Home From The Sea: The Elemental Masters, Book Seven (17 page)

And there was something else about this boy, a brightness, a spirit of vitality, that was not ordinary at all.

And that was the moment when Neville made a surprised croak, and jumped down off the marble seat where he had been pecking with great interest at a hole in the stone, to be joined on the floor by Grey. Both of them stalked over to the boy’s feet, looked up at him—

—and bowed.

There was no other name for what they did, and Nan’s mouth fell agape.

But this was not the only shock she got, for Memsa’b had risen from
her
seat, and sunk again into a curtsey. Not a head-bowed curtsey though; this was one where she kept her eyes firmly on the newcomer.

“‘Hail to thee, blithe spirit!’”
she said as she rose.

The boy’s eyes sparkled with mischief and delight.

“Correct author, but wrong play and character, for never could I be compared to Ariel,” he replied and swiftly stooped down to offer Neville and Grey each a hand. Each accepted the perch as Nan stared, her mouth still open. “How now, Bane of Rooks!” he said to Neville. “I think you should return to your partner, before bees see her open mouth and think to build a hive therein!”

With another bow, and a croak, Neville lofted from the boy’s outstretched hand and landed on Nan’s shoulder. Nan took the hint and shut her mouth.

Wordlessly he handed Grey back to Sarah, who took her bird with round eyes, as if she saw even more than Nan did to surprise her. “So ho, fair dame, did you think to plan to play my play on Midsummer’s Day and
not
have me notice?” he said to Memsa’b, fists planted on his hips.

“I had not thought to have the honor of your attention, good sirrah,” Memsa’b replied, her eyes very bright and eager. “Indeed, I had not known that such as you would deign to notice such as we.”

He laughed. “Well spoke, well spoke! And properly too! Well then, shall I solve your conundrum with my humble self and let your restless Tommy play the ass?”

Nan blinked hard, as a furtive glimmer of light that could not have actually been there circled the boy, and then her brain shook itself like a waking dog, everything that wasn’t quite “right” shifted itself into a configuration she could hardly believe, and she burst out with, “You’re
him!
You’re
Puck!”

Oh she would never, ever forget that moment. It was the moment when something truly magical entered her life. The occult was one thing; by that point she had encountered ghosts, mediums, psychical manifestations, a distinct mental bond with Neville… but these were all things that had, if not an entirely rational explanation, surely they were something that was not
magical.
But Puck—Elves, the Fair Folk—they
were.
Magic was
real.
And it came in the form of an altogether enchanting playmate.

Puck had agreed to play himself for their production, and he had shown up, just as he promised, on the night.

She remembered what Memsa’b had said about him, when he had left them after that first encounter.

“Ah, now… I hesitate to pin down someone like him to any sort of limited description,” Memsa’b temporized. “And the Puck of Shakespeare’s play is far more limited than the reality. Let’s just say he is—old. One of the oldest Old Ones in England. As a living creature, he probably saw the first of the flint-workers here, and I suspect that he will see the last of us mortals out as well, unless he chooses to follow some of the other Old Ones wherever they have gone, sealing the doors of their barrows behind them. If he does, it will be a sad day for England, for a great deal of the magic of this island will go with him. He is linked to us in ways that some of those who were once worshipped as gods are not.”

“Will we see
’
im again afore the day?” she asked.

“Now that I cannot tell you.” Memsa’b pursed her lips. “If you do, be polite, respectful, but don’t fear him. He is the very spirit of mischief, but there is no harm in him and a great deal of good. You might learn a good deal from him, and I never heard it said that any of his sort would stand by and let a child come to harm. His knowledge is broad and deep and he has never been averse to sharing it with mortals.”

“But would he steal us away?” Sarah asked, suddenly growing pale. “Don’t
they
take children, and leave behind changelings?”

Here Nan was baffled; she had no idea what Sarah was talking about. But Memsa’b did.

