Guardian of the Green Hill Page 8

  “Meg, look,” Finn said, jerking her to an abrupt stop and nearly wrenching her shoulder out of joint. She followed his finger and saw a green-cloaked figure kneeling at the water’s edge, leaning out across the flow. Her face was hidden by a deep hood, but long, wild strands of red hair fell forward into the moonlight. It might be Moll. It must be Moll. Who else could it be?

  The woman didn’t appear to see them, though they stood to her side and slightly behind her only a few yards away. She had something clutched in her hands. She thrust her arms into the stream and churned them among the rocks. She was washing something as she wailed, something white and red. Meg took a tentative step closer. Something about the red was awfully familiar … red by moonlight, thick and dark with a quicksilver sheen and a taste of copper in the air. Blood! She was washing a blood-soaked shirt.

  Meg squeezed Finn’s hand almost hard enough to pay him back for the wrenched shoulder. She knew that shirt. The fine linen, the silver threads, splashes of other colors that were not bloodred.… It was the shirt Phyllida had given her to paint in. The shirt she had given to Rowan that very afternoon.

  “Moll,” Meg began, taking a small step forward.

  The washerwoman raised her head with infinite slowness until the hood fell back just far enough to reveal eyes as bright as blood, eyes red from weeping, and redder. There were no other features, no mouth, no nose.… Surely they were just hidden by the hood? But the woman who stared at them, seeing and not seeing, was all eyes. What else did she require when all her life was about weeping?

  Meg, wanting desperately to run, took another step toward her, but then she wasn’t there.

  “Was that her?” Finn asked breathlessly.

  “It couldn’t be.”

  “Then what … who?”

  Meg wished she knew more about the fairies. That poor woman must be one—how else could she vanish?—though what her unhappy purpose was Meg couldn’t guess.

  “Come on, we should go home,” Meg said. “Phyllida will be so worried, and we have to tell her about this. She’ll know what it was.”

  “I left something at the Green Hill,” Finn said. “We have to go back.”

  Meg looked indecisive. This was Finn after all, and for all their sudden burst of camaraderie, she couldn’t forget his fundamental nature. To meet him at the Green Hill was one thing, to lead him there quite another.

  “It’s important. I’ll tell you about it on the way back. It’s something from the fairies.”

  She led him through the darkness back to the hill. It seemed steeper to their tired legs, and they trudged to the summit, grunting and panting like it was any ordinary hill. Finn fumbled through the tall, coarse grasses, on the edge of panic until he found the bag, exactly where he had left it. Meg resisted the urge to ask what was inside and started back down the hill to hurry him along. Then the ground heaved under her, and as she slid to her rump, she had the impression not of an earthquake (which is rare in those parts) but of sitting atop a giant tortoise that had suddenly decided to take a stroll (which is even rarer). Finn staggered on deeply bent sailor legs to collapse beside her as the ground stopped shifting.

  “What on earth?” Finn began, but Meg clapped a hand over his mouth and pointed down the hill, even as she pulled him lower behind the veil of Queen Anne’s lace.

  “What? I don’t see anything,” he said indistinctly from behind her fingers, and was piggy-pinched for his troubles.

  “Be quiet!” Meg hissed fiercely. “Don’t you see them?”

  There was a rustle of leaves, a tinkling of silver bells, and the brambles fell aside reverently for a fine dapple-gray horse, which bore the most lovely woman in the world. When Meg had first seen her, she wore a green and silver gown speckled with jewels, but today the Seelie queen had set aside her royal raiments for hunting garb. She wore trousers and a trim green jerkin that might have been leather or might have been leathery leaves. Her hair, that ambiguously pale, shining color that shifted from platinum to gold, hung loose to her waist. A hooded hawk perched on her hand. The bells Meg heard were tied to his jesses.

