Home From The Sea: The Elemental Masters, Book Seven (9 page)

Again, she shrugged. “Course.” She moved off again, towards another patch of kelp. “Don’t fish, don’t eat.” He started to follow. “Village bain’t rich.” Surely he had seen that for himself. Surely he had seen the number of deaths by drowning in the parish records.

The rope suddenly tightened around his ankle as he started after her; taken completely by surprise, he went sprawling on his face. And before he could notice what had tripped him, the rope whipped itself away and sped up the sand, to lie, all harmless-looking, too far to have been what caught him.

He came up with a face and fancy uniform full of sand, sputtering, and looking around for what had caught him. He glared at her, but she was too far away to have done anything to him, and what could he accuse her of? Say she was a witch and had bespelled him to trip? A right fool he’d look. Claim she’d planted some sort of trap in the sand that had managed to disappear as soon as he’d fallen? A greater fool he’d look then!

She resisted the urge to say something—although she could hear giggling from where the rope was.

His notebook lay a yard away, pages fluttering in the wind. She made no move to pick it up or give him any other kind of help.

Her basket was full, so she decided this was a good time to make him follow her again. She hiked it up on her shoulder and headed for the house. She didn’t look back—but she did hear him fall twice more.

That delayed him enough that she was able to get the fire started
beside the bare garden and throw the kelp on it, then hang the kettle over it to start the laver boiling to make the fuel do double-duty. Kelp smoke was… fairly noisome. And as delicious as the laver was after boiling for a day, when it was boiling it was just as noxious. To her gratification, somehow, no matter where he stood, he found himself downwind of it. He waved at it ineffectually, coughing.

He probably wants to ask me why I’m burning kelp and boiling seaweed, and he can’t get a breath long enough to get the words out. Does the wretched fool think laver grows in a garden? He’s a Welshman; he has to have eaten laver-bread.
Now she was highly amused, and some of her temper cooled. Clearly, clearly a city man, and one who’d never had to make what he could buy. The kelp ash was invaluable in the garden, and for making soap, and for scrubbing pots and the hearthstones. She’d have to wash the ash to get rid of the salt before she put it on the garden, but it would keep down the weeds between the rows just a treat, besides nourishing the plants. But he wouldn’t know that. And she was not going to tell him. Let him ask in the village.

And clearly he had no idea where laver came from, nor how it was prepared. He probably didn’t even know that the thin brown sheets she’d picked off the rocks
were
laver. As for the samphire, well, from the look of it, he’d think of eating grass before he’d think of eating samphire.

She’d told him that her mother had died going kelping, she’d shown him what kelping was, now let him try and figure out
why
anyone would go kelping, then burn or boil the kelp.

The smoke almost seemed to be chasing him. Before long, his eyes were red and weeping, and he kept trying to wipe them with the handkerchief around his wounded hand. The sea-water in those deep scratches and bites must have burned like fire. She was not in the least sorry for him. After all, he’d brought every bit of his suffering on himself.
Evil to him that evil thinks
had never, in her experience, been so immediate.

After opening and closing his mouth several times and getting a lung full of smoke for his troubles each time, sending him into a coughing fit, he gave up. Without so much as a “Good day”—although he
probably would not have been able to choke even that out for the smoke—he stalked off, heading for the road. She watched him leave, carefully. His tormentor tripped him twice more before leaving him alone—or perhaps at this point, between the coughing and the watering eyes, he simply couldn’t see where he was going very clearly. She sincerely hoped he’d been tripped into something nasty at least once.

When she was sure he wasn’t coming back, and his figure was a stiff, distant little sketch nearing the road, she left the fire to tend to itself and took in her peas.

Clearly he had been trying to get
some
sort of information out of her—presumably to use against her da. That was troubling, but no more than her da had expected.
He came out here, figuring I would tell him something that would give him a reason to call up da for killing mother. Or at least something that would let him link da to smuggling or maybe the anarchists.
Why? Maybe he figured since they lived so far from the village that the village wouldn’t care if he went after them. But why would he do so in the first place? Just because he was sour-natured? That didn’t seem right.

She worried at that and worried at it as she put the peas to cook, and got a nice bit of salmon ready for frying. She still couldn’t untangle the puzzle. Why was he coming after the Protheros? Or was he doing the same in the whole village?

Finally she just gave it up as being something she couldn’t puzzle out. That was when the memory of the seaweed-girl practically leapt up out of the back of her mind. The seaweed girl, who Constable Ewynnog had not been able to see… but…

Who had been able to make the constable’s afternoon a misery.

Which meant only one thing. That the creatures that only she could see, were, nevertheless, able to
do things
. Real things. Torment real people… and if they could do that…

Here was her proof. They were not fever-dreams or the phantoms of a mind going mad. They were real.

The revelation thrilled and terrified her. Thrilled, because who
wouldn’t
be thrilled to know that they were not going to end up tied to a bedpost, mad-eyed and raving. But terrified…

Tylwyth Teg folk. They were not safe, no matter that they had been helpful to her all this time. They were not tame. They operated by their own rules, which often seemed to be as much whim as rules. If they liked you, as they seemed to like her, they could do you great favors. But you could not count on that liking to last, and when they were angry with you, they could do a great deal more than trip you up.

These were dangerous waters. And she was going to have to try and recall every tale that old woman had told her, just to have an inkling of how to navigate them.

