Guardian of the Green Hill (15 page)

“It's all settled,” Smythe said. “I've already put thin metal bars all through the patch he's to mow, planted 'em as it were, all through the hay. Can't see 'em while you're mowing, but he'll sure feel 'em. They'll slow him down and dull his blade, and fairy or no, you'll not have a lick of trouble beating him. He'll never know the difference, the clod. He'll just drool and grunt and swing away and make no progress and never know why.”

“And if he catches onto you?”

“To us, my boy,” Smythe said sharply. “He hasn't yet, and we've been deceiving him these many years, one way or another, from my grandfather's time.”

“I don't know,” said Tansy with more sense than any of them. “If he finds out, he'll likely do something terrible to us. You know he will. I have a little one on the way. Fine lot my woman'll like it if I'm gutted by a fairy.”

“You fret like a gaffer,” Smythe said. “Believe me, he'll never know. We'll get free work out of him and not see him till the next mowing festival … when we'll do it all again. Now, go on out there and look pleasant, and I'll see you at the fields in an hour. And you, Jonas, go make nice to your ugly mower out there. Best remind him which end of the scythe to mow with, the great lummox.”

They stepped out of the taproom back into the hurly-burly of the tavern and went their separate ways so as not to attract notice. Jonas reluctantly approached Fenoderee, on the side away from his scythe, and said a few words to him, at which the fairy drained his mug, grunted, and stalked out of the tavern.

“Now!” Meg said, and started out the door to catch Fenoderee. It wasn't until she exploded into the sunlight that she realized Finn was still cowering in the taproom. Why of all the …

But it was too late to change her mind now. There was the bright blue wagon, and there, oh, lordy, was Fenoderee. He must have been seven feet tall.

She could run, or she could scream, or she could gather her courage and do what she must.

“P-please sir,” she began, for it never hurts to be polite. “Will you come with me?” To her amazement Fenoderee obediently took her hand and let her lead him into the darkness of the taproom, where Finn, watching, had backed even farther behind the barrels.

“Who's there?” Fenoderee asked in a small voice, looking nervously at Finn's shadow in the corner. He stepped behind Meg, looking for all the world like he was afraid.

“It's okay, it's only Finn. Come out, Finn.” You coward, she thought. “See? Finn won't hurt you.” Can't is more like it. “He knows your son.”

“Sun's in the sky,” Fenoderee said. “I know the sun too. He's my friend.”

“No, I meant…” Fenoderee was looking at her with such childlike simplicity. Meg had a thought and immediately dismissed it, but it refused to be dismissed. Could it be? He was a fairy, and a giant, bigger than any man she'd seen.

“Come out, Finn. Let him see you.” Reluctantly, he emerged. “Mr. Fenoderee, this is Finn. I think you've met him before.”

If it were possible for a seven-foot creature to peer out from behind the skirts of a young girl, Fenoderee would have done so. He stood behind Meg as if she were his mother and he was safe as long as she sheltered him.

He spied Finn and cried, “You!” and swept Finn up in a crushing bear hug, tossing him in the air just before his ribs cracked and catching him in another hug just before his head hit the ceiling.

“Careful,” Meg admonished, and pried the dizzy Finn loose.

“He fixed my wagon,” Fenoderee said gleefully to Meg. He skipped from one foot to the other, shaking the room to its foundations, then sat down on the rush-strewn floor with his legs spread straight out in front of him. “He helped me, he did. He fixed my wagon for me ever so neat. He's my best friend, my best in the world.”

“You mean he—” Finn started, wide-eyed.

“He's the little boy,” Meg clarified to the astonished Finn.

“Look at my wagon,” Fenoderee said proudly to Meg. “See how he fixed it ever so sweet.”

Meg cracked the door and peered at the wagon, with Finn, sidling nervously past Fenoderee, looking over her shoulder. “Is that the wagon you fixed?” she asked.

“It was the same color and had the same lettering on the side, but it was just a toy, no more than a foot long. Oh, look! Look there!” He pointed to the left rear axle. “I fixed that with a stick, a piece of a branch I broke to the right size. That's it … but it's more like a tree now. I remember snapping off that little bit on the side there, and I scratched it down with my pocketknife. It can't be, but it must be. This is the wagon. That is the little boy. But how?”

“Fairies can change size, you know,” Meg said. “Maybe his wagon can change too.”

“But I never thought…” He wouldn't admit it, but if he'd known he was repairing this monster's toy, he would have lit out for the Rookery and tucked himself into bed.

“It's easier to be a little 'un the rest of the year,” Fenoderee said. “They don't notice me so much when I'm a little 'un. But for the mowing it helps to be a big 'un. I like to mow, don't you?” And he started playing with bits of hay in the dust, making figures and shapes and looking for all the world like James when he played his self-absorbed games on the ground.

“Where do you live?” Meg asked him gently.

“Nowhere,” Fenoderee said with a sniff. “Not for a long time.” He brightened. “I get to go back soon, though. Only another hundred years, and I can go home again. I miss my mum and da, I do.”