  Even though she knew it was only a glamour—that the Seelie queen could just as easily appear a wizened hag, or a great tusked sow, or a winged fish—Meg was so awed by her beauty that it was a full minute before she even noticed the queen’s retinue. There was the prince, her friend of sorts, Gul Ghillie, in his grown-up guise, wearing a green and red doublet and puffed bombasted hose over parti-colored tights, looking rather like a jester or a slim Henry VIII. Behind him rode serried ranks of Seelie nobles, arrayed in fantastic variations of hunting garb through the ages, from foxhunting pinks to leopard pelts, and behind them capered creatures of all shapes, some dressed, some furred, some feathered, some wearing nothing but their own skins. One slate-gray sprite with stubby leathery wings played on a multiple pipe and somehow had breath enough to dance to his own lively tune. A creature that looked like a hedgehog without the spines rolled to and fro beneath prancing feet and stamping hooves. Will-o’-the-wisps hovered at the periphery, assisting the moon to light the panoply.

  “What’s there? What do you see?” Finn asked as low as he could.

  “The court, the queen … Gul Ghillie … all of them. Hush!”

  Finn clenched his jaw, mortified, angry at Meg, though it was no fault of hers. Denied again! The fairy court, the queen, within his sight, if only he could see!

  They laughed and chatted and sang merry tunes as they rode directly into the hill and disappeared from sight, their voices echoing for a moment before they were absorbed into the ground. The train became intermittent after the great lords and ladies entered, as the lesser fairies, some slowed by their odd forms, followed at their own pace. They were almost gone, all but a small green piglet in a stocking cap and a manikin on a horse. It looked like Little Lord Fauntleroy, dressed beyond its years (though who knew how old a fairy might be) in midnight velvet and masses of ruffles at its wrists and throat. Its golden curls glinted in the glow of the last will-o’-the-wisp, and its face was pale as moonlight.

  Why, Meg wondered, did some of the fairies choose to look like men, some like beasts, and some like nothing on this earth? Did they have their favorite forms, like the stubborn Rookery brownie, or did some change all day long? Did they reflect some aspect of their personalities? She would have to ask Phyllida when she began her formal education. That last fairy man, for example, looked remarkably like—

  He turned his round little face to the sky, and Meg froze. It couldn’t be.

  “Oh! Do you see?”

  But Finn could see nothing except the dark forest.

  Her hand tightened on his again. “Finn, is it … is it?”

  The fairy boy on the pony looked exactly like her own brother James.

  He rode into the arch of the Green Hill, and the earth trembled, settled, and was still. The Green Hill had closed its earthen gates upon its treasures.

  As Meg had learned once before, no amount of ranting and raving and pounding on the grass can induce the Green Hill to open against its will. The last retreat of the fairies hunkered and held its peace against Meg’s commands and Finn’s few baffled kicks against the turf. When Meg had expended enough of her energy to be rational again, Finn asked her what she had seen.

  “James. Or … I thought it was James. It looked like James.” She used to live in a world where, if something looked like a thing, it was that thing. Not so anymore.

  “Tell me exactly what you saw,” Finn said, and she did, even concealing her annoyance when he made her linger over her description of the queen, down to the moment she saw James’s dear little face.

  “But you can’t know if it was him, can you? I don’t know much about fairies”—though after weeks of quizzing Dickie on his research, Finn knew more than he thought—“but it might just be a fairy pretending to be James, right? I mean, if they knew you were watching, they might take his form just to mess with you, make you think they had stolen him. Isn’t that s
omething they’d do?”

  She had to admit it was.

  “That’s it! I’ve had enough!” she yelled, not at Finn but at the Green Hill. “I won’t do it! You all are crazy—you fairies, and Phyllida, and Bran, and everyone in this village. You are horrible, mean, cruel.… Why doesn’t everyone move away from here and fence it off with barbwire and post guards?” She collapsed into tears. “You made me kill Bran. You took James, or even if you didn’t, it’s just as bad to make me think so. I won’t be Guardian! I won’t! Phyllida can find someone else … or no one else! I don’t care. I’m writing home tomorrow. I want to go home! I want to see my mom and dad! I hate this place!” And to Finn’s dismay, she fell on his shoulder, heaving and sobbing in a wet, sticky mess.

  “Uh, there, there?” There, there? He cursed himself. What on earth did “there, there” mean? Where, where? What good was that supposed to do Meg?

  “Come on, let’s go home. Phyllida can sort this out.” He pushed her gently away, and as soon as the warmth of her cheek was off his shoulder, he almost wished it were back. As repulsive and confusing as it was in one way, it was also kind of nice. It made him feel important, older, different from how he usually was.

