Guardian of the Green Hill (24 page)

At last she could go no farther. Her questing hands and then her forehead bumped solid dirt. They'd reached the end of the tunnel.

Panic filled her. She was held so tightly in the earth's embrace that she could barely move, otherwise she would have flailed and kicked her feet. She felt she couldn't even scream. Her face was pressed against a wall of dirt, and every exhalation echoed back to her. There wasn't any air! She was breathing her own air over and over again, and the tunnel would collapse behind them, and they would die suffocated and crushed and alone so far beneath the hill that no one would find them, and worms would eat them!

Then a hand wrapped itself around her ankle. If he said anything, she couldn't hear it, but that simple human touch reassured her just enough that she discovered she could breathe after all.

Who must do the hard things? She who can. Meg made mole-paw scoops with her hands and started to claw at the wall of earth. Madness, she told herself. You'll pull the whole thing down on our heads. But still she dug. This was the Green Hill,
her
Green Hill, her heritage and birthright. It might make the way hard, but it would let her inside in the end.

She scratched and scraped until a piece of the wall crumbled. Behind, the earth was softer and she squirmed her way through. There wasn't a tunnel anymore, just the hole made by Meg's body. Dirt forced its way into her mouth and even into her eyes, which against all reason she couldn't help but open periodically to check for light. And then there
was
light, tiny pinpricks like Finn had seen when she kicked him in the head. Winking diamonds whirled around her as she forced her way forward one last foot. Then she was free—or her head was—and she pulled the rest of her body out and shook herself like a dog. She gulped several deep, relieved breaths before she remembered Finn. She threw herself back on her belly and thrust her hands into the dirt. Fingers twined around hers, and between her strength and Finn's frantic kicks, he was hauled out of the ground.

He lay stunned, weakly wiping the dirt from his good eye and from behind his eyepatch. When he could see, he said, “This isn't the Green Hill I saw.”

“Me neither,” said Meg, who had only glimpsed it from the outside.

They were in a cave of sorts, lit by twinkling rocks in the walls and the soft reflection of glowing grubs that clung to the stalactites. Nothing in it looked man- or fairy-made … and yet it wasn't quite natural either. It was like a movie set: not a real cave but an almost-too-perfect representation of a cave created just for them. The rock walls were molded to look perfectly natural, the glowworms placed with careful randomness. Even the steady drip-drip of mineral-rich water from stalactite to stalagmite sounded with artificial precision.

“Hello!” Meg called, and her voice came back in ever fainter echoes,
hello-hello-hello.…
Where was Gul Ghillie? Where was the Seelie queen? The fairy kingdom was supposed to lie beneath the Green Hill. Bran had told her about the feasts, the dancing, the lovely fairy woman who had held him seventy years away from his family. Where were they all? More important, where was James?

“Let's go,” Meg said.

“Go where?”

They were in a large cavern that branched out into various passageways. They couldn't see very far down any of them.

Meg shrugged. “I don't think it matters. We found this place. We're bound to find something.”

Again, the impossibility of going back propelled Finn forward, and he followed Meg as she chose a corridor.

“There are bats, so there must be another entrance,” Meg said, pointing to dim flying shapes above their heads. That was a momentary relief … until one of the bats swooped closer and they saw it was dark bloody purple and slimy, with a frog's face and a long, trailing tadpole tail. Like many cave dwellers, it had no eyes, so it flapped along with its mouth gaping open, tasting the air to find its direction. It bumped against Meg then swooped back to lick her on the arm, its tongue leaving a slime trail. It flew up to its cavemates, and they all touched tongues to talk about the new creature in their lair.

Meg and Finn were walking downhill, and before long they heard the trickle of water. Meg fell on her backside and was sliding down the chute before she'd quite placed the sound. Finn, finally deciding that he absolutely, positively wouldn't follow her this time, lost his footing as he scrambled back and tumbled down the chute. He landed on top of her in a pool of frigid water, and they both went under.

