Home From The Sea: The Elemental Masters, Book Seven (32 page)

Perhaps she was being too practical, but better that than have her head in the clouds. An early life where she was the one who found her own food, more often than not, had made something of a hard shell inside her. She never wanted to go hungry again, and she would do anything honest and decent to make sure she wasn’t
going to. She wanted to know that she was doing more than just existing. And if that meant sacrificing
romance
to practicality, well, she’d shed a tear and do it.

And about being practical—she went to the drawer and got the pen, the ink and the paper. Puck was right; they had better start making arrangements while there was still time to do things. “Here,” she said, handing pen and paper to Sarah. “You write what you think is important, I’ll do the same; that way, we won’t miss anything.”

Sarah nodded, and they both bent their heads over the table and got to work. One thing was certain; they had to make sure that these were letters Lord Alderscroft could not in any way misinterpret or ignore.

“He’s watching us again,” said Mari, not looking up from her peas. She had a whole bushel of the dried pods, and was shelling them into a rough burlap bag. Not a pleasant task, even when done out of doors, but at least Idwal was giving her lessons while she did it. It was too bad; it was a lovely day, difficult to tell that autumn was coming on fast, with a strong breeze that picked up the bits of dried pea-pod and carried them away as she rubbed the peas briskly between her palms. When she finished these, there were beans to do next, the same way. She sat on that bit of wood; Idwal sat facing her, cross-legged on the earth. He made a pleasant thing to rest her eyes on.

Rhodri had taken to going out with her da, not only cutting his fishing time in half, but bringing up things from the sea-bed Daffyd would never have gotten himself. Mussels in plenty, which were usually hers to gather, and clams, but also oysters and whelks, which lived deeper. Spider crabs, which Daffyd had thought were pests until Rhodri showed him how to cook them and how good they were. Idwal’s lessons bored him; he’d rather be out fishing. The shellfish weren’t something you could sell, for anyone along the coast here could easily forage as much as he liked just by being
willing to go out into wretched cold water at low tide, and Daffyd didn’t want to compete with the lads who sold them in Criccieth, but they made a lovely addition to their normal fare. Mari usually had too much to do to go shellfishing on her own too often.

“Well, that constable won’t be seeing me,” Idwal said firmly, shaking his hair back. “Nor Rhodri, when he comes in with your father.” The Selch used Water Elementals as messengers as casually as a Clogwyn housewife sent one of her children on an errand. A moment after he said that, a seabird flew down and landed on the sand next to them,
looked
at him in a penetrating way, then flew off. That was Rhodri sorted.

“What on earth can he be wanting?” Idwal asked, clearly bewildered. “Surely he’s satisfied himself that you’re not one of those—what did you call them? anti-christs?”

“Anarchists,” she said. “Which I can’t make head nor tail of.” She had studied all of the old newspapers she could get her hands on—well, everyone in the village was doing the same, since Daffyd had gone about imparting his favorite theory about why the constable was here in the first place—and she couldn’t, for the life of her, understand why he was looking for anarchists here. The miners inland weren’t striking because they were anarchists; they just wanted more safety and a decent wage instead of working like slaveys and dying like rats in a hole. And there was no one striking here in Clogwyn, anyway! Furthermore, unless someone was hiding a rogue cousin somewhere in their family tree, no one in Clogwyn was even distantly related to the miners. Clogwyn and Criccieth had been towns that lived by the sea as long as they had existed. And rough and hard as a fisherman’s work was, there wasn’t one of them that would trade it for the sunless hell of a miner’s life, no matter how much it paid. Never had the twain of mine and sea even met. The miners might go to Criccieth on holiday, if they could scrape the money together, but they wouldn’t bother to go to Clogwyn; there was nothing for them to do there, unless all they wanted to do was forage for shellfish, laver, and samphire, cook on the beach, and stuff themselves. Which they
could
do, and she
supposed there might be some that did, but then they would have to find somewhere to stay, for the only place there was to rent was Gower Cottage. And Gower Cottage was more than a miner could afford, even if the squire would let it to him, which, of course, he wouldn’t.

Constable Ewynnog was up on the hill; the very same hill and the same patch of gorse that Nan and Sarah had hidden in to watch her and the Selch before they had finally come down openly. He had a spyglass, and thought he was concealed. And so he would have been, had the Water Elementals not taken it as their duty to warn her when he was there, just as they had when Nan and Sarah had watched her.

“He is a very foolish man,” Idwal said severely, in tones that said
this man is a bloody fool, and I wouldn’t trust him to know which end of a cow to milk
.

Idwal was teaching her one of the tricks of going invisible, which in the easiest case wasn’t actually going invisible at all, as it turned out, but more a case of convincing someone’s mind that you weren’t there. That was simplicity itself for the Tylwyth Teg.
No one
expected to see them. For Mari, however, it could be a deal harder, especially when she was somewhere that she was supposed to be. There was no way, for instance, that she would ever convince the constable that she wasn’t right here at the cottage. He expected to see her here, and so he would, no matter how hard she worked at trying to convince him otherwise.

Still, it would be very useful if she was somewhere else she didn’t normally go… in the village, say. And once she had mastered this, Idwal said she could learn the trick of truly going invisible.

“I think he just wants to find someone he can put trouble on,” she said, as she always did. It was an automatic answer by now. Her father had said so over and over, and she didn’t see any reason to doubt his reasoning.

