Guardian of the Green Hill (17 page)

The mowing competition was set to start just after midday, and under the glaring eye of the sun, they gathered at the first plot of hay marked off from one of the communal fields planted specifically for this day's demonstration.

Whoever organized the competition had an entertainer's knack. First on the list were a very tall, fat man and a scrawny dapper little fellow barely five feet high. Obviously friends, they teased and tormented each other with good-natured enthusiasm and a malicious wit that delighted the crowd even more than their physical contrast alone would have. They were the opening act, the jesters, and they helped gather the crowd and hold their interest. Meg, still at the back of the group and focusing more on searching for Fenoderee than watching the swinging scythes, heard the lively insults but didn't get to see any of the mowing.

How could a pig-faced fairy almost seven feet tall be so elusive? She shoved her way through the press until she came to an open area, but she couldn't see the distinctive head anywhere. She didn't know that whoever was canny enough to open the show with comedy was also clever enough to save the high drama of the star act for the end. How else could he get hundreds of people to watch farmers they didn't know mow a patch of hay? Holding the audience riveted to the end meant more betting, more drinking, more spending. So the laws of entertainment decreed not only that Fenoderee must be last, but that to heighten the shock value (even among those who had seen him at past mowing festivals), he must be hidden until the moment of his grand entrance.

Finally Meg intimidated two small urchins into moving from their perch on a fork-armed lamppost and climbed up in their stead. From there she had a panoramic view of the field. Only two patches of hay remained, rippling like a dun-gold pond. From her height, she could clearly see brighter glints in the leftmost patch, thin metal bars planted among the grass to stymie the mower. Anyone on ground level couldn't see them, and trusting Fenoderee would never think to look for them. However hard his years of banishment might have been, they hadn't corrupted him so far as to make him expect treachery.

There was an excited sound running through the crowd as each turned to his neighbor and asked,
Is it time? Where is he? Will he come this year?
Meg wondered how many of them knew Fenoderee would be tricked.

Even though she knew what to expect, she caught her breath when she saw him come out of the little shed where they'd made him hide. He stepped into the sunlight, noble for all his ugliness, so strong, so trusting that even his pig snout wasn't hideous anymore. Fenoderee wasn't aware that he looked different, that mothers pulled their babies closer and hid their eyes, that pregnant women turned from him, lest (according to the old belief) their child be born with a snout too. Where he came from, appearance was a thing of the moment, a whim of the individual, not, as with us, an almost moral quality upon which people are judged.

He towered above the heads of all present, indeed, stood almost as high as Meg in her aerie. He carried his scythe casually around the back of his neck, a thing no mortal would dare, with the finely honed cutting blade resting lightly on his bare skin. Seas of people parted before him, and if she hadn't known better, Meg might have thought it homage for a hero. But they cringed, they did not bow, and Fenoderee was alone in the crowd, a pariah.

She wanted to call out to him, to stop him before the contest could start, but she still couldn't think of any way to keep him from exacting some revenge when his childish illusions were shattered. She was on the verge of just shouting out the truth and trusting to luck to prevent bloodshed, but she had seen children in the throes of blind tantrums strike out at their own beloved mothers before, and knew there was no force she possessed that could stop Fenoderee if he was determined.

She had a sudden inspiration. Why couldn't she confront Smythe and the others? She wouldn't have to tell Fenoderee, only threaten to tell him. When they knew they were in danger of discovery, they would back out of the contest quietly, no harm done. Maybe later she could explain things to Fenoderee, when Smythe was safely home, help him understand that the world was not a safe and pretty place, make sure he didn't get fooled again. Yes, that would work.

Like trees and cliffs, lampposts are easier to get up than down, particularly ones with ornate filigreed iron scrollwork at their capitals. Meg had been sitting astride the bent arm with her bedraggled skirts carefully tucked up under her. She started to swing one leg over so she could sit sidesaddle before shinnying down the post. All very good, in theory, but in fact she tangled her skirt in the unnecessary artistic flourishes, pitched forward when her momentum was stopped, hurled her top half backward to save herself, and, after a loud ripping of material, wound up hanging upside down by one knee six feet off the ground.

