Under the Green Hill (9 page)

The Morgans laughed nervously, except James, who said, “They're not in the garden. They're in the woods.”

“Funny James!” Silly said, and dragged him off in a rush to get breakfast. Rowan had an impulse to put Finn in his place by telling him exactly what they'd seen the night before, but he caught himself in time. Meg suddenly remembered Dickie, and ran off to see if he was awake. She, too, was desperately afraid she'd say something, though it was more from an urge to impress Finn than to cow him.

Safe away from him, she rapped softly on Dickie's door. He let her in, and she sat on a flowered ottoman while he wrapped a robe over a long sleeping shirt that pulled tight at the buttons.

“Why are all your pillows on the floor?” she asked him. They were in fact shoved into the farthest corner.

“Down,” he said. “I'm allergic.”

“Oh. There are probably foam pillows somewhere.”

“This doesn't seem like the kind of house where they'd have foam pillows,” he said with long-suffering acceptance, and sneezed.

“Is it really that bad? Can't you take something for it?”

“I do. I have medicine for my allergies, and an inhaler for my asthma, and once a month I get shots. But it doesn't really help.”

“Oh,” she said again, “I'm sorry.” She didn't really know what else to say. She was used to offering solutions to people's problems, but she couldn't see how to help poor Dickie.

“We were talking about what to do today. Explore the house, or the garden, or maybe go into the village. What would you like to do?”

“I don't know…. Anything you want.”

Meg, who was used to getting an argument from her siblings about almost everything, was surprised to discover that this easy acquiescence and indifference were actually annoying. “Don't you have a preference?”

He shrugged. “I sneezed so much in the garden kitchen, I think the real garden would be worse. Would we walk to the village, or drive? Only, I got a blister on each foot last night. I'd like to explore the house, I guess, though it's pretty dusty.”

Honestly, Meg found it hard to have the proper sympathy for poor Dickie. She tried to imagine what she'd be like if everything made her nose run, if she was shy and didn't seem to have any real friends, and then she felt more kindly toward him. She hadn't known him too well before the trip, but the few times she'd spoken to him, he'd come across as fairly bright. He was awkward, and seemed to have a hard time convincing himself to speak, though when he finally did it was frequently something clever (when it wasn't a physical complaint). Still, he wasn't quite up to her standards, and for the moment her friendship was based more on pity than anything else.

To shift the subject from his allergies, rather than from any real curiosity, she asked him how he'd fared after they were separated. To her surprise, he looked almost frightened—certainly uncomfortable—and he crossed behind her to shut and lock the door.

He said nothing for a long while, until Meg said, “Tell me!” very earnestly. Then, with nervous glances around the empty room, he began.

“I had the strangest dream. At least, it must have been a dream. We were separated, Finn and I, from the rest of you. We followed a light we thought was yours for a while, but it disappeared, and we were lost. Finn said he was going to get back to the Rookery before you and lock you out, so you'd be caught when the Ashes came home. He went off, and I tried to find you so you could hurry back.”

“Oh, did you, Dickie?” Meg cried, jumping up and giving him a quick little hug before she could stop herself. “That was swell of you!”

Dickie beamed and blushed, and it seemed to be easier for him to go on. “But I couldn't. I called and called, and no one ever answered. I thought you must have heard me—maybe you just weren't answering.”

“We'd
never
do that to
you
,” Meg said stoutly.

“Well, I walked on, but after a little while I didn't have any idea where I was going. I came to a stream, a tiny trickle, and I remembered that a bigger stream went by the road at the Rookery. So I thought maybe this one fed into it. I started to follow it, but it went in between some rocks. Big boulders, much taller than me. I didn't want to go around and risk losing the spring, so I started to climb over them, but it was hard with only the moonlight, and I stopped to rest.

