Guardian of the Green Hill
Read Guardian of the Green Hill Online
Authors: Laura L. Sullivan
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For Buster
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for you
Contents
And You After Her, My Pretty Pet?
There's Something Stirring in the Earth
The Edification of the Common Man
A Deus ex Machina Is a Shabby Device
She Can't Give You What You Want
She Will Be My Creature
M
ORE SKIN THAN FLESH,
more bones than skin, the artist hunched over his easel. He added shading under the eyes and thickened the hair, then growled in disgust. It was still nothing like her, nothing like what he wanted her to be. The eyes were only wistful, not yet weak and sorrowful. The round chin looked too strong.⦠It would never tremble. Even the short curling silver hair looked too tidy, nothing like the unkempt locks of one given up to despair. And that is how he needed Phyllida Ashâhopeless, self-pitying, cringing, and powerless.
He tore the paper off with a flourish and fed it to his goat.
“I am only half the artist my father was,” he said bitterly, sketching out new lines on a fresh sheet.
“True,” said the goat, “but you are twice the magician.” He munched on the paper contemplatively. “Perhaps if you switched to charcoal.”
“You just don't like the taste of ink, Pazhan,” the man said. “Be glad I don't use oils. I will, though, just as soon as I can worm my way in. Into the house, into her confidence ⦠and into her place at last. One good sketch, and I'll have a hold on her, enough to create an opening. Then when she sits for me, when I can do a proper portrait, she will be my creature.”
“Will she really do as you say, Gwidion? She'll give it up, just like that?”
“You've seen what I can do.”
“Sketches to make the innkeeper give you a free night and a full flagon. Portraits to charm some gullible young woman into leaving her loved ones to follow you ⦠till you've had your fill. I've seen that, sure enough. But this is something else entirely. Phyllida Ash is a strong woman, bred to her role for generations, and she has powerful protectors. She may keep the fairies in check, but do you think they don't love her?”
“What of you, Pazhan? Do you love her?”
He shrugged his goat shoulders. “That is neither here nor there. I am part of your family. So long as there are Thomas men, I am yours, not hers, till such time as you strike me thrice in three days.”
Which didn't quite answer the question, but Gwidion nodded. “My only inheritance. My father's only inheritance, and his father's before him, when it could have all been ours. All mine.”
“Have I been such a bad bargain?” the goat asked archly, but Gwidion ignored him.
“Soon I will come into my own. No more wandering, a penniless rover. No more living by my wits, day to day, town to town. Here is where I belong, Pazhan, here at the Rookery, at the Green Hill. Whether they like it or not, I am home.”
They Came to Me
M
EG
M
ORGAN PLUCKED
a last plump jade-green berry from the thorny hedge just before the Gooseberry Wife could lurch her corpulent body close enough to nip. She gnashed her small, grinding teeth in pique as Meg escaped with her prize.
“You shouldn't tease her,” Phyllida chided from across the lawn. “She takes her job very seriously.”
The Gooseberry Wife was a lumbering, bloated caterpillar as long as Meg's arm. She haunted berry shrubs, guarding them from the marauding hands of youngsters, preserving the fruits for the cook's tarts and fools. Meg looked into her squinty eyes from a safe distance, but found herself compelled to look instead at the large black false eyespots on the top of her pale-green head.
“I'm sorry,” Meg told her. “I want them for Bran.”
The Gooseberry Wife shivered her segmented body in annoyance, making each spiny witch-wart hair along her back stand on end.
Meg carried her handful of berries back to Bran. He lounged on a chaise, scowling. Every few minutes he tried to rise, muttering something about wood to chop or rents to collect, but his family shoved him down again. He was restless, furious at his imposed sloth, but too weak to protest. After all, he'd died only two weeks ago.
It was teatime, a custom the children wished had followed the colonists to America. Here in England they realized how welcome a fourth meal is to someone who spends the better part of the day tramping through the woods, running, playing, and fighting. The more sedate adults, Phyllida and Lysander Ash, contented themselves with tea and thin, floating lemon slices and a few McVitie's digestive biscuits. The childrenâRowan, Meg, Silly, and James Morgan, Finn Fachan, and Dickie Rhysâgorged themselves on scones and clotted cream, sardines on toast, eggs, seedcakes, nut cakes, and fruitcakes. To Phyllida's horror, they insisted their tea be served cold and sickeningly sweetened, and though they consented to lemons, they looked at them suspiciously if they weren't cut into wedges.
Now the carnage of crumbs lay scattered across the tables, and the children (save James, who was studying a small civilization of black ants) were playing croquet on the manicured lawn, making up rules as they went along. At times they seemed to confuse croquet and cricket.
“Out of bounds!” Silly shouted.
“No such thing,” said Rowan, who really had no idea.
“Ow, my shin!” Dickie wailed.
“Sorry, no depth perception,” Finn said, in a tone that sounded far from apologetic. “My point,” he added, stopping to pull his black silk eyepatch into place. The game had degenerated into something like violent polo without the horses. Silly compensated somewhat for their lack with her raucous neighing laugh.
