Under the Green Hill (19 page)

“Tomorrow night I'll be in for a treat to be sure,” the Fenland traveler went on.

“That other one he's fighting—'e's no more'n half his size, but to hear them tell it, he's twice as fierce. Should be a Midsummer War to remember.”

His friend agreed, and patted the birch's trunk in farewell. “S'long, old girl,” he said fondly.

“Are ye sure we shouldn't bide a bit, wait till she's her old fierce self again?”

The other fairy didn't think so. “Folks in these parts know to be on guard around her. They won't know she'll be harmless for a few more minutes. Them two eggs, and the lives they hold, are safe enough without us. Step smart, now, Micawber. I've got a barrel of last year's cider ready to be tapped.” They marched away to their drink, and Finn took their place beneath the birch.

Now, Finn knew nothing whatsoever about the Midsummer War, and it never occurred to him that a person's life force could be held in an egg. But he did know from the fairy conversation that the eggs were supposed to be closely guarded, and so must be precious. And he knew that one of them, the blue one, belonged to his instinctive nemesis, Bran. Though he really didn't see how a birch tree could do him any harm even on her best days, he knew that, whatever her dangers, she was no threat for the moment. So, as soon as the fairies were gone, he hoisted himself into her slippery branches and took the two eggs, the blue and the speckled, and put two jawbreakers in their place.

It was a precarious trip down the boughs, and thrice he almost dropped the eggs (and you know what would have happened to Rowan and Bran then), but in the end he touched ground safely, and headed home just as the Birch Lady came awake and shot a twiggy fist after him. He never realized how lucky he was to escape the birch's white hand. If it touches your skin, it sears a white mark and frequently brings madness. If it touches your heart, it brings death. Not to worry—most birches are kind, and dream their lives away. Very few of them are the deadly White-Handed Ladies.

Finn wrapped the eggs in a sock and tucked them in a mousehole he found in a fourth-floor garret, where he was almost certain no one would venture, and went to sleep satisfied. He did not know exactly what he had gained by stealing the eggs, but if he could in any way get even with Bran for his imagined slights and insults, it was a day well spent. Perhaps the eggs would have their uses, and at the very least, they might hatch into something interesting.

The Ashes made everyone go to bed early on the night before Midsummer Day—and of course most of them didn't sleep at all. James, sulky at being sent to bed, picked his scabs, his nose, and all of the embroidered ivy out of his pillowcase. Rowan stayed up late alone in his room, practicing sword strokes and blocks with his shield. Silly grumbled and read fitfully alone in her room for a while, then tried knocking on everyone's door. Rowan ignored her, Meg whispered shakily for her to go away, Dickie really was asleep, and Finn, rehearsing exactly how and when he'd reveal his intimate knowledge of fairies, told her testily to take a hike.

Meg finally fell asleep near dawn, but was awakened first by a dream of Rowan being killed by Bran, which was terrible, and later by a dream of Rowan killing Bran, which was nearly as bad. The world seemed to be out of its proper and logical alignment, and Meg felt younger than she had in a very long time.

There are so many ways in which we can divide up our world. We set people apart by their ages or faces, so that a man of fifty sees all boys of ten in a certain light, and all women of ninety in another. We cut the world into halves, and the northerners laugh at the southerners, and vice versa, while those in the east often cannot fathom those in the west. We call some animals elite—ourselves—and dismiss the personal lives of squirrels and fruit flies as inconsequential. We use time to divide the vastness into more manageable chunks, so that when one day ends we can let ourselves sigh with relief and prepare for a fresh one; each year is over and done with the moment it passes, and the past and the future have nothing to do with each other. For as long as there have been humans, the world has been temporally divided into discrete blocks by which we reckon our existence. For much of our history, the sun's cycle has been one of the most pronounced of such divisions.