She debated telling her da this, but given his reactions to her talking about her odd “friends” when she was a child… she finally decided, no. No, probably not a good idea. So instead, when her da came home, she laid out dinner and gave a faithful rendition of everything that had happened, including the constable’s mishaps, but
not
saying what had caused them.

Her da was grinning as she spoke of the man getting savaged by the cat, and grinned wider at his clumsiness. “Must have been them city boots,” he said, with mock-gravity. “I imagine he was fair put out.”

“I imagine so,” she said, and grinned a little herself. But then she lost the smile, thinking that it was bad enough to have the attention of the Tylwyth Teg, but having the attention of the constable was no better. “Da,” she said, clasping her hands on the table in front of her, and ignoring the rest of her meal, “Da, I think he was trying to get something nasty he could use to put you in jail! But
why?
Why would he do that? Why is he trying to hurt us?”

The lantern-light from the lamp he’d hung above their heads cast shadows on his face as he looked up. “I believe you’re right. But—oh now, that’s several questions in one, my heart,” her father said, gravely, and set his own fork aside. “Look now, first, I think
he
thinks that we are some sort of village outcasts for living out here. So he thinks we’re the weakest out of all of the village—that no one will spring to our defense if he comes up with some daft charge or other.”

She nodded; that made sense.

“He’s a bully; bullies always pick on the weakest.” He grinned at
her. “But we’re not weak, we’re like the seals, strong and slippery and fast, and any rope he tries to cast around us, we’ll just slip right through and be gone.”

She sighed, feeling a little more comfortable. It sounded as if her da had spent a goodly long time thinking about all this, and was already planning things.

“Now as to why he would do this in the first place…” her da frowned. “I think we talked of this before. I’m going to say he’s been sent to
find
trouble. Sent to hunt out lawbreakers. Whoever sent him just assumed that no matter where you looked hereabouts, you’d find anarchists and unionists, and sympathizers, and I’m thinking it must go further than the Manor folk, since they seem no happier to have him than we. I’m thinking it goes all the way back to the
big
landowners and the mine owners who hold the leashes of the constables. Money talks, my love. Money is what tells power what to do. Money is always there, any time you see power moving. Only there’s no one here doing what he’s been sent to look for, so now he has to twist and bend and even make things up for the ones that sent him, so that he won’t find himself in trouble.” Dafydd Prothero shook his head, sadly, but also angrily. “If he was a good, honest man, he’d tell his bosses that there’s naught to be found here, and all their prodding him won’t give them what they want. But he’s not. He’s a little, petty man, with large ideas of his own importance, and he’s a bully, and those two things together are going to make trouble for
someone.
”

“Then we need to make certain it isn’t us!” she exclaimed, with indignation.

“Aye, true, but we also need to make certain we come to the help of whoever it does end up being,” he cautioned her. “Do as you would be done by. Or you’ll be done by as you did.”

And with that, he picked his fork back up and finished his dinner thoughtfully.

As usual, they worked for a bit, and sang together a bit, but the darkness seemed thicker tonight, and they soon went off to bed.

She thought about all that he had said as she went up to bed. It was true that the folks in Clogwyn had come to her defense, but
that was when none of them were in any danger of anything other than irritation. Would they still feel that way if it was one of their own with his neck being measured for a noose? After all, she and her da
were
something of outsiders. As far as she knew, no one was aware of Daffyd Prothero’s truly extraordinary good luck in fishing, and the daily sails to Criccieth before he came home, but they did know he was always able to bring in enough to sell, and for some, that was enough for jealousy.

People had always been reticent to talk to her about her mother and her lost older brother too. Was that just because they felt it wasn’t right to, or was there something more, something to make them wonder why her mother had taken them both out kelping on that particular day? She’d never thought twice about it until today.

Well, now she knew. She knew that the Tylwyth Teg folk were not some visions of madness, but just as real as she had supposed they were as a child. She knew that they could affect things in the real world—even do mischief to those who couldn’t see them! So… what if
they
had something to do with her mother’s drowning? It would explain why her father didn’t want to hear about them. It would explain why the villagers didn’t want to talk about it—because if
she
could see them, well certainly there must be others who could, or where would all those stories come from?

Or maybe they had seen something truly uncanny. Maybe they had just seen the wave coming for her mother as if it was alive—or some of them had actually seen her and the child dragged into it. There were plenty of the Tylwyth Teg that would kill a mortal if they could.

And if that was true, did it mean the Tylwyth Teg were coming for her next? Would they lure or push her into the sea? They’d never been anything but playful before… but who could tell for sure? They might do anything. There were plenty of stories about the malicious ones, the murderous ones. Even the prettiest… well, they were said to lure men to drown, too.

She shivered in her bed. This did not make for comfortable thinking. Bad enough that she was going to have to worry about Constable Ewynnog and his spying ways, but if the Tylwyth Teg
were a danger as well… the Tylwyth Teg were more dangerous than the constable. Him, she could see coming. They could be invisible if they chose, or hide in the shadows, or creep in at night when she and her da were asleep.

But they never have before
, she reminded herself.
Nothing other than a bit of theft or hiding something. Even the Pwca, he never offered me harm.

And there was another thing to worry about. Was that why her da didn’t want to hear about them? Not that he didn’t believe in them, but because he
did
, and he, too, was afraid that his wife had been their victim? Was he afraid they were coming for his daughter as well?

What to think? Her mind went round and around in little circles, trying to reason it out, and she came to no conclusion at all before she was worn out and fell asleep despite her fretting.