Dickie dropped out, joining Meg, while the others continued in deadly earnest. Rowan and Finn, antagonistic as ever, might have caused each other some serious harm if not for Silly getting between them, not as peacemaker but with her own keen desire to beat the boys. Legs were struck, feet trampled, turfs uprooted as they pounded across the lawn. Soon the rifle crack of mallet upon ball faded into the distance and peace reigned, more or less, in the English countryside.
Meg and Dickie drifted to the hedgerow and looked across the sunken wall of the ha-ha to the sheep-strewn meadow. The sheep, white with black faces, were echoed in the sky, deep lapis dotted with small white clouds barely tinged with a darkness that hinted at a distant storm. They grazed contentedly, unaware of the little men in green who methodically sheared the softest wool from their bellies.
“They're like chipmunks,” Meg said absently, much to Dickie's bafflement.
“The sheep?” he asked, perplexed.
Meg gave a little laugh. “Oh, I forgot you can't see them. The Weavers are out among the sheep.”
“And they look like chipmunks?”
“No, no, I didn't even realize I was talking out loud. I meant fairies are getting to be like chipmunks were back at Arcadia.” Arcadia, sylvan seat of learning in upstate New York, was where all their parents taught. “They were pretty common, but they didn't let themselves be seen. Then when you saw one, it was always a little thrill. The fairies are getting to be like that. Commonplace somehow, not surprising anymore, but still extraordinary.” She didn't think she had expressed herself very well, but Dickie understood.
“There seem to be more of them than usual,” Meg went on. “Maybe it's just easier to see them for some reason. On the grounds, too. Phyllida told me, back before the war, that fairies don't generally come on the Rookery property, except for a few, like the brownie or the Gooseberry Wife. But I see other ones here every day now. The Weavers and flower fairies, and I even stepped on a stray sod yesterday, right here on the lawn.”
“I wish I could see them,” Dickie said.
“You can stand on my foot if you like. You said that's one way, stand on the foot of someone who can see fairies.”
He sighed longingly but shook his head. “And end up like Finn, with a hazel stick in my eye? No, thank you. They don't like spies. Anyway, I
have
seen fairies, the ones who wanted to be seen, and for the most part I didn't enjoy it much.” Despite his words, Meg noticed something like pride on Dickie's face. She remembered that evening when she was racing to the Green Hill as Seelie champion in Rowan's place. Every horror of the Unseelie Court had tried to stop her. The worst was the skinless Nuckelavee.
How brave Dickie had been that night, luring it away and foiling it with its nemesis, fresh water. He'd pooh-poohed her praise later, saying, “Nothing's so bad if you know what its weaknesses are.” But Meg was still impressed by his valor. Even in bright, unthreatening daylight, when he was his pale, pudgy, sniffling self again, he possessed, in her eyes at least, the air of a hero.
“I wonder why we can all see them ⦠Rowan and Silly and James, I mean.”
“You're related to Phyllida. It must be in the blood. Meg⦔ He hesitated, not sure how to go on. “Phyllida doesn't have any children, you know.”
Meg just looked at him.
“I mean, you four are it. And from what she says, it's always a woman of her bloodline who's the Guardian of the Green Hill. So that's just you and Silly. You two are the only ones left. I was just wondering if somedayâit's not a nice thing to think about, but she is awfully old, and someday⦔
Meg's eyes widened in alarm. Oddly enough, it had never really occurred to her that she might be next in line. “No!” With all the chaos of the Midsummer War, she had been too preoccupied to carry things to their natural conclusion. The present was enough to fill her head, and though she had some vague idea that she had an obligation to learn about fairies, this suggestion of being Guardian was shocking.
“Phyllida will live a long time ⦠a very long time.” Oh, how she hoped so, for love of the old woman and, now, for newer selfish reasons.
“Hasn't she said anything to you about it?”
“No, nothing.” Come to think of it, there had been vague hints, mentions of her birthright, of the duties and obligations that come with gifts, of her family's heritage. But she thought it was just history, nothing to do with her own future.
Seeing how uncomfortable Meg was, Dickie wisely let it drop.
He was just wondering if asking Meg to point out which particular sheep were being sheared would count as an eye-losing offense when they were interrupted by hooves clattering on the cobblestone path that led to the croquet lawn.
A big roan horse skidded to a halt inches from Phyllida and Lysander, panting and lathered in sweat. His rider tumbled off and made the barest bow before gasping out, “Please, Lady, you must come quickly!”
Phyllida got to her feet, dusting the crumbs from her lavender frock and anchoring her rose-bedecked straw hat more firmly on her head. “What is it, Cain? What's amiss?”
“I don't know, ma'am. Young Evan came running to the stables and said whoever was fastest on a horse should go for the Lady. Jim said he was, but by the time he was finished bragging, I was on Lightfoot and away.”
“Evan didn't give you any clue what it was about?” Phyllida asked even as Lysander hailed a servant and gave instructions that their carriage be readied.
“It's at Moll's house, is all I know. You're to go to Moll's house.”