Guardian of the Green Hill (21 page)

“Just by saying the words?” she asked.

“By saying them and meaning them.”

“There's nothing else I have to do? No ritual, no spell?”

Phyllida laughed. “The world is not so complicated as all that, child. Magic, the best kind anyway, doesn't need all that gobbledygook. Your own oath binds you more strongly than chains of steel or magic. Your will can work more wonders than any Latin chant or dancing in a circle widdershins. If you go to the Green Hill with a certain heart and speak, it will hear, and from that time on, no one else can be Guardian of the Green Hill until such day as you pass it to your own daughter … or great-great-niece, though if you don't mind me saying so, I hope you'll have a bountiful clutch of chicks.”

Meg blushed.

“This is not something to be entered into lightly,” Phyllida continued more gravely. “It is a lifetime of work, of joy but also pain, and you know enough of the world now to understand that the joy is overlooked and forgotten all too quickly, while the pain lingers fresh. Are you sure, Meg, that you give yourself freely as the next Guardian of the Green Hill and all its inhabitants?”

She didn't let herself think. She'd decided her course and wouldn't falter. “I'm sure. Tomorrow at dawn I'll go to the hill and let them know. I just hope … I hope there's time.” It was the closest she could get to speaking of Phyllida's fate.

“Oh, my dear, you don't know how happy you've made me. Before I even met you, I had visions of this moment. I almost gave up hope.”

She was interrupted by Rowan strutting in with mud on his boots. “You should see the kennels, Lysander,” he said cheerfully, oblivious to the heavy mood. “Diana's whelped, six of the most perfect little foxhounds you've ever seen. When the Master of the Foxhounds gets a look at them, he'll dance a jig.”

Silly, who had gone through both a pirate and a motorcycle-gang phase and was forgiving of other people's eccentricities, ignored his squire act and said, “Meg's decided to be the next Guardian.”

“Jolly good,” Rowan said, swinging his walking stick. “I ought to mind, but you're right, that sort of thing is better left to girls. You have intuition and sensitivity and all that. You attend to that part of it, and I'll take care of the rest.” Imagining himself heir, he had done a lot of thinking as he surveyed his estate. Yes, the fairies were interesting, but he hadn't had very good luck with them so far, and they didn't hold his interest like the Rookery and the grounds and the tenants themselves. He was already making plans for expanding the stables and adding emergency sprinklers in case of fire. Even the greed he'd felt under the fresh effects of Gwidion's spell had vanished. Of course he must have all the money associated with the estate. How else could he keep things maintained and repaired? But his desire for the money now was only practicality, not avarice.

“Next order of business,” he said, a phrase that astounded them. “James. As head of the household, I am responsible for all my siblings, and as the spare heir, as it were, James is important. Meg, what have you done so far to get him back? All very good to have a test for you, but enough's enough.”

“Me? I haven't done anything. Phyllida and Lysander have been doing it all.” She turned to Phyllida, who was making desperate shushing motions to Rowan. “Now that things are … different … I really should help. I don't know how much time you'll have. Wait … test? What test, Rowan?”

“Oh, don't worry about them. It's all up to you. You know, the test for the new Guardian. Someone you love gets taken by the fairies, and you have to get him back all by yourself. I really think you'd have been better served working on that than going off to the fair.” He turned to Phyllida, who was already starting to hyperventilate. “I know there's supposed to be secrecy and all, but I plan on running things with efficiency. It's high time Meg stepped up to her duties if she really means to take them on. I'll need the help.”

Meg didn't understand half of what Rowan was saying, but she zeroed in on the other half. “James being kidnapped is a test? For me?” She looked at Phyllida, not accusing yet, though Phyllida knew with heartsickening certainty it was coming. Right now, Meg only looked confused, still trusting. “I'll help. I wanted to from the beginning, and if that's what I'm supposed to do—”

Rowan jumped in again. “Not help, you nitwit. You have to do it all yourself. They haven't been doing anything to get James back. You were supposed to figure it all out for yourself, I think, but we're wasting time. The sooner we get James back, the sooner we can get to those drains at Gladys Gap.”

