Give Me (4 page)

She raised her head off the pillow and listened. Strange harp music—maybe a lute—played somewhere, a familiar tune. She went out into the hall and followed the sound down the corridor to a stone staircase on the right. There was the tapestry again, the woman and the king on the hill.

Lilith was late to the wedding banquet. She didn’t want to go. It was the wrong wedding. The wrong bride. And she was dressed in her nightgown. But the music called to her like a charm. Halfway down the stairs, she tripped and pitched forward. Again. This time she was going to hit the landing.

But a man caught her.

“Have a care! You might break your lovely neck.”

He steadied her and caressed her cheek with gentle concern in his dark brown eyes. He was dressed in white satin and blue velvet like a prince in a fairytale. She shifted so that his hands slipped from her arms down to her waist. She ran her fingernails over the skin of his neck. He smiled, and hunger and heat welled up inside her. She wanted him. She wanted sex.

She pressed him against the corner, and his smile broadened. Their lips met, and his tongue pushed into her mouth. An ache of memory washed over her, laced with the thrill of desire. He felt so familiar. She nudged his hand toward her breast, and when he moved his thumb over the nipple she knew he was hers.

He opened her nightgown, and his fingers brushed against her skin as he eased the fabric aside. He kissed her ear and her throat and moved down to her bared shoulder.

She whispered, “I’m in agony for you.”

He lifted her chin and searched her face, his expression a mass of pain and desire. “We’ve waited for so long.” He spun her around and pushed her against the wall, covering her shoulders and breasts with kisses.

She ran her fingers through his hair—then gasped and pulled back. Her own hair had fallen forward over her face—but it wasn’t her light brown hair. It was waist-length and pale blond. She twisted away from the prince.

He cried “No!” and faded away.

Lilith woke to sunlight streaming into her room. It was close to noon, and she flew out of bed and threw her things into her suitcase. She’d requested a late checkout, but it was going to be tight. As the taxi driver took her luggage, she offered to share with two other people going to the train station. The London air felt wonderful compared with the dry desert. She felt alive and free. Happy.

At Paddington Station, she’d despaired of finding her train when someone touched her elbow. “Are you lost, dear?” Lilith turned and almost stepped on a short middle-aged woman with twinkling blue eyes.

“I’m looking for the train to Dumnos.”

“That’s my train,” the woman said. “I have an inn at Tintagos Village.”

“I wonder if we spoke on the phone. Is it the Tragic Fall Inn?” Lilith said.

“You’re Lilith Evergreen, then. I’m Marion. I thought I might see you on the train.”

As Lilith shifted the weight of her handbag, Marion grabbed her right hand. She turned it to get a good look at her ring. “Now that’s quite nice. Family heirloom?”

“I’ve only had it a month.” Lilith eased her hand away from Marion’s grip and twisted the gold band. “It was a present—from someone I don’t like much, as it happens. I should probably take it off.”

“Oh, I wouldn’t do that, dear. I…I mean it looks lovely on you.”

“That’s what I thought.” Lilith smiled. She loved the ring. It didn’t matter where it came from.

“Here we are.” Marion walked along an old-fashioned steam engine. “There should be two more ladies on their way to the Tragic Fall. Let’s hope they’re on the train.” At the last car she climbed the steps and said, “On to Tintagos. Perhaps your destiny awaits you there!”

“But I only want a vacation.”

Marion laughed as if that was the funniest joke ever told. Lilith would never get British humor.

The westbound train was like something out of
Murder on the Orient Express
. Lilith sat diagonally across from Marion. Over an hour passed and neither spoke. Occasionally Marion glanced at Lilith with a friendly smile, but she spent most of the time knitting, adding to the considerable length of a moss-green scarf.

Across the aisle a girl chatted on her cell phone, unmindful or uncaring who heard. “Ah, Jimmy, don’t be a git.” Her expression and her voice softened. “You’re more than good enough for me. I love you.”

A fresh pang of hurt feelings washed over Lilith. Despite her present opinion of Greg, his reason for dumping her still chafed. He would have been degraded by her lack of pedigree. She’d never again fall for someone who was her social superior.

The cell phone girl noticed Lilith watching and listening. With a defiant stare she said into her phone, “Give me a kiss, love.”

