The Wizard of London (39 page)

But
restfulness eluded him, and he let his feet take him farther, out of the
manicured gardens and toward the “wilderness.” This was a part of
the grounds that differed from the lawn mostly by virtue of the fact that only
the paths were mowed; or at least, so far as he could tell in the darkness. He
had just stepped under the shadow of the ancient trees there, when a voice from
behind startled him.

“So,
son of Adam, you venture into my territory at last.”

He
turned. No Elemental Mage, much less a Master, would ever have mistaken the
creature that stood on the path, arms folded over his chest, for anything other
than what he was: a powerful Primal Spirit. Some might have said, a godling, as
it was not of any one Element, but of all of them, though Earth held primacy in
his makeup. In form, it was an adolescent boy, in antique costume, with a
strand of vine leaves tangled in his long, curly hair, and the moonlight seemed
to gather itself around the Spirit so that it was as easy to see him as if he
stood in broad daylight. There was an impression of veiled Power there, a great
deal of it. In this case, the very fact that this power was concealed from
David’s normally acute perception told him that the creature was not the
usual sort he was likely to encounter.

“I
beg your pardon?” he said politely. No point in beginning a
confrontation—not that he had any doubt of his ability to handle the
situation. It was only some Nature Spirit, after all. True, he had never yet
met one this powerful, but still, he was no peasant, to be terrified by such a
thing.

“I
come to give you fair warning, son of Adam,” it replied calmly.
“Had you ventured here in the proper season, I would have no issue with
the source of your power. But you come, out of skew with what is right and
proper, and I will not have it. Wield your might unduly, and bring blight, and
I will remove you—and at need, from this mortal coil entire.”

Well,
he might not have intended a confrontation, but there was no mistaking the
challenge there! Insolent thing…

He
suppressed his outrage, however, and merely said, coldly, “I am afraid I
do not take your meaning.”

The
seeming youth snorted. “You lie, you do; you lie and feign you do not
understand. But I will be plainer, then. You bring winter into summer, you take
the Element that should be your companion and twist it to bitter usage. And I
do warn you that you tread now on
my
ground, and I will not abide this
thing. Use your breath of ice and bring blight here all out of season, and you
will suffer the consequences. I do not meddle in the quarrels of mortals, but I
will not permit
you
to meddle in my affairs and with my charge. Use
what you have on your fellow fools, but do not o’erreach yourself.”

David’s
temper flared. “And you, sir, dare to threaten me!” He gathered his
own power about him like a cloak.

The
spirit laughed mockingly. “I do more than threaten, son of Adam. You hold
no sway over
all
that walks the Earth.” And he raised only his
eyebrow.

But
the moment that he did, David was driven to his knees—literally—by
fear. Fear so overwhelming, so crushing, that there was nothing he could do,
for his knees gave way and his thoughts collapsed and although every fiber of
him urged flight, his body was so paralyzed with terror that he could not move
so much as a fingertip.

It
lasted a lifetime, that fear. He could hardly do more than breathe, and even
that brought with it more fear with every intake of breath.

Then,
as suddenly as it had overcome him, the fear was gone.

And
so was the spirit.

***

Sarah
and Nan should have been in bed, of course. They should not have even
considered setting a single toe on the floor now that the rest of the household
was asleep.

But
Nan had long ago discovered what—though they did not know
it—generations of young maids who had been assigned to the room they were
now in had discovered. There was a simple way to leave the house when they
wanted to meet their swains in the moonlight. The window gave out onto a piece
of roof that was nearly flat. That, in turn, led to a series of bits of
ornamental stonework as easy to descend as a ladder, and from there to the top
of a wall one could walk along until that, in turn, led to the roof of a shed that
sloped down to within a mere four feet of the ground. Any girl sufficiently
sturdy and willing to tuck up her skirts could get out. Again—although
they did not know this—the housekeeper was well aware of this means of
egress, and this was why there were no young maids ever given that room. But
she had not considered that two little girls, strangers to the manor and mere
children after all, might also discover and use this means of egress.