Meg turned to Phyllida with hurt in her eyes, though Phyllida knew the hurt would soon be drowned by something much worse.

“Is it true?” she asked in a small voice. “You … you lied to me?”

“My dear, we had no choice,” Lysander said.

“You always have a choice,” Meg said, her anger rising. “Why didn't you tell me? I could have been trying, all this time. Instead I went to a stupid festival while James is alone underground. What if they're hurting him?”

“We did what we had to do, dear, and I'm sorry, but that's the way it is always done. When someone is chosen to be the next Guardian, she is tested, and the test is always the same. Someone she cares about is stolen by the fairies, and she has to get him back without help.”

“But why?”

“I don't know. Perhaps it is so the fairies have a hostage. You will always treat them squarely if they have one of yours down below.”

“Bran was your test? But you didn't get him back for seventy years, and you were still the Guardian.”

“It's not a test you have to pass. ‘Test' isn't the right word, I suppose. More like a trial, a tribulation.”

“But…” She was wasting time on the particulars. There was something much more important. “You lied to me. You risked James's life, and you lied to me. You both lied! You lied! You lied!” Her voice was escalating, and she couldn't control what she was saying anymore. Just those two words over and over as she stared at them both with a hatred she'd never felt before for man nor beast. They were worse than Smythe, and she was more naive and trusting than Fenoderee.

She didn't cry. She had been stony when she heard Phyllida was going to die, and now in the face of this shock she was as steel, hard and cold. Very evenly, so there could be no mistake, she said, “I don't care if you do die. I will never, never, never be the Guardian now. Not after what you've done. I hate you. I hate you both!”

She walked out and slammed the door, and if she heard a heavy thump and a cry of anguish, let us hope she thought it was only a fallen chair and not Lysander crumpling to the ground, clutching his chest. By the time Phyllida began screaming for a doctor, Meg was already at the edge of the woods on her way to the Green Hill. Rowan was right. It was time she took care of things herself.

He'll Kill You, You Know

“S
ILLY, GET
B
RAN …
no, he's had his sleeping draught … get … oh!” Phyllida knelt beside Lysander, crouching over him protectively as if the very strength of her grief could help him. He was pale as death, his breathing so shallow his chest barely rose. As soon as Meg exploded and fled, he'd started to his feet as if to go after her, then he suddenly clawed at his chest and throat, and fell heavily to the floor.

Rowan, with a presence of mind befitting a young lord, found a stable lad and sent him for the doctor. After he left, the others managed to get Lysander up to the sofa. His eyes fluttered and opened.

“My love, don't try to move.”

“The banshee…,” Lysander said, and winced as a spasm went through him.

“Hush. Don't think of it. This is nothing. A little stroke perhaps, nothing more. Why, gaffer Hudson had six of 'em, and he can still shoe a mule faster than his grandson. Just rest until the doctor comes.”

“I won't leave you alone. I'll try—”

She shushed him again as the others looked on miserably. They had no idea what to do.

“First Phyllida, now Lysander too?” Silly whispered to Dickie.

“He wouldn't want to live without her,” Dickie said just as quietly. “Once he heard about the banshee wailing for Phyllida, the shock of it must have made him sick.”

They milled around, wretched, feeling useless and in the way, but not wanting to leave in case they were needed.

“What if they both die? And Meg said she won't be Guardian. What will happen then?”

“Maybe you'll have to do it,” Dickie said.

For once, the unflappable Silly was afraid. “No! That's Meg's place, not mine. I love it here, but I can't do that. No way.”

Rowan came back. “That's it, I'm putting a telephone in here,” said the lordling, though no one paid any attention to him.

At last, almost an hour later, Dr. Homunculus arrived. He took one look at Lysander and shooed all the children out.