Lilith rolled her eyes, but Marion’s sympathetic smile stopped her cold.
Great gods,
Lilith thought.
I’m cynical! I’m jaded and broken, and I will never love anyone.

They rumbled along through hills, past lakes and meadows all caressed by gray mist, a welcome promise of cool weather. Farmhouses and fields of sheep alternated with the occasional village. One hillside had a huge chalky white horse painted or carved into it. It was all so green and magical.

You’re not in Indio anymore.

“Bollocks.” The girl flipped her phone shut and tossed it into her backpack.

The other two passengers remaining in the car looked up in one movement, like synchronized swimmers, and put away their laptops.

“Those must be the other two for the Inn,” Marion nodded at the laptop ladies. “We’ve crossed into County Dumnos. No mobile. No wi-fi—oh, goody!” A waiter rolled a cart of drinks by, and Marion stuffed her knitting into the bag at her feet. “You’re old enough for champagne, aren’t you dear?”

Lilith snorted. “I think so.”

Marion shifted to the window seat directly across from her. “Sharon,” Marion said to the girl with the cell phone, “would you like to join us?”

“All right.” Sharon left her backpack behind and moved to the seat Marion had vacated. “How’s Dad?”

“Misses you,” Marion said, “as ever. Keen to see you next Saturday.”

When Marion introduced Lilith Sharon’s face lit up. “American then? Jimmy and I long to see the Painted Desert.”

“There’s irony for you,” Lilith said. “I long to never see it again.”

“It’s a curse to live in the wrong place,” Marion said. “A cactus in the rain, or a lilac in the desert.”

“Or myself in the land of no mobile phones,” Sharon said.

“It’s true,” Lilith said. “I feel more at home here on the other side of the world than I did my whole life in the desert.” Green countryside was her proper place. When she returned to the States she was going to leave Indio and move far, far away from where the word
forest
conjured the image of Joshua trees.

Sharon took out her identification as the waiter poured three glasses of champagne.
I’m getting old,
Lilith thought.
She seems so young to me.

“Pardon me, miss.” The waiter said to Lilith. “I’ll need to see some proof of age.”

“What, me?” Lilith stared up at him to see if he was joking. He wasn’t. “I’m twenty-nine,” she said.

“You’re rather well-preserved, dear,” Marion said.

Lilith showed the waiter her California driver’s license. He stared at it and looked doubtfully at her hair, then nodded his head.

“I thought you were younger than me,” Sharon said. She raised her glass. “To California. How do you know Moo?”

“Lilith is stopping at the Tragic Fall,” Marion explained.

“You seem too sensible for that circus,” Sharon said. “No offense.”

“What do you mean?” Lilith said. “I’m sure the inn is fine.”

“The Tragic Fall is lovely. But I assume you’re coming for the Handover.”

“Of course she is,” Marion said. “Elyse sent you. Isn’t that right?”

Lilith was glad of the reservation, but she couldn’t remember making it or mentioning the Elyse from her dream to anyone. The fact there was also an Elyse in Tintagos, one who had some sway with the innkeeper, was creepy. She had to think. Why
was
she going to Tintagos? She could blame it on Greg and say she was running away from a terrible break-up. But that wasn’t true. She wasn’t running away from Greg and Jenna.

She was running
to
something. Something that had existed long before she’d met Greg. As if the castle and the tree and the sea cliffs had always lived in some hidden spot of memory, waiting for her to wake up.

Marion had a frown on her face. It was hard to tell if she was lost in thought or staring at Lilith’s ring.

“Who is Elyse?” Lilith asked.

“That’s the wyrding woman,” Sharon said. “She’s called for the Handover.” She pointed her glass toward the laptop ladies. “Which those two are going to Tintagos for, no doubts there.”

“What’s a wyrding woman?” demanded Lilith. “What’s a Handover?”

“A wyrding woman is a witch.” Sharon raised her eyebrows. “The last of her kind.”

“Be nice, dear,” Marion said. “Long ago, Dumnos was a sovereign country with its own king. The wyrders of Dumnos weren’t witches. They were pagans.”

It sounded like a story Marion had recited a thousand times for her guests.

“Some say the fairies drove the wyrders away, but it was really the rise of the monasteries. All pagans went into hiding to avoid the church, and their practices died out. Today one wyrder remains in Dumnos, and she lives in a cottage outside our village.”

“The wyrding woman of Glimmer Cottage.” Sharon made her eyes big and her voice spooky.