  Who knows what Phyllida thought when they appeared at the door, so long after dark, coming from the woods, Meg distraught and tear-stained, Finn with obvious signs of having been struck about the head.

  “Where’s James?” Meg demanded before Phyllida could put any of her hypotheses into words.

  “Upstairs in bed, I imagine. Meg, where were you? We were so worried.”

  Phyllida found herself talking to Meg’s rapidly retreating back as the girl dashed up the stairs. Meg scoured the bedrooms and found no sign of James.

  “Where is he?” she asked, almost hysterical.

  “I don’t know, dear. Tell me, one of you, what this is all about? What has James to do with it?”

  Finn had to be spokesman. “We were at the Green Hill,” he began.

  “Meg took you to the Green Hill?” Lysander asked.

  “No, I found it. We were looking for Moll.” He almost told them about the weeping woman, but first things first. “Then we went back to the hill, and Meg saw the fairies, and she said she saw James with them. He went under the Green Hill, and we couldn’t get in.”

  “Is this true?” Phyllida asked Meg as she ran by.

  “Yes, yes, yes!” she said exasperatedly, making dashing forays into rooms in search of James and then coming back to the group.

  Rowan, Silly, and Dickie were drifting downstairs, rubbing the sleep out of their eyes, asking what all the hubbub was about.

  “James is missing,” Meg said. “Have you seen him? Who saw him last?”

  “Oh, don’t worry, he’s in the kitchen,” Silly said. “I heard him go down about an hour ago, and I went down too for another piece of apple tart. You missed a good dinner, Meg. Where were you?” But Meg was already sprinting to the kitchen, with Phyllida, Lysander, and Finn following close behind her, the others coming up behind on sleep-heavy legs.

  Meg peeked into the garden kitchen. There at the table was James, with a huge loaf of oat bread clutched in both his hands. His face was all but buried in one end, and he made grunting snorts like a ravenous badger as he ripped and chewed great chunks. For all that he shoveled food down his maw at an amazing rate, he looked positively gaunt. Cheeks that had been full and peachy were now sunken, and his arms looked like sticks. He got the whole loaf of bread into his gullet faster than a starving dog and turned to the remains of the apple tart, grabbing fistfuls. Between bites (or wolfings), he swigged what looked suspiciously like hard cider from a stone bottle.

  Phyllida laid a hand on Meg’s shoulder and drew her gently back. They gathered in the parlor.

  “That’s him, isn’t it? He’s okay? It was just a trick when I saw him go under the Green Hill, right?” Meg hoped against hope Phyllida would give her the answer she longed for.

  Phyllida sighed. “It was right before my eyes, and I didn’t see it.”

  “No … no!”

  “He grows skinny and cold. He eats like a glutton. Has he been rude, improper?”

  “Yes,” Meg admitted. “He … yes, very rude. Not himself. I thought it was just a phase.”

  “I think … I cannot be sure until we perform the test … but I think that is not our James in the kitchen. That is a changeling, and you saw the real James on the hill tonight.”

  “We have to get him back! What do we do, Phyllida?”

  “Lysander,” she said, “get the eggshells from the compost pail.”

  “What are you going to do? You’re not going to hurt him, are you?”

  “You can’t hurt a fairy,” she said as she sorted through the eggshells, picking out the most intact ones and brushing off bits of coffee grounds and carrot peel. “But no, the test won’t hurt him a bit, whether it’s James or a changeling. Come, follow me into the kitchen and just watch, don’t speak. Whatever happens, don’t ask questions or look surprised at what I’m doing. As far as anyone is concerned, we just got out of bed for a midnight snack.”

  The whole group filed into the kitchen and took places around the table, trying awkwardly and unsuccessfully to look normal. Fortunately James had found a smoked ham hanging on a hook near the hearth, and he was tearing into it with teeth that looked a little sharper than usual. He made a grunting sound to acknowledge their presence, and said, “Hullo, fatty,” to Dickie, who sat next to him. This wasn’t exactly fair. Dickie had certainly been plump on his arrival, but since his asthma and allergies didn’t seem particularly susceptible to English pollen, he’d managed to be a lot more active and had firmed up considerably. Still, both fairies and children will seize on your most sensitive point to mock, and that was always Dickie’s.