“And then, while I was sitting on one rock and leaning against another, I heard a strange voice. It said, ‘Thank you for visiting me. I have been so very lonely.' It startled me, but it was such a gentle little voice, so sad, and so hopeful, that I couldn't be scared. I thought it must be someone just behind the rock, and so I talked to him for a while. I asked him if he knew where the Rookery was, and he said he'd taken lost lambs there before. He told me about the stream, about the music it makes from day tonight, and he sounded like it was almost all he knew of. He asked me about my home, and I told him about Arcadia. He seemed very impressed with it. ‘Imagine,' he said, ‘such a place in hills and woods, where people do nothing but learn all the livelong day!'

“And then he said that he had never met such a pleasant fellow as me, and he had to come around the rock to introduce himself properly and shake my hand. I must have been dreaming by then, though I don't remember falling asleep. He said, ‘I'm a Urisk, and they call me Tim Tom.' Then he came around the rock with his hand held out. But it wasn't his hand I was looking at. He had a sort of skin tied around him—it looked like a fox—and his feet were like goat's hooves. But he didn't look like a faun or a satyr. I've read about those. He was very thin and very sad and kind of hunched in on himself, like he was afraid to be seen. And I…I stepped back, and I think I fell and hit my head, and I don't remember anything else. When I woke up, I was back here, and you were, too. Now I think about it, I seem to remember one other thing. A voice, it must have been his, sighed and said, ‘Another little lamb for the Rookery, and no friends for Tim Tom.'”

“Are…are you sure it was a dream?” Meg asked him.

“Do you think it could have been real? It
seemed
real. Could he have been a fairy, d'you think? I didn't think your relatives were serious, but could there really be fairies here?”

She was tempted to tell him about her encounter with the brownie, at least (though last night was really too secret to spill easily), but something still held her back. Perhaps it was only that Dickie looked so pleased at having had an adventure, at seeing something no one else had seen. Learning that they had all done just the same, and better, would diminish it.

“I don't think Phyllida and Lysander would lie,” Meg said, choosing her words carefully. “If people have believed in fairies for hundreds of years, there must be something to it.”

“I'll ask your relatives!” he said excitedly. “I'll tell them what I saw, and they'll tell me about fairies. They must know all there is to know.”

He had gotten no farther than swinging his legs over the edge of the bed when Meg sprang up and barred his way. “Are you crazy? Then they'll know you were out last night. And if they have any sense, they'll know the rest of us were out, too—you'd never go out alone.” She didn't mean for that to be hurtful, and after all it was perfectly true, though it smarted just the same. Dickie knew he wasn't adventurous, but he didn't like it rubbed in.

“I have to find out some way!”

“You can ask them questions, just not all at once. And be careful. I'll ask them, too. I'll talk to them after breakfast.” She had far more faith in her own subtlety than in Dickie's. But it wouldn't hurt for another person to be seeking out information. Even if Rowan wasn't going to participate in the fairy war, a new world had been opened up to them, and they certainly weren't going to let it slip away.

They all ambled down to the garden kitchen, and the cook brought them oatmeal and honey and eggs and grapes. Midway through, Phyllida popped her head in and told them that she'd decided breakfast and lunch should be informal meals, but that they'd all gather at eight for supper. “You no doubt have your own business to attend to, and don't need the responsibility of showing up at any particular hour to eat,” she said. “And I don't want to have to worry every time you're ten minutes late—so better not to know at all. I'll take inventory at supper.”

How marvelous she is, Meg thought. It would be just like living on their own, free to make their own decisions about practically everything.

“Meg,” Phyllida said as she was leaving, “come and see me in the parlor when you've finished eating. Daisy will show you the way.” Daisy was one of the housemaids (and also one of the cows, though in this case Phyllida referred to the former).

“I'll come now,” Meg said, wiping the honey from her mouth and shoving her plate away.

This is it, she thought with foreboding. Meg was perfectly capable of holding her tongue, but if Phyllida asked her directly about last night, she didn't know if she could lie to her face—or if she should.