As summer draws nearer, the sun rises earlier and sets later, so lengthening each day before Midsummer. After the Midsummer turning point, the sun wakes a bit later and goes to sleep a bit earlier, and so the days grow shorter, the nights longer. Midwinter, which is just before Christmas, is the shortest day of the year and the longest night.

Now, the people who figured all this out thought about the world a bit differently from you and me. We might celebrate the long days before Midsummer and the long (though declining) days after it with equal fervor. After all, the amount of sunlight at the beginning of September is roughly the same as that at the beginning of April.

But the ancients, and their descendants who still have fragments of the old ways in their lives, whether they know it or not, saw that boundary, that marvelous longest day of the year, Midsummer, as the beginning of a decline, the first sneeze as the year sickens and falls toward winter's death and darkness. You'd think Midsummer would be a time of unalloyed celebration, but, no, it is always tinged with the poignant realization that the best is over, the bloom has reached its fullness, and the rest is all downhill. A depressing lot, those ancients, though pragmatic. No matter that the rich bounty of harvest time still lay before them, or that harsh winter was still many months away. The longest day was passing, and the days would shrivel and shrink for the next six months. Contrariwise, though Midwinter has the longest night, the briefest day, it heralds the year's rebirth, and so that holiday is often a more hopeful celebration.

The Ashes were very businesslike about it all. They had some role in the village's Midsummer rituals during the day, which they accomplished without betraying to anyone that their relatives would fight to the death that very night. You might think that this was a strangely cold indifference, but for those who are accustomed to fulfilling obligations and steadfast in doing their duty, such mechanical obeisance to what is required is often the only way of fighting back emotion.

And also, you must understand, this ritual of the Midsummer War had been a part of Phyllida's life since her earliest years. She might not like seeing a young man die every seven years, any more than the shepherd likes selling his lambs for chops. But that was the natural order of things, and Phyllida told herself she'd be a terrible hypocrite if she suddenly protested against it just because two of the people she loved best in the world were involved. It
was
different—how could it
not
be different—but she made herself act as though it weren't. It had been going on for centuries, and there was no stopping it unless the participants themselves chose to.

Already Phyllida was in a state of mourning, for one or for the other, and somehow that made it easier. If you see your friend struck down by a bolt of lightning, the grief is so sudden, so shocking, that it can cripple you. But if you see your friend fall sick, and nurse him through the weeks before his end, why, you've spent those weeks already crying for him, and when the end does come, the sadness is somehow quieter, and the rawness of the grief has already been covered by time.

To keep them occupied and oblivious, she gave Finn and Dickie permission to attend the Gladysmere Midsummer festival on their own. Finn strolled to the village in the afternoon, but didn't see anything particularly interesting about a straw man covered in flowers, so he went back to the Rookery to amuse himself. It would just be another bonfire and a bunch of carousing peasants, he thought, neither of which held much appeal for him. Dickie likewise declined the offer, preferring to stay immersed in study with the Wyrm. If Phyllida hadn't had so much on her mind, she might have worried about his being cooped up so unsociably, away from his friends and the fresh air. But as long as he was comfortably out of the way, she didn't much care what he did on this day.

In the painstakingly planned ritual of the Midsummer War, the spectators—the Guardian and her associates, who served as official witnesses—were to arrive an hour before sunset. The reigning fairy court, the Seelie, would emerge from the Green Hill as the sun touched the horizon, and the challengers, the Host, would ride out of the woods at the moment the sun set. When the last rays hurtled through space, a few minutes after the sun himself had disappeared, the two champions would declare themselves, and the battle would commence. It would last until one of the humans had fallen, his blood shed on the Green Hill.

Meg emerged from her room late on Midsummer morning. She'd finally managed to snatch a few hours of sleep after the larks began their matins, but her eyes were red and her face was puffy from more than want of sleep. She walked despondently downstairs and found her siblings already gathered in the garden kitchen, talking furiously. Unnoticed, she stood in the doorway and silently despised Silly for being so callous, James for being so young, and Rowan for being such a fool, before she drifted away. She had virtually given up hope, and now only longed for it all to be over.