“But why? Why would he want to do such a thing? Isn’t that counter to the law? And isn’t he supposed to be the enforcer of the law? That is why he is supposed to be here, is it not?” Idwal didn’t
usually care about such things; like the other Selch, he was here for Mari, and dismissed other land-dwellers without a second thought. But it was clear that this behavior on the part of Constable Ewynnog bothered him. Idwal was genuinely puzzled, and that made her look a little more closely at her own answer. And at what she knew about the constable.

“Well… he’s just a human, and a not very nice human at that,” she said. “People aren’t much different than Selch; when they take on a position, they don’t always do as they’re supposed to in it. If you ask me, and if you ask half the village I’d say, the answer would be that he went for the job of being a constable because he’s a bully.” She rubbed more pea-pods between her hands and the peas fell down into the bag while the flecks of pod blew away like odd-colored snow. “He isn’t in it to represent the law; he’s in it to be able to make people do things whether they want to or not. And he thinks he can especially bully me, because when he comes to talk to me I act like I’m feared of him.” Had that been a mistake? She thought about how Nan had been with the man, for her friend had described their single encounter and the outcome. How she had stood up to him, how the squire’s dog had protected her, and how she had made him back down and leave her and Sarah alone. Certainly the wretch had never bothered Nan a second time.

But Nan is not from here; she’s from farther inland, closer to the border, closer to being English. And she’s almost gentry. And the squire won’t let the constable meddle with someone on his land
, she reminded herself.
And besides all that, Nan has a lord who looks out for her and Sarah. I don’t.
No, as much of a nuisance as it was, he never would have backed down if she had stood up for herself, and she likely would have just stirred up more trouble for herself and her father. What kind of trouble she didn’t know—but then, she wasn’t a constable, and she didn’t know what mischief he could work if he was minded to.

“I don’t think he’s as able to bully people in the village,” she continued. “Because they all stick together when he tries.” She thought some more.

“I still cannot fathom why he would be looking for troublesome persons here, where they do not exist,” Idwal objected. “Why doesn’t he look elsewhere? Looking for these
anarchists
in the village and here is like looking for a rose on the seabed. You cannot find something that simply is not there, no matter how hard you look.”

“I think he was sent here a-purpose, and so does Da,” she reminded him. “The people that he has to take orders from don’t know Clogwyn from Criccieth or Criccieth from Cardiff.”

Idwal considered this. “But shouldn’t he tell them?”

“Would they even listen?” she asked in return. “Would Gethin listen if you told him this bargain with the Protheros is more unfair to a girl than a boy-child?”

Idwal considered that. “Probably not. And Gethin is sometimes reasonable. He does listen when the clan speaks with one voice.”

Mari truly hated to be so… objective. But Idwal had taught her, over the summer, that an Elemental Master must truly be able to see every side of a problem, because the answer might be hidden somewhere he might not otherwise think to look.

I wonder if all his questions now are a test?

“Oh! It grates on me like sand to say this! But though he’s a bully, he could be getting bullied by the men who rule him,” she said reluctantly. “And if they were hard enough about their orders, and threatened
him
with losing his place if he doesn’t find troublemakers, it would make him want to find whatever he thinks might appease them. It might even be he has those
he
fears
, who’ll make things hard for him or even get him dismissed if he doesn’t find someone.” That left a bad taste in her mouth. She didn’t like to think of the bully as also
being
bullied, but—

But there it was: Idwal had told her, and schooled her, that of all things, a magician must be honest. For if she was not, it would taint her magic, and the Elementals would not trust her. And if they did not trust her, they would not help her. And if they did not help her, she would find herself tempted to force them.

And the end of that path was darkness.

“Well, and that may be true,” Idwal replied, weaving his magic about himself as he spoke, so that it looked as if he was sitting in the midst of a dome of lace. “And it would explain why he is being so desperate-stubborn. But he is a man of the law, and would it not be the better for him to be an honest man and say ‘I can find nothing,’ than to bear false witness? Is it not better to be honest, and stand up bravely against the consequences? Would his superiors respect him more? They certainly cannot respect him now, at all.”

Ah, now… that made her feel better again. “It would,” she agreed. She looked to the sea. “Do you think Rhodri has been warned yet?” Rhodri was the only one of the four Selch left; Siarl had left at midsummer and Trefor a week ago. She expected Gethin to turn up any day now to demand that she wed the younger Selch, and she still didn’t know what she was going to say. Idwal seemed content that she would think of something, or he would, or they both would.

“I do. Although he is always cautious, and has had his own watchers watching for those who should not be here.” Idwal sketched in another section on his casting. “And I would not concern myself that Gethin will appear any time soon,” he added soothingly, as if he had read her thoughts. “Siarl decided that he would go to visit our Scottish kin, and Trefor conceived of a notion to have a look about in Ireland to see if there was a Selch maid that suited him. Truth to tell, they volunteered out of a sense of duty to the clan, and not because they fell in a passion over you at first sight. I think how things fell out gave them relief rather than otherwise. They have not told Gethin that they left, since the less he knows, the less he can forbid.”

“Well, I wish you had told me all this!” she exclaimed. “Here I was fretting that Gethin would be turning up at any moment!”

“I just did,” he teased.

“I would throw something at your head, but the peas will not shuck themselves,” she retorted. This was part of the business of preparing for winter. True, her father could go out fishing, but you could not live on fish alone, and there were times when the storms
were bad enough that even he would not go out—nor could they get to the village for provisions. Dried peas made a good soup, tasty with a bit of bacon, but they did need to be hulled, and it was better to do it now rather than later. Being left in the hulls made them more prone to mold.

“We sound like a married couple already,” he observed. “You, threatening to throw things at my head—”

“And so I will, if you don’t reweave that last bit of your magic, so I can see how you did it,” she replied serenely.
“Teacher.”