Meg had never been in a room called a parlor, and thought this one perfectly charming. It was all done in soft pink tones, with overblown dahlia blossoms on the wallpaper. The chairs were very plush and comfortable, and there was a clever little writing desk that unfolded to reveal secret compartments. As in most of the other rooms of the Rookery, there were several vases of flowers, this time dusky-yellow roses mixed with trailingivy.

“Bran tells me you've seen the brownie,” Phyllida began as soon as Meg had settled herself.

“Yes, I…I saw him in the kitchen. He disappeared so quickly I wasn't sure I really saw him.”

“And that's what Bran should have told you, no doubt. If he'd laughed at you, you'd have thought it all a trick of your imagination. That might have been for the best. But Bran is of his own mind on this, and I'm not sure that I don't agree with him, now that I've met all of you. I thought maybe you could come here and remain blind and stupid to what was going on around you. I see that isn't possible.”

“I'm sorry,” Meg said, which she often said when she didn't know what else to say.

“Nonsense, girl! No need to be sorry. You weren't stirring up trouble. It just happened. The brownie chooses who will see him, just as they all do. It was wrong of me, though, not to tell you—to tell all of you—something of what goes on around here. Of course, if I just sat you down and told you all of it, you'd never believe me. And there might have been better protection in that than in all the knowledge and precautions in the world. What you don't believe in cannot hurt you. Did you tell the others about the brownie?”

Meg looked down at the carved wooden feet on her chair, and finally confessed that she'd told her siblings.

“Ah well, you'd have to, wouldn't you? But not the others? Not Dickie or that Finn?” Meg shook her head. “Good, good. Best to keep it away from prying outside eyes. The less they know the better, though, living here, they're bound to see hints of things. Especially around this time of year.”

“Why now?”

“Oh, it's a volatile time. The fairies get more lively as the season grows. They like the greenery, the blossoms, and the fruit. You hardly ever see the Neighbors in the dead of winter, except perhaps one of the Host. They're always on the alert.”

“The Host?”

“The bad fairies would be the easiest way of putting it, though how much any of them can be bad or good I still don't know. They're all of the same family, more or less, but there are two courts. The Seelie, they call the more benevolent of them. And the others are the Unseelie, or the Host, or the Strangers. But that's not to say you can trust the Seelie, or that one among the Host might not do you a great kindness someday. That's the thing about the world of Fairy, Meg Morgan—you can never be sure what to expect. I've known the fairies, in their good forms and their bad, large and small, fair and hideous, since I could crawl about the garden, and even I could never tell you more than a fraction of their quirks and freaks. Bran, now, he thinks like one of them. But that's another story.”

Meg realized that she would dearly love to hear about Bran, but she didn't quite dare ask, and Phyllida went on.

“It's in my family, you see—in my family and yours. The tale is almost lost in the centuries, but I can tell you the heart of it. Long ago, longer than you can even imagine, an ancestor of mine was appointed to be the human guardian of this place. In those days, there were not nearly so many people in the world, and the influence of the fairies was more strongly felt. They would talk to herdsmen in the fields, teach women to weave, or give council in war. They would seduce men's daughters and sweethearts, and sometimes swear friendship with humans and offer them fairy hospitality. But the men grew stronger, and the fairies faded a bit. And they changed, too, for I do not think in those days there were such terrible members of the Host, fairies that hate humans and would cause them harm.

“There came a time when each grew apart from the other. Humans began to fear the fairies, and desired some protection against them. And yet there have always been those among the humans who still loved the fairies, and who know they must be honored and preserved. The fairies, too, needed protection, for they were being driven from their homes, and the old friendships were forgotten. There was a woman, an ancestor of mine, who was wise and kind—and beautiful, I suppose, for all women in old stories are beautiful. She was a friend of the fairies, and the men also trusted her, and both clans named her Guardian of this most sacred place.”

“Here? This is sacred?”