“I don’t—think he’d be likely to,” she replied after a long moment of thought. “Firstly, I don’t think he would have revealed himself to us if he was going to do that. Secondly, what
I
know of such things is that his sort never take children who are cared for and wanted, only the ones abused and neglected.” She held out a hand and Sarah went straight to her to be hugged reassuringly. “No one can say that about any of you, I do hope!”

No indeed. No one could. No one could have loved Nan better than Memsa’b.

As if her thinking about Puck had communicated itself to Sarah, her friend looked up at her from across the table where they were both making lists and notes. “Do you think we should try and call him?” she asked, without needing to specify what
him
she was talking about. “I expect he’d come here if we did; it’s lovely land and the back grounds are half wild.”

Nan shook her head. “I have… a feeling about that,” she said, after a moment. “It was all very well to call on him whenever we wanted to see him when we were children; children are allowed to be playful and a little thoughtless. But we’re adults now. I think that we should only try and call him if we run into difficulties in this task that we just can’t work out answers to ourselves. I think he—rightly!—expects a great deal more of an adult than of a child. Self-sufficiency, for one thing.”

Sarah nodded agreement, but sighed. “Well, perhaps he’ll come
to us without us trying to call him. I’d like to see him again. Sometimes… sometimes I find myself thinking that everything about him was just a dream.”

Nan couldn’t help sharing those sentiments. She remembered the night of the play, for instance.

At the moment when they were all milling about backstage, waiting for Memsa’b to announce the play, Nan felt a tug on her tunic and turned to find herself staring into those strange, merry green eyes again. This time the boy was wearing a fantastic garment that was a match for those Titania and Oberon were wearing: a rough sleeveless tunic of green stuff and goat-skin trousers, with a trail of vine-leaves wound carelessly through his tousled red hair.

“How now, pretty maiden, did you doubt me?” he said, slyly. “Nay, answer me not, I can scarce blame you. All’s well! Now, mind your cue!”

With a little shove, he sent her in the direction of her entrance-mark, and as she stepped out into the mellow light of lanterns and candles, she forgot everything except her lines and how she wanted to say them.

Now, Nan was not exactly an expert when it came to plays. The most she had ever seen was a few snatches of this or that—a Punch and Judy show, a bit of something as she snuck into a music-hall, and the one Shakespeare play Memsa’b had taken them all to in London.

But the moment they all got onstage, it was clear there was real magic involved. All of them seemed, and sounded, older and a great deal more practiced. Not so much so that it would have been alarming but—certainly as if they were all well into their teens, rather than being children still. Everything
looked
convincing, even the papier-mâché donkey’s head. Lines were spoken clearly, with conviction, and the right inflection. Nan and Sarah even made people laugh in all the right places.

And as for Puck—well, he quite stole the show. From the moment he set foot on stage it was clear that the play was, in the end, about
him.

Yet no one seemed to be in the least put out that he took the play over. Not even Tommy. And perhaps that was the most magical thing of all.

There had been no sign of him after that—until the hour that
the two of them ventured to investigate a bridge just off the property that had given them bad feelings, and discovered that what haunted it was very dangerous indeed. They had, in fact, come under attack, and it had been Puck who rescued them.

It had been a hungry, evil spirit that had ensnared another, the ghost of a little girl, and was sucking the life out of her. Nan and Sarah had immediately come to the ghost-girl’s defense, and had been attacked in their turn. They had been very young, of course, and not strong, and certainly not as practiced as they became even a few months later, and the horrid thing had come very close to taking them too.

But then their savior had appeared.

“Not so fast, my unfriend, my shadow-wraith!” cried a fierce young voice that brought with it sun and a rush of flower-scented summer wind—and blessedly, the release of whatever it was that had hold of Nan’s throat.

She dropped to her knees, gasping for breath at the same time that she looked to her right. There, standing between her and Sarah, was Robin Goodfellow. He wore the same outlandish costume he’d worn for the play, only on him, it didn’t look so outlandish. He had one hand on Sarah’s shoulder, and Nan could actually see the strength flowing from him to her as she fed the ghost-girl with that light, which now was bright as strong sunlight.