To the two grubby boys she'd evicted from their prize perch it was better than seeing a fairy mow, and they hooted and giggled and soon drew everyone's attention to the filthy girl hanging with her skirts around her head and her free leg flailing wildly for purchase. For the first few seconds, she was terrified of the six-foot drop onto her face, but for the next few seconds, which felt like a lifetime, all fear was replaced by utter humiliation. She couldn't see a thing beyond the tent of her green and cream skirt, but she heard the laughter and even a few bawdy jests, and she risked her own safety to try unsuccessfully to hold her dress modestly in place. Finally Tansy, on his way to the hayfield, took her on his broad shoulder and let her down.

“Are you okay, lass?” His eyes were bloodshot, but his grin was friendly and only a little teasing. He picked up the scythe he'd set down for her rescue. “Steady!” he said as she stumbled, her knees wobbly. “Here, let me take you to the front. Have a sit-down in the shade and see the mowing.” He swung her back onto his shoulder like she weighed no more than a marmoset. Still a little nauseated, she would have preferred to keep both feet on the ground, but he meant well, and it got her through the crowd to where Smythe was pacing, anxious for the start of the competition.

Tansy's kindness settled it. She couldn't let Fenoderee wreak vengeance on him, even if Smythe deserved it for orchestrating the whole thing. Tansy wasn't blameless, but at least he wasn't the ringleader, and she didn't want to see him hurt. She didn't want to see anyone hurt. As soon as he put her down, she ran up to Smythe and faced him squarely. He stared at the grimy, pathetic, daggle-tailed creature who stood with her hands on her hips and a scowl on her dirty face.

“I know what you're doing,” she said, loudly enough for those nearest to hear but not so loud that Fenoderee, sharpening his scythe on a stone, could catch her words. “I know you have metal bars in the field and you're cheating Fenoderee to get him to mow all your fields for free. You'd better stop this contest now, or I'm telling him, and you know what will happen then!”

Smythe looked down at her and said the last thing she expected.

“So?”

*   *   *

Finn sat restlessly in Fenoderee's wagon. It was fiercely hot, and unless he crawled under the sacks there was no shade—but better sun in the open air than shade under a stifling blanket. He wanted to enjoy the festival, but he didn't dare leave his prized possessions alone. That skeleton key! If only he could figure out how to get it out of the bag, he wouldn't mind leaving the fifty-pound note behind.

From somewhere far away he heard a shout and commotion, a man's voice calling to someone else, but he couldn't see anything. He knew it was almost time for the mowing competition, and though he couldn't think of anything more boring than watching a bunch of yokels cut hay, it was better than sitting around in the glaring sun, hot and miserable and alone. He began to feel sorry for himself again, and he blamed Meg for leaving him, even though she'd tried to get him to come along. He hefted the sack morosely to remind himself how bad off he was, and to his surprise, it didn't weigh nearly fifty pounds. He pulled the drawstring open and pulled out the bill. There was the bill with the illustration of Darwin—and it weighed only ten pounds.

To save you the trouble of figuring it all out, it might be best to explain now that the fairy money shrinks and grows according to need. In the normal course of its existence, it is worth about enough for a hearty meal—until someone starts to spend it. The first time or two, it stays the same, but the more it's spent, the more it weighs, until the owner stops spending. Finn was new to the game, so it had returned to its proper weight quickly, but if he'd stayed greedy and kept spending, it would have taken longer and longer to shrink, and someday it would never shrink at all until he managed to get rid of it.

Finn dimly guessed something of this. In any case, though he had a fleeting desire to spend, spend, spend straightaway, he controlled it and counted his blessings that he would be able to walk at an almost normal pace with his reasonable burden.

Positively rejoicing in the weight he once found so troublesome, he jumped lightly out of the cart … and immediately hid behind the cartwheel. Gwidion, dressed in his paint-spattered clothes, was just walking into the pub. His goat tried to follow him but was shooed outside by a bouncer. The goat either gnashed his teeth or chewed on something, Finn couldn't be sure, and walked around the corner.

