Guardian of the Green Hill (11 page)

Meg peeked into the garden kitchen. There at the table was James, with a huge loaf of oat bread clutched in both his hands. His face was all but buried in one end, and he made grunting snorts like a ravenous badger as he ripped and chewed great chunks. For all that he shoveled food down his maw at an amazing rate, he looked positively gaunt. Cheeks that had been full and peachy were now sunken, and his arms looked like sticks. He got the whole loaf of bread into his gullet faster than a starving dog and turned to the remains of the apple tart, grabbing fistfuls. Between bites (or wolfings), he swigged what looked suspiciously like hard cider from a stone bottle.

Phyllida laid a hand on Meg's shoulder and drew her gently back. They gathered in the parlor.

“That's him, isn't it? He's okay? It was just a trick when I saw him go under the Green Hill, right?” Meg hoped against hope Phyllida would give her the answer she longed for.

Phyllida sighed. “It was right before my eyes, and I didn't see it.”

“No … no!”

“He grows skinny and cold. He eats like a glutton. Has he been rude, improper?”

“Yes,” Meg admitted. “He … yes, very rude. Not himself. I thought it was just a phase.”

“I think … I cannot be sure until we perform the test … but I think that is not our James in the kitchen. That is a changeling, and you saw the real James on the hill tonight.”

“We have to get him back! What do we do, Phyllida?”

“Lysander,” she said, “get the eggshells from the compost pail.”

“What are you going to do? You're not going to hurt him, are you?”

“You can't hurt a fairy,” she said as she sorted through the eggshells, picking out the most intact ones and brushing off bits of coffee grounds and carrot peel. “But no, the test won't hurt him a bit, whether it's James or a changeling. Come, follow me into the kitchen and just watch, don't speak. Whatever happens, don't ask questions or look surprised at what I'm doing. As far as anyone is concerned, we just got out of bed for a midnight snack.”

The whole group filed into the kitchen and took places around the table, trying awkwardly and unsuccessfully to look normal. Fortunately James had found a smoked ham hanging on a hook near the hearth, and he was tearing into it with teeth that looked a little sharper than usual. He made a grunting sound to acknowledge their presence, and said, “Hullo, fatty,” to Dickie, who sat next to him. This wasn't exactly fair. Dickie had certainly been plump on his arrival, but since his asthma and allergies didn't seem particularly susceptible to English pollen, he'd managed to be a lot more active and had firmed up considerably. Still, both fairies and children will seize on your most sensitive point to mock, and that was always Dickie's.

As they all watched and pretended not to watch, Phyllida took another stone flagon of cider from the icebox and a pair of tongs from the drawer, then turned up the gas on the stove. Whistling a little tune as she worked, she took the largest of the eggshells gingerly in the pincers, poured in a measure of cider, and held it over the flames.

“Ginger or cinnamon?” she asked casually.

“Oh, both, if you please,” Lysander answered, just as casually, as he prodded the low hearthfire into more robust flames.

She sprinkled the spices into the mulling brew and swirled the concoction around until it started to steam. James looked up from his ham haunch and stared, gobbets of meat falling from his mouth, as Phyllida handed the eggshell cup to Lysander and placidly started on another.

James slammed down his mangled hambone and sprang up onto the chair, where he craned his neck and bobbed up and down, trying to see Phyllida's handiwork from all conceivable angles. “Damme!” he said, in a grainy growl completely unlike James's dear little voice, and continued,

Here I stand, all in a fog,

Like a pollywog, agog!

Flummoxed, fuddled, and hornswoggled

Like a lummox, all boondoggled!

I have seen the first chick pip,

I have squeezed the first rose hip,

But ne'er in all my unborn days

Has cider been brewed thisaways.

“Eggshells?” James who was not James said. “Bosh!”

The adults sprang into action—Lysander tossing back his egg of cider like a shot, Phyllida dropping her second brew onto the burner, where it filled the room with burnt sugar fumes. They grabbed little James roughly by the arms and flung him headfirst, shrieking, into the flaming fireplace.

“No!” Meg screamed.

