Read Snow White and Rose Red Online
Authors: Patricia Wrede
Snow White and Rose Red (27 page)
“Peace, prattler!” Madini snapped. “I must have silence, to see how best Hugh’s Faerie power may be unraveled from this mortal foolery. ”
The oakman snorted. “I thought you’d not be so quick as your talk made it seem.”
“Hold thy tongue!” Madini commanded, and turned her attention to the lamp. A moment later her eyes narrowed and her lips drew back from her teeth in an involuntary hiss. “Thou fool!”
“Now what’s toward?” Bochad-Bec said.
“Thou‘st stolen the wrong object,” Madini said with quiet venom. “This bears no Faerie power, if it ever did.”
“Thou toldest me to bring thee the lamp,” Bochad-Bec said stolidly. “There it is. An it’s not what you wanted, ‘tis thy fault, not mine.”
“Who speaks of fault?” Furgen said, stepping out of the shadows. Its cold eyes flickered from Madini to the lamp and back. “‘Twas good of thee to wait on my arrival,” it said pointedly.
“The thing this dullard stole is useless,” Madini said with great disdain, ignoring Furgen’s second comment. “Hugh’s essence is not in’t.”
“‘Tis the lamp the wizards used,” Bochad-Bec insisted. “I heard them say so.”
“Then even if ‘tis empty now, it has not always been,” Furgen said. “If that be true, can we not use it as a link, to reach whatever thing we truly want?”
Madini looked startled; then a slow smile spread across her face. “‘Tis possible; give me a moment.” Again she raised the lamp and studied it, then closed her eyes and concentrated. The lamp began to glow. In John Dee’s study the crystal flared into life, and in the forest outside Mortlak Hugh sat back and howled in pain before the startled eyes of his brother and his friends.
On the polished surface of the lamp’s side, a picture of Dee’s study formed. Madini studied it with care, noting the glowing crystal and the surprise of the two men as they hurried toward it. She smiled and murmured a spell to bring the crystal to her.
Nothing happened. Madini’s smile faded. Kelly bent over the crystal and for an instant his eyes looked out of the side of the lamp, directly into hers. Then Madini drew her sleeve across the surface of the lamp and muttered yet again. After a moment, she drew her sleeve away. Kelly’s eyes still stared intently out of the side of the lamp, but they saw nothing now.
“What happened?” Bochad-Bec asked.
“The mortals have wrought better than I guessed,” Madini said. “They’ve prisoned what they took from Hugh inside a crystal, and tied it somehow in the mortal lands. It will take time and study to learn how to bring it to us. Meantime, we must discourage them from further foolishness. Go and see that any tools they’ve left behind will be no further good to them.”
“We have the lamp. Is’t not enough?” Bochad-Bec said, not moving.
“No, ‘tis not!” Madini snapped. “Do as I bid thee!”
Muttering balefully, Bochad-Bec departed.
The bear reared back on his hind legs and clawed blindly at the air in front of him; one huge paw missed John’s shoulder by less than an inch. “Hugh!” John protested.
The bear did not seem to hear. He had stopped howling, but he was making a high-pitched whining noise that hurt to hear. Then, without warning, he collapsed into a panting heap.
Blanche started forward, but Rosamund caught her arm and held her back. “Let me go!” Blanche cried.
“And how if Hugh’s taken with another such fit, and knocks thy head from thy shoulders in the midst of it?” Rosamund answered.
“Aye, stay back a bit,” John said. “Hugh, what happened?”
“No,” Hugh growled. He heaved his forequarters up and shook his coat, then with visible effort said, “Don’t know.”
His companions looked at him with dawning horror. “Hugh, thy voice ...” Blanche said pleadingly.
“Hard to talk,” Hugh said, and the words were almost drowned in a deep, bearish rumble.
“He’s slipping back,” John said. His voice was full of pain. “The spell that gave him back his voice comes undone.”
“I think not,” the Widow said, studying the bear with a small frown. “Look you, ‘twas not the kind of spell that lingers; when we cast it, it served its purpose and was gone. This must be the work of those magicians.”
“Or of the dwarf,” Blanche said.
John’s face went white with anger. “Bochad-Bec,” he said. “Oh, indeed, that’s likely.”
“Like enough, I warrant you,” Rosamund said. “But what are we to do about it?”
Blanche looked at her sister as if she were an idiot. “We must do what we came to do! Cast the spell again, and give Hugh back his voice, if not his form.”
“And make Hugh the rope for a pulling-contest?” Rosamund shot back. “We do not know why this has happened, nor whether it may be done again. What good is it to Hugh if we restore him now and then tomorrow the wizards or the dwarf make him a bear again?”
“We have to try,” said Blanche.
“We must do something, true,” the Widow broke in, halting the incipient argument, “but I think we must consider better what it should be. And in the end, the choice belongs neither to thee nor to thy sister. What say you, Hugh? Shall we postpone this spell-casting?”