On the downside, the water was just a little above freezing. On the plus side, the pool was lit from within by a strong glow that illuminated the whole cavern, and when they sputtered to the surface, they could clearly see each other's teeth chattering and their skin turning blue and goosefleshy. The pool was waist deep, shimmering silver. They couldn't see their own legs, but there were other things swirling in the water that Meg desperately hoped weren't alive.

They weren't, at least not yet.

Looking down, Meg saw people dressed in styles she had never seen. They walked in tight packs through a cityscape, and though it wasn't a place Meg recognized, it didn't immediately strike her as odd or ominous. Skyscrapers reflected each other grayly in polished windows, and cars—again, just a little different from any she'd ever seen—flew by. First she thought she was looking through the water to some realm beneath it, but when she moved and the ripples distorted the image, she realized it was a picture in the water itself. More people and different cities appeared, and it was a long while before she realized what disturbed her about the scenes: there was nothing green in them, nothing living besides the people. Every metropolis she'd ever seen had a tree or shrub planted in a preserved square of soil, clinging to life amid the smog. There should be rooftop gardens, flowerpots on windowsills. And pigeons—is there a city in the world without pigeons? In these places there was nothing but teeming humanity. She touched the icy surface with her hand, and the scene changed.

Now she saw men in military dress, soldiers with straps around their waists and thighs and chests, all holding weapons. They were running in loose formation toward … “Oh! Look!” She pointed, and the second her fingertip touched the water, the scene changed again, but she knew what she'd seen. The soldiers were about to engage an army of half-man, half-horse warriors wielding bows and lances. Men were fighting centaurs.

Another image rose from the silvery depths, a hairy, child-sized creature on two legs running for the safety of a forest while teenage boys chased it with rocks and chains. His legs were too short, they were gaining on him … a rock struck his head—

“No!” she cried, and touched the water again.

It was a seashore under moonlight, calm at high tide, and Meg let out the breath she'd been holding. She let the peace of the scene soothe her … then the tide started to ebb, revealing the mangled corpses of mermaids and mermen on the shore, their long hair flowing back and forth in the bloody waves.

Meg slammed the pool with both her fists. “Why are you showing me this?” she yelled. In answer, the water started to drain. With a whine and then a great sucking sound, it turned into a whirlpool, and Meg and Finn searched the cavern for any means of escape. But the chute that had brought them there was too steep and slippery with mud for them to climb, and the walls had no handholds. They watched, helpless, as the whirlpool widened, felt the sucking against their legs. At the end, they clung to each other as they were pulled under in a swirling mass of pressure and bubbles.

I'm dying
, Meg thought as the freezing water enveloped her.
Maybe the banshee wail was for me. Maybe
 …

But then the vortex spit them out, and they were warm and dry and standing in the middle of a massive, ring-shaped banquet table. Members of the Seelie Court were seated around the table, dining on savory delicacies from plates of gilded porcelain. At one end of the table, Meg saw a whole cooked peacock with its feathers cleverly reattached; a roasted black swan with its wings spread was at the other. A piglet lounged on a silver tray with a pomegranate in its mouth, and a crispy duck led a clutch of equally crispy ducklings around a jellied orange pond. There were cakes and sweets, marzipan mushrooms and chocolate forget-me-nots on spun-sugar stems.

All around was the gay, lively chatter of the diners at the table, and in the center with Meg and Finn, dancers moved in light, precise steps and servants (as finely dressed as their masters) carried trays laden with yet more exotic comestibles. She heard piping and fiddling and, beneath it all, a mournful bass continuo from something that sounded like a cross between a bagpipe and a harpsichord. Someone was singing a song that didn't seem to go with any of the three or four distinct melodies floating through the air.

No one noticed Meg and Finn, or if they did, they were so accustomed to people appearing from nowhere that they took it for granted. A saffron sash floated across Meg's face, and the owner, a willowy dancer in orange and gold gauze, murmured an apology but kept dancing. When the veil lifted, Meg spied the Seelie queen and dodged between the dancers and servers to reach her.