Even though they were miserable with worry, Silly and Dickie took advantage of Dr. Homunculus's preoccupation to sit in his shiny red convertible sports car. Silly took the driver's seat and gripped the wheel the way she imagined a race-car driver might. The baby fairy uncoiled its clinging arms and fell with a soft thump into her lap, where it contentedly changed first to a white kitten with a pink nose, then to a wheel of cheddar, then to a fossil ammonite before resuming its usual shape. Like a human baby babbling or grasping at imaginary bubbles in the air, the fairy was practicing the skills that would serve him for the rest of his very long life. It took Silly a while to get used to the rapid changes, but he couldn't hold any shape but his standard one for very long, and she cuddled the pigs and potted geraniums and wombats just as lovingly as her fairy baby.

Dickie sat in the passenger seat and absently pinched the leather upholstery between his fingers.

“What are we going to do with the little fairy?” he asked. It was better than worrying about Meg. Or Phyllida. Or Lysander.

“I guess the only thing we can do is go to the Green Hill and demand an exchange. I bet they'll be so happy to get this little guy back—or girl, I didn't think to check, and I'm not sure if I'd know even then. Anyway, they'll be so glad, we won't have to threaten. They'd never believe it anyhow. I'd never ever wever hurt my widdle diddleums.” She squeezed the fairy until he turned into a prickly hedgehog, then she had to make do with kissing its fuzzy white forehead. Dickie looked on, amazed. How had tough little Silly been replaced by this ridiculously maternal creature who spoke the foreign language of baby talk?

“Do you think we should look for Meg? She was pretty upset.”

“Nah,” Silly said. “She'll calm down. She's probably in her room, crying. You know her.” Dickie did, and he didn't agree. “She'll forgive them in a little while, I know it. It was a pretty shabby trick, making her think they were helping, but they're like parents, always thinking they know what they're doing, even after you point out how silly it is. But now Meg has our help, whether she wants it or not. When we get James back, she'll feel better.”

“Maybe we should find her and bring her. She knows the way to the Green Hill.”

“No! I want to do this myself. With you too, of course. I can get us there. Won't it be a nice surprise for the others when we show up with James?”

Dickie still thought there was safety in numbers, but he shrugged, and they talked strategy until Dr. Homunculus came outside.

“What are you two whelps about? Out!” He spoke more gently than he would have if Lysander hadn't been seriously ill.

“How is he?” Silly asked as she climbed out, leaving muddy footprints on the floor mat.

“You leave him alone to rest, and he'll be just fine,” the doctor said, and despite the recent demonstration, they never thought an adult would lie to them.

*   *   *

Rowan strolled to the keeper's shack with his hands in his pockets, whistling “Garryowen.” He knocked and entered without waiting for permission, as befits the lord of the manor on his own grounds. Gwidion was standing at a large easel with a stretched canvas upon it. He looked up in alarm and tried to throw a sheet over his masterpiece, but in his anxiety not to smear the fresh paint, he fumbled and the sheet pooled at his feet.

“Oh, it's only you,” he said. “What do you want, boy?”

Rowan took his time answering. What a different creature he was from the kind, simple boy he'd been back in Arcadia, or from the disappointed, proud, resentful boy after the Midsummer War, or the greedy pig he had been earlier. There was nothing acquisitive about him now. He took it as a matter of course that he would inherit the Rookery.

Rowan was in no hurry to answer. “That's a decent-looking picture so far. I don't like her expression, though. Very like her, true, but she looks too timid and weak. Phyllida's not that way at all. Listen, I want you to wait awhile.”

“Wait for what?” Gwidion asked testily. He needed to work on his portrait, but it wasn't going as well as it had earlier in the day. His frustration over losing his captured beauty might have had something to do with it, as had his encounter with Finn. He didn't trust that boy.

“For making it official. My inheritance, I mean. I want you to wait awhile before you give Phyllida the portrait and convince her to make me her heir.”

One aspect that remained of the original spell was Rowan's credulity. How else could he believe this stranger who had appeared from nowhere wanted to help him? How else could he believe Phyllida would make such a decision in gratitude for a gift she'd plainly said she didn't want in the first place?

“Yes, yes, whatever you say. As you see, I'm not done yet.”

“It's because of Lysander, you see. He's not well, and Phyllida's pretty upset, so I don't think she'd appreciate the picture right now. When he's better, though—”