The ghost-girl thrashed wildly, and broke free of the shadow-woman’s hold, and that was when Robin made a casting motion of his own and threw something at the shadow-form. It looked like a spider-web, mostly insubstantial and sparkling with dew-drops, but it expanded as it flew toward the shadow-woman, and when it struck her, it enveloped her altogether. She crumpled as it hit, as if it had been spun out of lead, not spider-silk, and collapsed into a pool of shadow beneath its sparkling strands.

The ghost-girl stood where she was, trembling, staring at them.

“She’s stuck,” Sarah said, her voice shaky, but sounding otherwise normal.

Grey waddled over to the ghost-girl, looked up at her, and shook
herself all over. Neville returned to Nan’s shoulder, feathers bristling, as he stared at the shadow-woman trapped in Puck’s net.

“She doesn’t know where to go, or how to get there, or even why she should go,” Sarah continued, pity now creeping into her voice.

“Oh so?” Puck took a step or two toward the ghost-girl, peering at her as if he could read something on her terrified young face. “Welladay, and this is one who can see further into a millstone than most… no wonder she don’t know where to go. Hell can’t take her and Heaven won’t have her, but there’s a place for you, my mortal child.”

His voice had turned pitying and welcoming all at the same time, and so kindly that even Nan felt herself melting a little inside just to hear it. He held out his hand to the ghost-girl. “Come away, human child, or what’s left of you. Come! Take a step to me, just one, to show you trust your dreams and want to find them—”

Shaking so much her vague outlines blurred, the ghost-girl drifted the equivalent of a step toward Robin.

He laughed. Nan had never heard a sound quite like it before. Most people she’d ever heard, when they laughed, had something else in their laughter. Pity, scorn, irony, self-deprecation, ruefulness—most adults anyway, always had something besides amusement in their voices when they laughed.

This was just a laugh with nothing in it but pure joy. Even the ghost-girl brightened at the sound of it, and drifted forward again—and Robin made a little circle gesture with his free hand.

Something glowing opened up between him and the ghost-girl. Nan couldn’t see what it was, other than a kind of glowing doorway, but the ghost-girl’s face was transformed, all in an instant. She lost that pinched, despairing look. Her eyes shone with joyful surprise, and her mouth turned up in a silent smile of bliss.

“There you be, my little lady,” Robin said softly. “What you’ve dreamed all your life and death about, what you saw only dimly before. Summerland, my wee little dear. Summerland, waiting for you. Go on through, honey-sweetling, go on through.”

The ghost-girl darted forward like a kingfisher diving for a
minnow, a flash, and she was into the glow—and gone. And the glow went with her.

But that was by no means the end of it, for the horrid, hungry ghost was still there.

Puck, however, had an answer for her, too.

He turned to Nan and Sarah. “Close your eyes, young mortals,” he said, with such an inflection that Nan could not have disobeyed him if she’d wanted to. “These things are not for the gaze of so young as you.”

She kept her eyes open just long enough to see him take a cow-horn bound in silver with a silver mouthpiece from his belt, the sort of thing she saw in books about Robin Hood, and put it to his lips. Her eyes closed and glued themselves shut as three mellow notes sounded in the sultry air.

Suddenly, that sultry air grew cold and dank; she shivered, and Neville pressed himself into her neck, reassuringly, his warm body radiating the confidence that the air was sapping away from her. All the birds stopped singing, and even the sound of the river nearby faded away, as if she had been taken a mile away from it.

She heard hoofbeats in the distance and hounds baying.

She’d never heard nor seen a foxhunt, though she’d read about them since coming to the school, and it was one of those things even a street-urchin knew about vaguely.

This did not sound like a foxhunt. The hounds had deep, deep voices that made her shiver, and made her feel even less inclined to open her eyes, if that was possible. There were a lot of hounds—and a lot of horses too—and they were coming nearer by the moment.

She reached out blindly and caught Sarah’s hand, and they clung to each other as the hounds and horses thundered down practically on top of them—as the riders neared, she heard them laughing, and if Puck’s laugh was all joy, this laughter was more sorrowful than weeping. It made her want to huddle on the ground and hope that no one noticed her.