Guardian of the Green Hill (3 page)

“That was a long time ago,” she said, referring to the war of two weeks past.

“What are you doing here?” Dickie asked rather rudely, and Meg looked sidelong at him. This was the Seelie prince, albeit in disguise! Didn't he have any idea how to treat royalty?

“Oh, just taking the air,” Gul said nonchalantly. “I heard about the trouble yonder. Bad business.” He shook his head. “He was a fine child. Any fairy mother would be glad to have such a bonnie laddie.”

“You're not supposed to be here,” Dickie insisted. “None of the fairies are supposed to be at the Rookery unless invited, especially you.”

This was strictly speaking true, but a fairy who had risen from the earth as soon as the molten magma cooled enough that there
was
earth certainly wouldn't be stopped by any silly rules. It usually took a fair amount of Phyllida's skill and fairy lore to keep fairies safe from humans and humans safe from fairies. Lately she had been neglecting her duties. Iron nails driven into the sod had rusted away, never to be replaced. Crows stole the bells that tinkled in the wind at the gatepost. There hadn't been a four-leaf clover hunt for weeks. None of these things alone can keep out a determined fairy, but collectively they create a general feeling that fairies are unwelcome, and usually that suffices to keep them at bay.

“You know more than a lad of your age should,” Gul told Dickie, giving him that intense stare a border collie gives a straying sheep, then bolted for the tall grass, where he was soon lost among the cowslips and yarrow.

“I wonder what he was here for,” Dickie mused.

“Well, he would have stayed if you hadn't been so rude,” Meg countered. “I haven't seen him since—”

“Since you killed Bran for him,” Dickie finished for her. “You're getting as bad as Silly, thinking the fairies are safe. If he was here, he was up to no good. Prince or no prince, he's a fairy, and that means trouble. We should check with the others.”

They found Rowan, Silly, and Finn in their rooms performing perfunctory ablutions in preparation for dinner. Rowan's hands were pristine below the wrists, filthy above. Finn had a streak of grime behind each ear as if his face was a clean mask slipped on over permanent dirt.

“Did you see Gul?” Meg asked from the hall.

“Was he here?” Silly asked, jumping up and down on her bed in glee. “Oh, I can't believe he didn't come to see me. I wanted to show him what I've learned. I've been practicing my fencing with a pair of swords I found in the old armory.” The Rookery was filled with arms and relics from every generation that inhabited it, from sabers and arquebuses to modern fowling shotguns. “They're not the same as Hen and Brychan, but I'm getting used to them.” Much to her dismay, her fairy weapons had been taken from her after the Midsummer War.

“He doesn't care what you've learned,” Meg said sharply. Dickie was right. Fairies were dangerous, selfish. How had she forgotten? She rubbed her eyes. She felt a little hazy all of a sudden, confused. They
were
dangerous, weren't they? She didn't feel like herself. I'm just tired, she thought. Tired and upset by what I saw today. She shook herself like an agitated bluebird puffing her feathers.

“He trained us for the war, that was all. He doesn't need us for anything now. I'm sorry, Silly, but he's not our friend. You can't trust him.”

Silly stuck her tongue out and called Meg an old stick-in-the-mud.

Meg ignored her. “If he didn't come to see us, what was he here for? Phyllida and Lysander weren't around. Did he visit Bran?”

“Bran came to play croquet with us,” Silly said. “We would have seen if he was talking to Gul.”

“Bran got out of his chair? He … played?” He was too weak to run around. Trust that stubborn lout to put himself in danger as soon as her back was turned. The others wouldn't think to make him lie back down. Things seemed to fall all to pieces when she or Phyllida was gone from the Rookery.

She looked around, aware of an empty space. “Where's James?” she asked her brother.

Rowan shrugged.

“But you said you'd watch him.”

“I did? I don't remember.”

“When we were leaving. He was watching the ants and you said … Oh, Rowan, you're useless!” Meg stomped off to take care of things herself.

She wasn't really worried. The Rookery was swarming with servants, and Phyllida was so loved and respected there was no one in the village who would do her or hers any harm. But what if James broke his leg, or got stuck in a tree? What if he fell into an abandoned well? It didn't matter that she didn't know of any wells on the property. In fact, that made it all the more likely, because who would fall into a well they knew about? Maybe little James had been poking around the old summerhouse, and when he pushed aside the brambles in search of some novel bug, he crashed through the forgotten well to his doom.…

Oh, no, there he was, still playing with ants on the croquet lawn.

“James,” she called, running up to him and hugging him, relieved as if she'd just dragged him dripping from the well. He felt unnaturally cold. “Are you all right?” she asked, laying the back of her hand on his forehead.