  As they all watched and pretended not to watch, Phyllida took another stone flagon of cider from the icebox and a pair of tongs from the drawer, then turned up the gas on the stove. Whistling a little tune as she worked, she took the largest of the eggshells gingerly in the pincers, poured in a measure of cider, and held it over the flames.

  “Ginger or cinnamon?” she asked casually.

  “Oh, both, if you please,” Lysander answered, just as casually, as he prodded the low hearthfire into more robust flames.

  She sprinkled the spices into the mulling brew and swirled the concoction around until it started to steam. James looked up from his ham haunch and stared, gobbets of meat falling from his mouth, as Phyllida handed the eggshell cup to Lysander and placidly started on another.

  James slammed down his mangled hambone and sprang up onto the chair, where he craned his neck and bobbed up and down, trying to see Phyllida’s handiwork from all conceivable angles. “Damme!” he said, in a grainy growl completely unlike James’s dear little voice, and continued,

  Here I stand, all in a fog,

  Like a pollywog, agog!

  Flummoxed, fuddled, and hornswoggled

  Like a lummox, all boondoggled!

  I have seen the first chick pip,

  I have squeezed the first rose hip,

  But ne’er in all my unborn days

  Has cider been brewed thisaways.

  “Eggshells?” James who was not James said. “Bosh!”

  The adults sprang into action—Lysander tossing back his egg of cider like a shot, Phyllida dropping her second brew onto the burner, where it filled the room with burnt sugar fumes. They grabbed little James roughly by the arms and flung him headfirst, shrieking, into the flaming fireplace.

  “No!” Meg screamed.

  But she heard a high-pitched laugh and saw a dim shape rise up through the chimney, and when she’d shoved and elbowed her way to the hearth, there was nothing there but a charred lump of wood.

  “James?” she breathed.

  “The changeling has gone back to where he came from,” said Phyllida, panting.

  “What was all that business with the eggshells?” Rowan asked.

&
nbsp; “To expose a changeling, you must do something so unusual it makes him forget his disguise as a human baby and speak as his true self. Brewing in eggshells is a time-honored method, though come to think of it, I’m not sure why all the fairies don’t know about it by now.”

  “Probably too embarrassed,” Finn said. “It’s pretty silly if you ask me.”

  “No one did,” Rowan said, and there might have been a fight if Meg hadn’t reminded them about the more important issue.

  “But where is James?”

  “That,” Phyllida said, “is the problem.”

  She explained to them that getting rid of the changeling is the easy part. After that, who knew? “Sometimes the real child appears at the doorstep as soon as the changeling disappears. Sometimes he returns to wherever he was taken from. Sometimes, though, they don’t return him at all.”

  “What do we do then?” Meg asked.

  “We’ll cross that bridge when we come to it,” Lysander said decisively. “Now, all of you take torches and look around the house and grounds.”

  Meg ran to the front door. Before she could open it she heard the thud-thud-thump! of something on its last legs collapsing against the door. She pulled it open, and in fell a dark, shaggy form.

  “Bran! Oh, Bran, what’s wrong? What are you doing up?” Though of course by now he wasn’t up. She placed a hand to his chest and felt something warm and wet. She didn’t need to shine her flashlight on her fingers to know they were darkened with blood. Oh, blood and more blood! I want to go home, she whimpered to herself, but with heroic effort, she cut her self-pity short and dragged Bran into the house. (Which, should you ever encounter a fellow with a barely healed arrow wound to the chest, is not the best thing to do to him, though it seemed like a good idea to Meg at the time.)

  “There ye are, ye baggage,” Bran said weakly. He tried to sit, coughed, and much to his frustration, sank helplessly into Meg’s lap. “Where were ye, gallivanting about in the dark? Thought ye fell in th’ abandoned well.”

  (So there is an abandoned well, Meg thought.)

  “You went out searching for me? How could you? You’re in no shape to be on your feet, certainly not to hike around looking for me. You could have killed yourself. After all the trouble I’ve gone to, too.” She’d already killed him once. She didn’t want to be responsible for his second death.