“Aye,” Hugh rumbled, and that put an end to the argument. Blanche was somewhat put out by this decision, but having seen Hugh’s pain she was willing to go to considerable lengths to avoid bringing it on again. So, once more, the little group trudged back to the Widow Arden’s cottage to plan.
Bochad-Bec was not absent from the glen in Faerie long. He returned with half a wax tablet and the news that he’d found traces of John’s magic all around the fallen oak branch.
Madini’s eyes blazed with rage at this news. “John! An he choose to interfere, I’ll see he rues it.”
“He may already,” Furgen said. “Is it not likely that his purpose was the same as ours? And ‘tis we who have Dee’s lamp.”
“True.” Madini’s eyes narrowed, and she smiled coldly. “And he’ll have more regrets ere I’ve done with him. He no longer has the Queen’s protection.”
“The human sorcerers are more important to our plans, Furgen pointed out.
“And wouldst thou have those plans overset because of John? He knows too much of Faerie for my comfort.”
“Aye, he should be watched,” Bochad-Bec said.
“Then find him for me, dwarf, and his wretched brother as well. They’ll not be far, I think.”
“And what of the humans?” Furgen said.
Madini looked at him. “I cannot bring the crystal here, as yet, but I have barred it from their use. They’ll get no good of it till I’ve had time to learn what we need to know.”
“And if there is no spell to gain the crystal?”
“Then I’ll find some way to bend these humans to my will so we may take it,” Madini said impatiently. “Go back to your work, mud-dweller, and leave me to mine!”
Furgen held Madini’s gaze with his flat, expressionless eyes for an instant; then he nodded and slipped into the shadows. Before Madini could transfer her irritation to Bochad-Bec, the oakman had also vanished. Madini grimaced, then hid the still faintly glowing lamp behind a fold of her cloak and departed, leaving the meeting place empty.
CHAPTER · SEVENTEEN
“Some time later, the mother sent Snow White and Rose Red to catch some fish. As they neared the brook, they saw something jumping like a giant grasshopper on the bank. When they ran up, they found it was the dwarf. ‘What are you doing?’ said Rose Red. ‘Be careful, or you’ll fall into the water!’ ‘Don’t be a fool!’ said the dwarf. ‘Can’t you see that that fish is trying to pull’me in?‘ The little man’s long beard had gotten tangled in the fishing line; before he could get it free a big fish took the bait on the other end, and the dwarf was not strong enough to haul it in. ”
HUGH SUFFERED NO MORE VIOLENT ATTACKS OF PAIN in the days that followed, but this was little comfort to his brother or his friends. Something seemed to be eroding all the good the Widow and her daughters had accomplished with the first of their attempted disenchantments; the bear was slowly losing both his voice and his ability to think clearly. Horrified by this development, John and the girls tried everything they could think of to reverse the decline. They prayed over the bear and over the site of John Dee’s ritual; they fed Hugh Faerie herbs mixed with wine and honey; they hung cold iron about his neck and draped him in garlands of rowan berries; they rubbed his coat with earth and pine tar, then washed it with clear water that had been left three nights in moonlight, three in firelight, and three in darkness.
Nothing did any good. The bear continued to grow more and more like a real bear as May blossomed into June. His voice became more guttural, and his temper shorter. Sometimes, with John, the cloud appeared to lift for a moment from his mind, but it never lasted. The slow decline was not as distressing as a swifter setback might have been; nonetheless, when he returned to Mortlak after some ten days spent scouring the back streets of London for new spells and exotic ingredients that might help his brother, John was shocked by the way Hugh’s humanity had faded.
“I think that soon ‘twill be unsafe for you to come here,” he told the girls in a heavy tone.
“Mother thinks so already; do not you start as well,” Rosamund said crossly. She was seated on a rock, plaiting willow withes into a bear-sized halter, to be used in their next attempt to assist Hugh. Flecks of sunlight danced across her dark brown hair as the breeze ruffled the new leaves overhead; a few feet away, Blanche was arranging bits of colored rock in a complex pattern on the ground, while the bear lay stretched in a patch of sun beside her, his head sunk on his great paws, his eyes following the motions of her hands.
John’s expression grew more somber as he studied Rosamund’s bent head, but his voice was steady as he said, “An your mother thinks that Hugh becomes a danger to you, you should listen and stay home.”
“Hugh?” Blanche said, looking up so quickly that she knocked three dull blue pebbles out of line. “What’s Hugh to do with Mother’s fears?”
At the sound of his name, the bear raised his head and snorted. He shook his coat, then looked toward John and whined deep in his throat. When John did not respond, the bear gave a gusty sigh and stretched his head onto his paws once more, his mournful gaze fixed on Blanche.
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