He shook her off and stared at her unblinking. “Your eyes are red and puffy. You look ugly!”

She gasped. Gentle, loving, self-contained little James hardly ever had anything but hugs and caresses and praise for his adored eldest sister. Before bed every night, he would crawl into her lap and stroke her dark brown hair while she told him a story.
Surround me with your armies
, she'd say, and he'd throw his plump little arms around her neck, squeezing with all his love until she cried,
I surrender!
He'd never said an unkind thing to her in his life. She gulped and tried to dismiss it. Maybe it was just a phase.

“Come in and get washed up for dinner,” she said.

“Dinner? Hooray!” He jumped up and did a little dance. Well, at least he was cheerful, if not his typical sedate self.

“Look out, James. You're stepping on the ants.”

“I know,” he said serenely, continuing his jig.

She grabbed his arm and pulled him off the mound. “James! I'm ashamed of you! You know you don't kill bugs. It's not right.” And it's not like you at all, she thought. “Especially ants here at the Rookery. You know what Bran said. They might be very old fairies.”

He struggled against her grip, snaking out one leg to stomp a few more. “These aren't fairies,” he said. “I checked. They're just crunchy ants.” He wiped his mouth, and she thought she saw a tiny black leg flick off his cheek.

“You didn't … eat … an ant, did you?”

“I'm hungry!” was all he said, and he broke free and ran inside.

Phyllida failing, James rude and cruel … What's happening? Meg thought.

Phyllida and Lysander still weren't home by the time the children gathered for supper. Meg looked worriedly at James, but as far as she could tell, he was his old self—he focused on his food with single-minded determination and hardly seemed aware of the others, unless they tried to snag some last morsel he'd set his heart on.

Though she knew it wasn't exactly a polite topic for the dinner table, she told them about Moll, sparing them a detailed description.

“I think we should look for her,” Meg said.

Rowan, stuffed and sleepy after an afternoon of turning croquet into a blood sport, said, “Sounds like Phyllida will take care of it. That's what she does, isn't it?”

“But I'm supposed to … I should help. Come on. Silly? Will you go?”

“Well…”

“We'll go to the Green Hill.”

“I'll go!” Finn chimed in.

“Already a cyclops,” James said, not looking up from stuffing buttered boiled new potatoes into his mouth. “Wanna be blind?”

“James!” Meg admonished. But it was true. Finn had been punished for spying on the fairies, and even if he went under her aegis, he wasn't likely to be welcomed. “I'm sorry, Finn. I can't take you to the Green Hill.”

“Go on, take him,” James said, spewing crumbs. “Maybe he'll fall in love with you like you want.”

A wave of crimson climbed from Meg's neck up to her cheeks.

“And if he's blinded,” James added, “he won't care how you look!” He chortled while the others looked on, aghast.

Meg reddened the rest of the way, until even the part in her hair was a line of scarlet. She stared straight ahead so there wasn't the slightest chance of making eye contact with Finn and said, “James, go to your room this instant!”

He ignored her.

“I said—”

“I heard you,” James said, grabbing half a leftover roll from Dickie's plate. “Don't have to do what you say.”

She was sorely tempted to throw a fit, if only so she could yell away some of her embarrassment, or failing that, to grab James by whatever arms and legs she could catch and haul him off to his room. But she thought he would probably ignore her ranting lectures, and no doubt struggle against apprehension. Successfully wrestling a determined four-year-old without hurting him is a difficult undertaking, and just at that moment Meg really didn't feel up to it. She had to get away, from her family, from the Rookery. She had to get out into the woods.

She bolted from her chair and ran out the door, only breathing easily when she reached the edge of the forest. She heard steps behind her and turned to find Finn.

He regarded her with one dark blue eye … one beautiful blue eye … Stop that this instant, Meg Morgan! He fingered the black silk patch that covered the other eye, and Meg shuddered to think what might be beneath it.

“It's okay. You can stare,” Finn said casually, and it took her a moment to realize he meant stare at his eyepatch, not the rest of him. She usually only did that when she was absolutely sure no one was watching. How in the world had James known she had the smallest, tiniest, ever-so-insignificant crush on Finn? Perhaps she hadn't taken the trouble to guard her feelings from him as she had the others, since he was only four. Evidently growing up, though, to judge from today's outbursts.

“Do you want to see it?” he asked.

“Your … eye? No, no thank you.”

She thought, hoped, it was an attempt at friendship, but realized that being Finn, he was probably just trying to make her feel sick and squeamish.

“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.