If Finn ever looked handsome, he looked it now. A keen, malicious glow of anticipated revenge lit up his face, his cheeks lifted, and his lips curled. He was preparing to do his worst, and it suited him. He didn't yet know what his worst was, but there was his enemy, the man who had insulted and hit him, waiting like a sheep for the slaughter.

His were the instincts of a spy and assassin, not a hero, so the first thing Finn did was creep back to the taproom and hold his hemp bag up to the door.

“Could you, um … please…?” he said to the hand. He felt embarrassed, even though no one could see him.

The skeleton key, which had been treated far more rudely in its time, was happy just to be asked and obligingly opened the door. In a flash, Finn had his eye pressed to the chink in the wall, Pyramus to Gwidion's oblivious Thisbe.

Gwidion was in high spirits and ordered a drink. “And a round for the … gentleman beside me.” He'd almost said
for the house
, but even though most people were at the fields for the mowing competition, the house was still packed enough to break Gwidion's meager bank.

He'd chosen a seat near Finn, and between that and the fact that his volume rose noticeably with each of the small glasses of amber liquid he tossed back, Finn could hear him quite clearly.

“Never … hic … never worked so fast in my life,” he said to no one in particular. “Got the sketches done, got well into the masterwork.” Already his face was flushed and a sheen of sweat shone on his brow.

Some of the patrons looked at him like he was crazy, but a few, recognizing an easy supply of drinks, sidled closer. A customer with gray stubble all over his head, cheeks, and upper lip pulled up a chair and clapped him on the back. “Bring us the bottle,” the man said, with a nod toward Gwidion to indicate on whose tab it should appear.

“I've done it,” Gwidion said to his new friend. “Or as good as. I thought it would take two weeks, a week at best … because this has to be my very masterpiece, you know.” The stubbly man didn't know, but he nodded and chewed on a pickled egg. “But in one day I'm half done. Tomorrow, or the day after, she'll be mine. It will all be mine.”

Stubbly, catching the feminine pronoun, assumed he was courting and said, “A looker, is she?”

“None better,” Gwidion said proudly, thinking he meant the portrait. “My best yet. She's weakening, I can feel it. She was weeping today, you know.”

The bottle was as good as his, so Stubbly said, “Aye, when they go over all weepy, you know they're yourn.”

Finn didn't understand all of this, any more than Stubbly did, but he grasped that Gwidion was working on a masterpiece, and immediately he knew what he wanted to do. Gwidion was obviously proud of whatever he was drawing. Finn would hurt him, like the artist had hurt him yesterday.

A barmaid with dark, tumbling curls and a revealing sheer white blouse passed by with a friendly nod, and Gwidion's bony arm snaked out to grab her. “Come here, sweetheart, and give us a kiss.”

Only years of experience kept her from dropping her laden tray, and she let herself be pulled down to his lap to avoid falling to the floor. Her smile broad and artificial, her eyebrows scowling, she tried to pry herself away, but Gwidion was persistent. “Come on, darling, be good to me. I've got prospects. I'm up-and-coming!” He guffawed at himself. At last he took one liberty too many, more than even a barmaid can expect from her intoxicated patrons, and she slapped him resoundingly.

His look of drunken lasciviousness turned to hatred, and he said, “You'll come to me, willing or no, wench.”

She just tossed her curls and stormed off.

“Seems to me, if you got one gal, you shouldn't try for two,” said Stubbly, but Gwidion ignored him.

He fumbled in his vest for a pen and snatched a paper cocktail napkin from the far end of the table.

“'T'ain't 'arf bad,” Stubbly said, looking over Gwidion's shoulder as he drew. No matter how he twisted himself, though, Finn couldn't see what he was drawing.

When the barmaid passed again, giving Gwidion as wide a berth as possible, he called out to her, “I'm sorry, miss. Will you have this as a sign of my most humble contrition?” He thrust out the napkin and the woman, fascinated against her will, came closer. He held it just out of her reach until she was at his side.

She stared at it, and her whole attitude changed. Shoulders that had been rigid softened, her body inclined toward Gwidion, and though Finn couldn't see it, her once-guarded eyes dilated. She gave every indication of a girl in the first giddy flush of love. Without being pulled or prompted, she sank down on his lap, wrapped her arms around Gwidion's neck, and kissed him full on the lips.