Marion said, “A wyrding woman has lived at Glimmer Cottage as long as anyone knows.”

Like Starkadders at Cold Comfort Farm,
Lilith smiled to herself.

“When she gets old and begins to lose her powers,” Marion continued, “she calls for a Handover.”

“To hand it over,” Sharon said.

“She chooses a young woman with talent—”

“Talent?”

“Potential witch.” Sharon wasn’t going to let up.

“Whoever she chooses will inherit Glimmer Cottage and learn wyrding ways.”

“But wait, there’s more!” Sharon refilled their glasses. “Whoever’s chosen gets the cottage and a trust fund and supposedly wicked magical powers. Sounds good, right?”

It sounded great. “What’s the catch?” Lilith knew there had to be one.

“Well, there’s a curse involved, isn’t there?” Sharon looked at Marion in triumph.

“I knew it was too good to be true.” Lilith laughed and clinked champagne glasses with Sharon.

“Yes, there is a curse,” Marion said. “And the new wyrding woman’s only task will be to find a way to break it.”

“What’s the curse?”

“No one knows.”

“You did not just say that.”

“Makes it difficult to break,” Sharon said.

Marion didn’t laugh. “It must have to do with the interference in the county atmosphere. We can’t get wireless internet or a mobile signal. Aircraft with high-tech circuitry fly over at their peril.”

That explained the steam locomotive.

“Atmospheric conditions are screwed,” Sharon said, “but by metallurgy, not magic. Everywhere in Dumnos the iron ore gives off an intense kind of static. That’s what disrupts the wireless. It makes great steel, though. You’ve heard of Dumnos Clad?”

“Best cookware in the world,” Lilith said, “though too expensive for mere mortals. Well, too expensive for me. But I do possess an old stock pot I inherited from my mother. She called it her cauldron.” She sighed at the strange looks from Marion and Sharon. This was her mother’s legacy, a homemade necklace and a fantastic pot. “Is the Dumnos Clad factory near the inn?”

“No longer,” Sharon said. “They moved to Christminster. They needed to be online to manage the supply chain and order fulfillment. Even payroll is done on the internet now.”

“Sharon works at the factory,” Marion said. “Dumnos lost a lot of people when the Clad left.”

One of the laptop ladies asked loudly for another bottle of champagne. They were in a holiday mood. That was it, Lilith realized. There was no mystery here, no curse. The Handover was a gimmick to draw tourists. Like picking a child out of the crowd at Disneyland to pull the sword from the stone. The “wyrding woman” would choose a local actor for the honor—or the mayor’s daughter—with none the wiser. Very clever.

“Elyse has had Moo bamboozled forever,” Sharon said. “She takes advantage. Gets her to run errands and play along with her schemes.”

“I know what I know,” Marion said. “And this Handover has been good for the village. Cade was right about that.”

“Cade is always right about everything,” Sharon said as she looked out the window. “Oh, goody. We’re out of Dumnos.” She moved across the aisle again and pulled her cell phone out of her backpack. She talked with Jimmy until the train stopped.

“This is me.” She threw her backpack over her shoulder and winked at Lilith. “Don’t let Elyse choose you. You wouldn’t fancy a snogless life battling ghosts in a damp old cottage at the edge of nowhere.” She kissed Marion’s cheek. “Tell Dad hi for me, Moo. We’ll see you Saturday.”

She fairly skipped up the aisle to the exit and reappeared outside on the platform, her face alight with joy. She leapt into the arms of a young man, wrapping her legs around his waist. The two locked in a passionate kiss as the train pulled away.

“My husband’s daughter,” Marion said. “Tintagos Village isn’t smart enough for her. She loves her broadband and her mobile.”

And loves Jimmy too,
Lilith thought. She’d seen the movie
Wimbledon
. She knew what snogging was. Sharon was right; Lilith didn’t fancy a snogless life in a damp cottage. She didn’t fancy the snogless life she already had in the dry desert.

Marion picked up her knitting, and Lilith leaned back to watch the world go by. Soon they were back in Dumnos County—at least, that’s what she assumed when the laptop ladies uttered frustrated sighs and put away their computers. Again farms and flocks of sheep alternated with postcard villages. The repeating view and the train’s rocking movement soon lulled her to sleep—and to Tintagos Castle.