She wished she had someone to talk to, someone who might offer some words of comfort, or advice she'd be more willing to heed than Gul Ghillie's or the Ashes', who only told her again and again that she was powerless. But there was no one. She knew beyond a doubt that Finn was not one to offer her succor in this crisis. Dickie might have kind words, but when she sought him out in the library he looked so startled at the company that she could do no more than stammer a few senseless phrases and beat a retreat. Better, she thought, not to burden him with her troubles. Let him stay with his studies while she was left to deal with the painful reality. It never occurred to her that he might have uncovered something useful in the pages he perused.

Next she sought out Lemman, but the girl wouldn't even stay in the same room with her. No doubt she knew it was Midsummer. Did she grieve for Bran? Meg wondered. Or did she only wish that she were back with her own people on this, one of the fairies' most important days?

Eventually, in the afternoon, Meg went back to the kitchen, to find Rowan and his entourage gone. She forced herself to drink a glass of milk, which calmed her somewhat, then automatically poured a bowl for the brownie and left it on the counter. Much to her surprise, he appeared immediately and took a deep swig before settling down on a stool to wind a bundle of spun hemp into a ball.

“Here,” Meg said, “let me help you with that.” She took the bundle and began to untangle it as the brownie wound the free end with his long, clever fingers. There is a magic to working with fibers. It is said that weavers see visions, and spinners will go into trances if they spin too long. Meg realized that convincing the strands to untangle helped to untangle some of the turmoil in her own mind. She found herself telling her troubles to the brownie, who through the tale said nothing, only wound the cord with hypnotic concentration.

“And I can't stop him,” she said at the end. “I've tried every way I can think of to change his mind, but he insists on going through with it.”

Brownies are as a rule taciturn fellows, and loath to speak. They only bother when they have something profound to say, so when they finally talk you'd be wise to pay them heed. The Rookery brownie said, “There's never a man changed another man's mind, nor one who controlled another's actions. All ye have charge of is yerself. Yerself and no other.” And with that he tossed the now completed hemp ball into the air, and disappeared before it hit the ground.

“Fat lot of good that does me!” Meg called into the emptiness. When he started speaking, she'd felt a delicious glimmer of hope. Surely the brownie, one of the fairies, would know some way of keeping Rowan out of the Midsummer War. But no—just a trite homily on self-reliance. Disgusted, she decided to boycott the entire affair. She couldn't bear to see Rowan fight and perhaps fall, so she would hide away until it was all over, and learn how fate unfolded once it was too late.

When the Ashes began to call for her as evening came creeping, Meg went to her favorite hideaway. Past the thick, luxurious furs of all the hunted animals, up the pitchy stairwell to her bird's-eye view of the declining orange sun. They'd be leaving any moment: the terrible Ashes who had let this happen though they should have known better; poor, stupid little Silly, who knew nothing of death, and had no idea this was anything more than an elaborate game; James, poor James, who would probably be playing with grubs and spiders in the dirt while his brother was being slaughtered; and Rowan himself, thinking he was an unconquerable hero, whereas she knew full well he was no more than a skinny, foolish boy. Let them go! Her grief had turned almost to anger now, and she hated every one of them for being so blind, so idiotic. Let Rowan go off and get himself killed like the poor misguided fool that he was….

She burst into tears she'd thought were long spent, and ran to the parapet. There were the Ashes, and Silly with James in her arms. She called out to them, but they were already specks on the road and couldn't hear her. Rowan! Had he left yet? No—he was supposed to go later, on his own, to the Green Hill. She had to find him. She didn't hate him. She had to tell him how much she loved him, tell him to be careful, remind him not to drop his shield too much in an overhand strike, as he was so apt to do. She wouldn't see him fight, but it became suddenly vital to see him before he left. He could not go off without her cautions, her advice, her love. It would be bad luck, tantamount to a curse.