But she heard a high-pitched laugh and saw a dim shape rise up through the chimney, and when she'd shoved and elbowed her way to the hearth, there was nothing there but a charred lump of wood.

“James?” she breathed.

“The changeling has gone back to where he came from,” said Phyllida, panting.

“What was all that business with the eggshells?” Rowan asked.

“To expose a changeling, you must do something so unusual it makes him forget his disguise as a human baby and speak as his true self. Brewing in eggshells is a time-honored method, though come to think of it, I'm not sure why all the fairies don't know about it by now.”

“Probably too embarrassed,” Finn said. “It's pretty silly if you ask me.”

“No one did,” Rowan said, and there might have been a fight if Meg hadn't reminded them about the more important issue.

“But where is James?”

“That,” Phyllida said, “is the problem.”

She explained to them that getting rid of the changeling is the easy part. After that, who knew? “Sometimes the real child appears at the doorstep as soon as the changeling disappears. Sometimes he returns to wherever he was taken from. Sometimes, though, they don't return him at all.”

“What do we do then?” Meg asked.

“We'll cross that bridge when we come to it,” Lysander said decisively. “Now, all of you take torches and look around the house and grounds.”

Meg ran to the front door. Before she could open it she heard the
thud-thud-thump!
of something on its last legs collapsing against the door. She pulled it open, and in fell a dark, shaggy form.

“Bran! Oh, Bran, what's wrong? What are you doing up?” Though of course by now he wasn't up. She placed a hand to his chest and felt something warm and wet. She didn't need to shine her flashlight on her fingers to know they were darkened with blood. Oh, blood and more blood! I want to go home, she whimpered to herself, but with heroic effort, she cut her self-pity short and dragged Bran into the house. (Which, should you ever encounter a fellow with a barely healed arrow wound to the chest, is not the best thing to do to him, though it seemed like a good idea to Meg at the time.)

“There ye are, ye baggage,” Bran said weakly. He tried to sit, coughed, and much to his frustration, sank helplessly into Meg's lap. “Where were ye, gallivanting about in the dark? Thought ye fell in th' abandoned well.”

(So there
is
an abandoned well, Meg thought.)

“You went out searching for me? How could you? You're in no shape to be on your feet, certainly not to hike around looking for me. You could have killed yourself. After all the trouble I've gone to, too.” She'd already killed him once. She didn't want to be responsible for his second death.

“Yer precious,” he said, and coughed painfully again. “Nothing can happen to you.”

“What do you mean?”

“The Green Hill … Lady … Guardian … without you…” He curled into another painful paroxysm of hacking, and Meg called, “Help!” down the hallway. Wooster came running in a stiff and dignified way.

“Call for the doctor,” Meg ordered. Wooster glanced to Bran for confirmation of his instructions, but Bran had his eyes shut tightly, keeping a firm hold on his agony. “Go! Do it!” She might have been a child, but her voice already had the Guardian's authority, and Wooster couldn't deny it. He scurried to the stables and sent a lad.

“Bran, be still,” Meg told him when he tried again to rise. “You shouldn't have risked your life to look for me. I can take care of myself, and anyway, forget about that Guardian business. I've thought about it, and I won't do it. As soon as we find James, I'm going home. All of us are going home.”

“Find James?”

“Stop trying to talk. Yes, find James. He was replaced by a changeling. Phyllida got the changeling to leave—now we have to get James back. Then I'm through with this place. Now, don't get upset again,” she added as he struggled against her gentle but firm hands. “It's not your fault, and I love you very much, all of you, but I can't bear this anymore. First you, now James, in only a few weeks—who knows what would happen if I decided to stay? I don't know how Phyllida does it. But she chose to do it. I don't. I won't be the next Guardian. It's too much for me.”

He gripped her weakly. “Then forget the doctor. You might as well have left me dead on the hill, or under it, or outside on the doorstep till dawn. If you will leave us, all is lost!” He clenched his teeth against the pain and was unconscious by the time Phyllida and the others found them. When Dr. Homunculus pulled up in his little red sports car, Meg slipped away to be alone.