“Aye, above all spots in England. There were once fairies everywhere, from Penzance to the frigid Scottish northlands. There still are a few remnants, in the wilder places, where people keep their old habits. But this was always their home—their capital, if you will—their palace and their sanctuary. Under the Green Hill is where their home lies, beneath the earth from which all things grow. The woods, too, are theirs, where thrive oaks that are as old as time, and stones that the years cannot eat away. Even when they wandered far afield, this was their holy place, and when they came home, it was to the Green Hill. You would not know it—and few have ever seen it—but inside the Green Hill is another world. Would that I could tell you the wonders I have seen there! The fairies are close with their secrets, and quick to resent any who reveal them.

“This, then, is their principal home, and, for all the power the fairies possess, it is a strange and misty power, and cannot stand against the determined might of humans. So they craved some assurance that this place would always be safe for them. My ancestor—Angharad was her name—took up residence here, and learned the ways of the fairies, and taught the people charms to keep them safe from the more malevolent among their neighbors. She was a mediator between the two peoples, so different, yet more closely bound to each other than either cares to realize. Her role is passed along the female line, and she taught her daughters, who in turn taught theirs, until my own mother told me all that remains of fairy lore.”

“Why haven't I heard of all this before?” Meg asked. Phyllida sighed, and when she spoke her voice seemed to come from very far away…or very long ago. “I had an older sister, whose lot it should have been to hold the place that is now mine. But this was when the world was changing. There were planes and motorcars, and wars that made the world seem much wider than Gladysmere and its woods and hills. Chlorinda would not stay. She ran away one day, and I…we…did not hear from her for years. Later, we got word that she was in America, married to a man named Robert Goodfellow. She had a daughter, Chloe, who married a Richard Tamlane.”

“My grandparents,” Meg interjected. “I only just remember them. They both died when I was little.”

“Yes, I know. Fell into a volcano, didn't they? Blood will tell in strange ways. Adventure was always in our line, though it has usually been of a more local sort. Let me see, they had Glynnis Tamlane, your mother, who wed Tom Morgan and had all of you. And so the line split into a new branch that knows nothing of its heritage.”

“Why didn't Chlorinda ever say anything? There isn't a single family story about it.”

“She was desperate to get away, to forget everything about this place. It frightened her. Her father, our father, was gone then, taken, and we didn't think he'd ever be recovered.”

“Bran, you mean?”

Phyllida laughed. “Strange, isn't it? Though no stranger than so many other dealings with the fairies. Yes, Bran is indeed my father. Don't ask me about that story now. I don't think I have the heart to tell it. All said, it's not surprising Chlorinda never spoke of any of it, and the tales were never handed down. Oh, perhaps there were some rumors. I know your mother didn't quite relish the idea of sending you here. She's uneasy about us, even if she doesn't know why. But you're safe enough, I think.”

Meg was silent a moment, then said, “You don't have any children, Auntie Ash. Who will be the Guardian of this place when you…I mean, when you're not here?”

“You mean when I die? Don't be afraid of the word, child. And don't be afraid of death. It is only another change, and we are changing all the time. I don't know what will happen…. I suppose I should have planned better. But we are a long-lived people, at least those of us who don't traipse around volcanoes, and there is time enough to think about that. Eighty-four is no age.” She chuckled. “I suppose to you it's old enough. Here, try one of these macaroons. You didn't half finish your breakfast.”

Meg munched the treat and almost choked as she rushed to swallow it and ask more questions. “Where did fairies come from? And what are they, exactly? I mean, they're not all like the brownie, are they?”

“You ask things that would take a lifetime to answer, and even then I'd just scratch the surface, and likely be half wrong in the bargain. Fairies are…fairies. They have always been in England, a part of the land, like the dirt and the boulders. I don't know that they came from anywhere. Perhaps they once lived alone in this land. There are those who say they arrived—or were born, or created—at the very moment man set foot in England. They depend on humans in strange ways. I'll tell you more of that later. When the Christians came, they said fairies were fallen angels who were too good for hell, too bad for heaven, and lived a half life on earth. That's hogwash, of course. They were here long before anybody thought up Christianity. Some say they are old gods grown weak for want of worship, some that they are nature spirits, protectors. But I don't know where the fairies came from, only that they belong here, and if one day they are ever gone, this land will not thrive.