In
fact, Nan had worked it out within days of their arrival. She just didn’t
bother to use it all that often. There was no real reason to; they hadn’t
transgressed so far in mischief as to have been confined to their room, and
they were usually so tired at the end of the day that even when they tried to
stay awake, they couldn’t. But Nan had lived her entire life in
rat-infested tenements that often had fires, and she had early learned to find
an escape route in case the normal one was cut off. She had shown this one to
Sarah, then both of them had mostly forgotten about it.

But
not tonight.

There
was something about the air tonight that had made both of them restless. Long
after the lights had been put out, Nan had been lying in her bed, staring at
the ceiling and listening to the bat make his rounds, and knowing from the
sound of her breathing that Sarah was doing the same. And she felt, more and
more strongly, that something wanted her to be awake, wanted her to come
outside. She could practically hear it calling her name. Finally she threw off
the covers, and got out of bed.

“I’m
goin’ outside,” she whispered.

“Me,
too,” Sarah said immediately, doing the same. “Do you feel it, too?
Someone wants us.”

“Somethin’
like,” Nan agreed.

The
two of them groped for their clothing and fumbled it on in the dark, helping
each other with fastenings neither could see. Then Nan eased herself over the
window ledge and out onto that bit of roof, and from there it was easy to feel
her way down with her toes on the stonework. The wall top was broad and Nan
felt no fear in walking it; moonlight shining on the stone made it as clear as
any path. Sarah followed, and they both dropped down to the turf side-by-side.

Nan
looked around, squinting, as if that would make any difference in seeing better
in the darkness. She missed Neville, who was asleep, and hadn’t stirred
even with all of their moving around; he could see things she couldn’t
with no difficulty whatsoever. But Sarah acted as if she had the eyes of a cat,
taking Nan’s hand and tugging at it.

“The
Round Meadow,” she said, which wasn’t round at all, only an
approximation of round, but it wasn’t that far from the manor, just a
little ways into the “wilderness,” which was a poetical way of
saying that the only things mowed or trimmed in there were the paths for
horseback riding. It wasn’t very big either; more of a pocket-sized
meadow, in which sweet grasses grew waist-high and flowers bloomed all the
time. Sarah and Nan liked to play there, because you could trample down a
little “room” in the grass and be quite private but still get to bask
in the sun and watch the clouds go by overhead.

That
was where they had spent most of the afternoon today, in fact. It had been a
very lazy, sleepy sort of day, and no one had wanted to do much of anything.
Mem’sab had let them all be somewhat lazy, and not do any lessons. Sarah
and Nan had gone to Round Meadow with rugs and books and a picnic basket of tea
things. Sarah had made daisy chains and crowns, then they’d both made
flower fairies and set them up around their little grass-walled room, creating a
village in miniature, with houses, a fairy pub with acorn cups and bowls, and a
shop selling new flower frocks and hats. All very silly, of course, but then
they had gathered up their “fairies” and divided them into
“audience” and “players,” and put on
A Midsummer
Night’s Dream
with Sarah and Nan dividing up the parts between them.

Nan
could not help but think about that, and about how the first planned
performance of the play had somehow called Robin Goodfellow. Was that why the
two of them felt so restless tonight? Had the play once again worked its magic?

But
when they got to Round Meadow, it was not Puck that they found.

There
was something four-legged and white standing in the middle of the meadow where
their grass-room had been. At first, all they could see was its back and part
of its legs and its neck, all gleaming silvery in the moonlight, head down and
grazing. They could both hear the sound of the grass being torn up and strong
jaws munching it. For one moment, Nan thought it must be a small horse, perhaps
gotten loose from that Great House on the other side of the door in the hedge.
But then it raised its head and looked at them.

It
was a deer. A doe, actually, as luminous as moonlight itself, watching them
with gleaming silver eyes. Now, Nan knew how to tell a boy beast from a girl
well enough, and this one was definitely a doe, and yet, crowning its graceful,
great-eyed head were silver antlers.

“I
thought only stags had horns,” Sarah whispered to Nan, who only shrugged.
That’s what she had thought, too.