She considered going to her retreat on the Rookery roof, but the thought of her small self against that vastness of stars overwhelmed her. Again, it was the kitchen, that place for schemes and comfort, that called her.

In all her years on this earth, Meg had never been so confused. She wanted to stay, and she wanted to flee. She wanted to learn, and (like the Wyrm) she wanted to forget what she had learned. She felt some mysterious pull—whether it was her blood or her curiosity or her budding sense of adventure, she could not say—telling her to stay in England forever and be a part of this strange life with the fairies. And she felt a push nearly as strong sending her toward safety and predictability and, if she was completely honest with herself, dullness.

And now Bran, she thought miserably. Just when he seemed on the verge of recovery, both physical and psychological, he sounded hopeless again, and it was all her fault. He'd pushed himself to the brink of death once again to search for her while she heedlessly stayed out late. And because she might not (might?) want to become Guardian, he seemed on the verge of despair. Couldn't she do anything right? She could, maybe, if she knew what right was.

She looked around for something to eat, but most eatables had been laid waste by the changeling. She tidied up a bit, helpfully putting things where they did not go, so that for weeks to come, Phyllida would search in vain for spatulas and whisks. Meg desperately wanted to do something useful. She could not help Bran; that was the duty of Dr. Homunculus. She could not search for James, for she did not know how. She spied the butter churn in the corner. She shook it and heard a liquid slosh. Someone, Phyllida or a maid, had started churning and had probably been interrupted. She grasped the well-worn dasher handle pressed with indentations from several generations of women's hands. Hers were a little small, but they found a comfortable place, and she set about churning.

It was harder than it looked. She had to use not just her arms but her whole upper body. After a few minutes she ached, and the cream was no thicker.

“I can't do anything right,” she said in disgust, and thrust the plunger hard into the churn.

“Twist as ye churn,” came a voice, mournful and low.

Twist she did as she whirled around and found the Rookery brownie regarding her glumly. And no wonder. She was about to ruin his batch of butter.

Leathery, callused hands wrapped around her own and guided her in the right kind of agitation to make the better congeal. It was with some alarm she realized she was actually being touched by a fairy. He felt decidedly unhuman, his skin the texture of a bat's wing, and cold, like James had been, now that she thought of it. He turned her hands around on the plunger as together they raised it up and forced it down until, only a moment later, it began to thicken. And she had been about to give up.

“There,” the brownie said. “Keep at it, and you'll have butter ere long.” He settled himself on a bench and lit a cheroot.

Meg churned away, and as the brownie puffed, she told him some of her troubles. He offered no advice about recovering James, and she turned to Phyllida's desire to train her as her successor.

“Why can't Bran take over for Phyllida?” she asked at length. “He's young, and he knows all there is to know about fairies. He'd do it, and happily, I'd think. Or Rowan. He'd be just as good as me. Hasn't there ever been a male Guardian?”

She hadn't thought the brownie would answer. Taciturn and stubborn, he rarely spoke except about matters that concerned him directly (like his precious butter). So she paid particular attention when he said, “Aye, once. Fer a time.”

“Then why can't it happen again? I don't think I want to be the Guardian.”

“He were Guardian for ten minutes, no more, and he were druv out o' the county with a price on his head. No, there canna be a male Guardian. It's agin' the laws of nature.” He blew a smoke circle, then a smoke square.

“But why? That makes no sense.”

“The blood mun stay wi' the land. A woman knows if a child is her own, a man, never. The blood mun stay.” He snuffed his cheroot and moved her aside to scoop the clotted butter and press out the buttermilk. She pestered him with questions as he kneaded the butter, rolled it in cold water, and salted it, but he was intent on his work and ignored her. She thought she understood what he meant, but wasn't quite sure.

“But what am I supposed to do?” she asked, at her wit's end, as he spread the butter into molds.

When he finished, and not before, he cocked his head at her, looking more friendly, more human, than she had ever seen him, despite his rags and square feet. He smiled and took her hand, pressing it against his cold, barrel-shaped chest.