She gathered her courage and drew a deep breath to demand her brother back, but before she could say anything, her words, then her thoughts, then her feelings themselves seemed to slip out of her grasp. Her white-hot fury toward Phyllida vanished. She hardly remembered who Phyllida was. Her fears about James diminished. Of course he was fine. Weren't they all among friends?

She stared into the queen's soft gray eyes and knew there was something terribly important she'd meant to say. Remarkable, she thought, how much the Seelie queen looks like my mother, though when she'd seen the queen last time, she'd had fair hair.
Illusion!
some voice in the back of her mind chimed.
Glamour! Fight it!
But the resemblance made her feel so safe that she didn't want to fight. Mother and home were all she was longing for, and now that she was looking into her mother's kind eyes, she forgot why she wanted them in the first place. Everything was going to be all right, she thought. No, everything already was all right.

She turned, feeling a tap on her shoulder. A lissome young man with auburn curls offered her his arm, and before she could protest that she didn't know the steps and had no coordination anyway, he led her into a quadrille.

The first thing she noticed was that her nails were clean. She followed the line of her arm from her escort's shoulder to her own and found no trace of her journey through mud and worms and water. Instead she found a flowing dress in shell pink, studded with carved coral, skirts and overskirts and underskirts and petticoats in such profusion that she wondered with a giggle if her legs were still under there.

“I'm so glad we make you happy,” her partner said wistfully, and as the music changed, he whirled her to another man, who took her hands and bowed before turning her back over. They formed a line, men on one side, women on the other, and partners danced between them to cheers. Meg saw (with the only twinge of real feeling since meeting the queen's eyes) Finn leading a pretty milk-white creature clad in emerald silk in sashaying steps down the gauntlet, and he didn't even look at Meg. Then she was back in her handsome partner's arms, held close as her feet magically followed the intricate steps.

All was color, all was sound, blending so the dark violet of her partner's eyes hummed a cello baseline to the tinkling of the ruby jewels at his throat, and the piper's melody floated across her eyes like bluebirds. She felt weightless, tireless, but so parched. When the music ended, she would have to get a drink. But the music never ended, and she whirled first with her partner, then another, an older dashing fellow in black, then someone she thought was the prince himself, her friend Gul Ghillie in his other form, laughing, panting, joking along with the fairy court.

At last at the end of the wild dance, someone whirled her into another man's arms. She leaned against his chest for a moment, resting and laughing to herself at nothing in particular, and when the music resumed—a slow waltz—she looked up to find it was Finn.

Perhaps they heard different music from those around them, for they moved as if they were underwater, while everyone else twirled in a frenzy. Meg tried to say something to him, but her voice sounded very far away, and he just smiled and shook his head. When the tune changed again, he would have pulled her deeper into the heart of the dancers, but her dry throat cried out for relief and she signaled to one of the servants, a handsome, sturdy woman in dark red. She took a jeweled goblet and handed one to Finn. They pledged each other with their eyes and raised the glasses, secret smiles on their lips. Then a hand shot between them, the goblets fell with a clatter, the burgundy nectar inside splashing oblivious dancers, and the servant said, “Are ye daft? Din't yer ma teach ye better than that?”

It all came rushing back to her: James, Phyllida, the Green Hill, her journey below. Her hand flew to her mouth as she remembered what would happen if she tasted one drop of fairy food. She peered around her. The dancers were still whirling, but they were different. If she didn't look too closely, they were still lords and ladies of the Seelie Court. But if she managed to focus on one of the dervish figures, she saw a hoof, or a tail, or a withered hand, or a face like a fish with one round eye. The colors changed too. At the edges of her vision, they were still shining metals and flashing jewel tones, bright silks and deep brocades, but there was a gray tinge to everything now, a misty haze as if the whole scene was polluted somehow.

Finn tried to snatch another glass from the tray—he was more susceptible to the glamour than Meg—and she had to dig her nails into his wrist to make him stop.

“Hey, what do you think you're doing?” He jerked his hand away, and he was a grubby little boy once more. She looked down at herself and was a little dismayed to find she was muddy and sodden again too.