“As for what they are…why, they're everything you can imagine. They can be beautiful and kind, or beautiful and cruel. They can be fanged and horrid, but thresh your wheat for you. They change shape at will, and they change temper even faster. They have laws, but they can break them. You don't dare trust a fairy, of either court, and yet, if you do not trust them, they will never deal with you squarely. They have a society that in part mimics our own—they have a royal court, lords and ladies, and you may see them in clothes and fine jewels such as a human noble might wear, eating rare foods and sipping nectar. But those same fine fairies may on another day seem sallow and sick, clad in leaves and rags, and tearing at toadstools and moss. Which is the true form of Fairy? Both. Or neither.”

“It's awfully confusing.”

“Indeed. And sometimes dangerous. Most fairies won't want to hurt you, but their morals are not like ours. If they take a fancy to you, they might honor you by inviting you to dance with them. You'll step into a fairy ring—that's a magical circle of mushrooms—and they'll put a spell on you so you can't stop dancing. You'll dance until you're weary, and beyond. They'll take their merriment with you, and you will dance in that charmed circle until you die from exhaustion. Or they'll steal you away from your friends, your family, to keep you with them, and make you believe you're happy. You'll think you're just sitting down to a feast with them, but when you've finished eating and they let you go, you'll find sixty years have passed in the outside world. That's another fairy peculiarity—time moves differently for them. They hardly age at all, and don't always understand, or care, that our lives are so fleeting. Yes, there is joy beyond imagining to be found with the fairies, but sorrow and suffering, too, and you cannot tell which lot will be yours.”

“Is that what happened to Bran? But he didn't grow old.”

“Another perversion of fairy time. Hush, I said I would not speak of him now. Take another macaroon—they're good for the digestion.”

Phyllida Ash stood up, and it seemed harder for her than usual. She crossed to the window and talked to Meg with her back turned.

“That is why I give you so many warnings, Meg Morgan. There is no reason to think the fairies mean you any harm, but it is best to avoid trouble. There are dangerous things that live in the pools, and creatures in the woods you ought not to meet. Fairy food can make you a prisoner, and so I tell you not to eat the food of strangers. Even knowing your name can give them a power over you—though you knowing their names can give
you
a power, too. So promise me, child, and promise me again, that you will heed my warnings!” She wheeled around and held Meg in a gaze so powerful the girl trembled.

“I will! I promise!” Too late! she cried to herself.

Oh, how Meg wanted to reveal the truth! Maybe, she thought, Phyllida can fix everything. If she knows the fairies so well, surely she can keep Rowan from fighting. Yet she hesitated. She was ashamed they'd violated Phyllida's rules—Meg was no lawbreaker at heart—and what once seemed like a mild act of disobedience now seemed a crime tantamount to treason. I should tell her, Meg thought. But she didn't, not quite yet.

Phyllida softened immediately. “I suppose you'll tell all you know to the others?”

“I'd like to,” Meg confessed. “I won't if you say I can't.”

“You won't be able to stop yourself. I was a girl once, too. And it will help them understand how serious it all is. Perhaps you shouldn't tell Finn and Dickie. They have no part in all this.”

“No,” Meg said, “I won't tell them.” She hovered in the doorway, unwilling to confess, unable to leave. “Auntie Ash, when's Midsummer?”

Phyllida looked at her sharply. “Why do you ask?”

“Oh, when I saw the brownie, Bran said Midsummer was dangerous. I just wanted to know when I should be extra careful.”

“You should be extra careful all the time, but Midsummer is the twenty-first of June.”

“Why is it so dangerous?”

“Oh…,” Phyllida began, and stopped as if she was sorting through truth and lies and evasions, deciding which would serve best just then. She settled on a vague version of the truth. “It's another holiday, like Beltane. The fairies have a…a ritual they do on Midsummer. Nothing you have to worry about.”