“Ah,
but that is no common deer, daughter of Eve,” said Puck, who had
materialized out of nowhere beside them, wearing his outré fairy garb
again and looking perfectly natural in it. “That is a Sidhe-deer.”

“I
c’n tell it’s a she-deer,” Nan responded.

Puck
laughed. “ ‘Tis spelled s-i-d-h-e, sparrow, and ‘tis an old,
old word for the Good Neighbors.”

The
“Good Neighbors,” as they both knew, were another name for the
fairy folk. So this must be some sort of animal out of those strange lands where
the fairies still walked.

“
‘Tis said,” Puck continued, rubbing the side of his nose with one
finger thoughtfully, “That they can become maidens when they choose.
I’ve never seen it, but—‘tis said.”

They
watched the deer in silence as she lowered her head to the grass again.
“Why is she here?” Sarah whispered at last.

Puck
shrugged. “Ask the wind why it blows where it will,” was his
enigmatic reply. “She is here because she chooses to be, and she will go
because she has decided to. Perhaps your making your games in a round place,
and your playing of the play made the spot into a fairy ring. And perhaps it is
that you should be wary of the hard man who rode through the hedge the other
day.”

Neither
of them had any doubt who he was talking about, nor did Puck’s abrupt
change of subject give either of them a moment’s pause. The incident was
still fresh in Nan’s mind. And besides, there hadn’t exactly been a
lot of men riding through the doors in the hedges around the girls.

“I
don’t like ‘im,” Nan said flatly. “There’s summat
cold about him.”

“And
there you put your finger on it, my pretty London sparrow,” Puck
responded, with a nod. “Cold. Cold he is, cold out of season, cold at the
heart, and there’s an end to it. A man that cannot feel, be he mortal or
fey, is a man who may do anything.”

The
Sidhe-deer raised its head again and looked at them. Was it nodding?

“But
what if he could change and feel again?” Sarah asked quickly. “I
feel sorry for him. I think he is very lonely. What if he could thaw?”

Puck
shrugged. “I warn about what is, not maunder about what could be. I do
not meddle in the affairs of mortals, except as the affairs of mortals affect
what I have charge over. May be he can, and may be he can’t and it
matters not at all. But his cold, his ice—now that matters, and cold and
ice are death and I will not have death in the season of life.” He nodded
at the deer. “It may be she is here because of it. The Sidhe-deer will
not abide death out of season either.”

Sarah
set her chin in the expression that Mem’sab called “mulish.”

“I
think there is good in him,” she said.

Puck
shrugged again. “ ‘Tis not mine to say nor mine to do anything
about,” he replied. “That’s the affairs of mortals.”

Sarah
said nothing aloud, but Nan could almost hear her thoughts—
then I
will
.

She
sighed, but not loudly. If Sarah had made up her mind to do something, then it
would be up to Nan to guard her in it.

Not
that she was likely to get into too much trouble. The man was only a toff,
maybe one with a bit of magic about him, but he wasn’t
bad
evil,
he was only the sort that would meddle because he thought he had a right and he
thought he was stronger than anything he meddled in. So up to the point where
he fell into the hole he hadn’t seen, he was safe enough.

“Well,”
she said aloud. “If we’re gonna meddle, we best do it afore he gets
himself into somethin’ worse nor he is, an’ brings it home.”

Puck
gave her a wry little bow. “And there’s wisdom; to know when to run
and when to hold fast, and when to stand by your friend.”

But
his smile in the moonlight was warm with approval, and when the Sidhe-deer
moved on like a drift of mist, glimmering a moment among the trees and then
gone, he took them off on a strange, wild walk in the night. He showed them an
owl’s nest in a barn, with four round faces peering at them out of it,
and he spoke to the mother owl when she came with a mouse, so that she allowed
them to stay and watch her feed the hungriest. It made Nan giggle to watch, as
the mouse tail hung out of the owlet’s beak, and it gulped and gulped and
the tail slowly disappeared. She would have thought that Sarah would have been
revolted, but Sarah found it just as funny.