “Dear me, I seem to remember nothing of the recent history of Amerigo. All forgotten, all gone. How delightful!” The Wyrm had spent a lifetime learning everything there was to know, then, bored, set about forgetting it. He could tell you all about the Etruscans, but every detail of the exotic lives of Cyprians had escaped him. He could speak sparrow, but not wren. He could teach you how to make a Napoleon pastry, but hadn’t a clue what happened at Waterloo.

  “This is a weatherstone. An interesting oddity, though not particularly useful. It tells you what the weather is.”

  “Like a forecast?” Rowan asked.

  “No, nothing so practical. More like looking out the window. Today it is sunny, so the stone is clear blue like the sky, with a few high clouds. I imagine last night it was murky and full of lightning sparks. If a tornado came by, you would see it, in miniature, in the weatherstone. So you see, more a conversation piece than anything truly handy. Now, the Phoenicians had a stone that told you what the weather would be like tomorrow—very practical for a seafaring race.”

  “Where did you get it?” Phyllida asked.

  Meg told them about her excursion the night before. She didn’t mention Gwidion—she had no memory of him.

  “What was it the thing called itself?”

  “Ani something-or-other,” Meg said.

  Phyllida and Lysander exchanged puzzled looks. “Haven’t heard of it either,” Lysander said. “Ani? Well, there’s Black Annis, but she’s ferocious, so if it didn’t try to eat you, it wasn’t her. I’ll ask Bran, but I thought between the two of us we knew every fa
iry in these parts. Some kind of lightning fairy?”

  “Ani Yuntikwalaski,” Dickie said.

  “That’s it, that’s what it called itself,” Meg said. “What is it?”

  “A Cherokee spirit of lightning and thunder. I read about them last summer when I was at camp in North Carolina.” He spoke as though excusing himself. He was always a little ashamed of his knowledge—the more obscure and esoteric it was, the more abashed he felt. He also didn’t mention that his father sent him to camp to try to “make a man out of him” (which he had overheard quite accidentally). Who can say if it is more manly to play flag football and fish and swim in frigid lakes with unknown muddy depths, than to immerse yourself in a new culture and set about meeting its representatives? Sports made Dickie wheeze, and something in the North Carolina air had aggravated his allergies, so he spent all his time with the old Cherokee woman who cooked and mended for the campers, hearing the tales of her ancestors. His only hikes were to the library to check out books on Cherokee history.

  “What on earth is a Cherokee spirit doing in England?” Phyllida wondered.

  “And what did it mean about waking him up?” Meg asked. “I don’t think I woke anyone up.”

  “Ye killed me,” a rough voice said. Bran stood in the doorway, half in vivid sun from the garden, half shadowed from the kitchen. He had an uncanny knack for hearing everything that was discussed on the Rookery grounds and appearing without warning.

  Meg hung her head. It didn’t matter that she had entered the Midsummer War to save Rowan or that Bran would have killed her (or would he?) if she hadn’t loosed that temporarily fatal arrow. And it hardly mattered that they had all brought Bran back to life afterward. She had taken a life, and what’s more, had found it surprisingly easy. She still remembered her sense of resolution when she marched up the Green Hill, the certainty of her fingers when they released the bowstring, the sureness of her aim, the power she held within her that night … and she fought those memories. It wasn’t right that there should be any feelings other than sorrow and shame associated with the Midsummer War.