“Oh, Rowan, where are you?” she whispered.

From her vantage point, she scanned the grounds, but Rowan was nowhere to be seen. In a frenzy she tore down the stairs, bruising her elbows on the cold stone walls. Furs tumbled to the floor as she pushed her way past, and when she struggled to be free of the fox stoles and beaver coats it seemed that some little animal sank its teeth into her shoulder. She wrenched free, and pulled with her a short cloak of deep scarlet with a collar of thick dark fur. She threw the cloak violently to the ground.

Two empty eyes looked forlornly up at her. Two limp paws trailed over the cloak, and a soft whiskered nose with a creamy chin rested against the ruby wool. It was an otter pelt, whole from tip to tail, fastened like an inconspicuous ruff around a forgotten cloak in an abandoned wardrobe. She told herself that it couldn't be. Surely they had searched the entire house? But even inanimate, the otter fur was somehow unnaturally alive. The holes where its eyes had been pleaded with her, and she'd almost have sworn that there was warmth from within that empty pelt. Rowan was momentarily forgotten. With awe she picked up the otter skin and cradled it in her arms, then went to the dairy.

Meg Morgan charged through the dairy doors, where she was at once confronted by the solemn face and unyielding bulk of the dun cow. She blocked Meg's path and refused to budge, looking at her in that particularly cowlike way that says, Sorry, but I really know best.

“You have to move!” Meg cried, shoving against the cow's bulk with her shoulder. But the cow knew that Lemman could bear no company that night, and would protect her against all unwelcome intruders. “Let me by!” Meg said, and then revealed the otter skin she held crushed to her chest. “This is it—it's been found at last!” The dun cow's eyes grew even larger and wetter, and with a grunting little moo she stepped back a pace and made a gesture like a bow. Meg rushed past her to the dairy annex, where she found Lemman in the company of a black-and-white kitten. She was holding it up to a large vat of milk so it could drink, and the ripples from the kitten's tongue were joined by others made by Lemman's falling tears.

“Lemman!” Meg called.

With infinite slowness, as though her slight form was bent under a grave weight, Lemman turned. Her fair hair hung lank in her streaked face, but still she was lovely…all the more so for her wretched sorrow. Meg held the otter fur out to her.

It was as though an incandescence suffused the dark dairy, and it washed over them both. With steps at first halting and heavy, then lightening as she came nearer, Lemman approached Meg and her pelt. Their hands touched, and Meg felt a warmth course through her veins. Then, before her eyes, Lemman changed. For an instant she seemed still a girl, but how altered! Her hair was billowing and clean, bright as a field of mustard flowers. She stood more erect, so lissome that her limbs seemed to float up—gravity and weight were nothing to her. A radiance emanated from her center, and she seemed more beautiful (and yet less terrible) than the Seelie queen herself.

And then she was a girl no longer. She dived into the pelt as though she was putting on a shirt, and as the thick, silky fur fell over her body, it became a part of her. There was an instant when Meg saw an otter head with bright, dark eyes atop human shoulders, and then the transformation was complete. Standing at her feet on splayed webbed paws was a very large, very joyous otter, its sharp white teeth bared in something like a smile.

Have you ever met an otter? Otters—even ones who aren't fairy girls in disguise—are the most carefree, happy beasts on this earth. Everything is play to them—the world was created solely for their enjoyment. The otter at Meg's feet shook itself from snout to tail in one delicious shiver, then (as the kitten watched uncertainly from the floor) leaped lightly to the rim of the vat of milk. It wasn't quite the quartz-clear waters of her natal river, but after years of being trapped in a human body, it was close enough. Lemman the otter dived into the vat with a milky white splash and swam in tight circles. She leaped and sported in her sleek, rediscovered body. At last, the first of her exuberance spent, she pulled herself out and jumped back to the dairy floor, shaking every last drop of milk from her coat (which the kitten, brave again, lapped up).