“You can't go home for another hundred years? Why?”

Fenoderee looked glum and scraped his heels in the dirt. “I let her go.”

“Let who go?”

“The girl with the golden hair. She were took from a big stone house, and her father raged ever so, but our lord would have her, he would. He took her down below and made her stay, but she didn't want to, not one bit. She cried and cried and her gold hair went all gray, and still he wouldn't let her go, but I was sad to see the gold all gone, so I took her back up to the sunlight, and she went home to her own da and mum, and they made me go away for a thousand years and a day, and it's the day that's hardest, they do say, for it comes at the end, not the beginning.”

It took Meg a while to sort through the story and all the jumbled pronouns. “Are you just a child, then?”

She wasn't sure if he'd take offense, but he nodded and said, “My mum and da were the only ones to have a baby in the last two thousand years, full fairy, that is. My mum swore something fierce when they sent me away, but there weren't nothing she could do. I've been a brave boy, just like she said, though. Haven't I?” He looked at Meg pleadingly.

“Of course you have,” she assured him, and patted an arm that was bigger around than her waist. He had the same shape-shifting abilities as all fairies, but he was just a kid, after all. He should still be with his mother. How cruel to banish a mere child, even one who could look as fearsome as this. He had survived on his own for nine hundred years, alone, away from his own kind, thrust into a world that would at best ignore him, always mock him, at worst persecute him. Somehow, wandering, alone, he had put his rare abilities to use at harvests. And, oh, how horrible of those men to trick him, year after year!

“You can't mow this year,” she said. “You can't mow in the contest.”

“How come not? I like to mow.”

Meg hesitated. As much as her dander was up at Fenoderee's ill treatment, and for all he was no more than a little boy, he was a huge little boy with a scythe, and a fairy, to boot. What would he do if she told him he was being tricked? She wasn't sure, but she had visions of him going after his deceivers with that glinting, grinning blade. They almost deserved it, but no, not quite.

“Can't you not mow this year? For me? For Finn?”

“You're going to lose,” Finn said, and Meg shushed him and made a face, which he didn't understand at all.

“You lost last year, didn't you? And the year before that?”

“I did,” Fenoderee said, “but I tried. That's what's important, they always tell me. Mr. Smythe, he always wants his man to mow against me because I'm such a good sport, he says. I try my best, but the hay is always hard to mow in the beginning. Later, when I mow all Mr. Smythe's fields, it gets easier. Mr. Smythe says I just don't get limbered up until I've mowed an acre or two.”

If she saw Smythe again, she vowed, she would step on his toe as hard as she could.

“I've got to go or I'll be late, and everyone will be mad at me. They all smile and laugh when I mow. That's why I like to do it.” And he ran off before Meg could think of a way to tell him he was being tricked that wouldn't result in the evisceration of three men.

The Edification of the Common Man

“… O
R WE CAN FIND A FAIRY MUSHROOM CIRCLE,
and I can go in and grab one, and you'll have a rope around my waist to pull me out. Or, no, I better be on the outside, I'm stronger than you. Or we can … oh, look, pies!” Silly's already rather squeaky voice squealed up an octave as she spied a confection shop down a little alley off High Street. Though obscurely tucked away from the bustle of the main boulevard, it did a thriving business, first because it used far more sugar and butter and chocolate and marzipan and cinnamon than can possibly be good for anyone and second because it had an industrial fan in the doorway to waft its delicious scents down the alleyway to High Street. Silly made a beeline for the inviting window with tiers of pastries on display and was soon sucked in.

Silly and Dickie emerged a few minutes later, a bit poorer and a lot stickier, gobbling the last crumbs. They were lured to a floating gossamer dragon at a kite shop a few doors down. But they couldn't afford their favorite kites, so they came out again and were immediately caught by a barker at the door of a little store selling exotic pets.

“I have here in my 'umble establishment the very last of the pigmy hooded rats, denizen of the far-off minarets of the Orient. Last of his ilk, I tell you, and a steal at five pounds.”

They peered down at a perfectly ordinary dark-brown and white Norway rat washing his nose and whiskers with clever pink paws.

“Or I have the rare and exotic coracle tortoise. Most tortoises can't swim, you know, but this one lives in the flood-prone Valley of Kings, and when the river rises, he just flips on his back and floats till the water recedes. Only seven pounds, cage and swimming bowl included.”

They saw a pretty little tortoise who obviously wanted nothing whatsoever to do with his water bowl.

“I see I'm dealing with a couple of savvy youngsters,” the man said, tapping the side of his nose with one forefinger. “Tell you what, you head down the alley till you get to the empty lot where the orphanage used to be afore the fire. My cousin Carl from the Cotswolds is there with his wagons, having a show for the edification of the common man. Wonders you never did behold in all your many years, my kiddies. All for fifty pence at the gate, fifty pence each for the special exhibits. Even a couple of blasé kids-about-town might learn a thing or two there.”

This tantalizing information was enough to send Dickie and Silly farther down the narrowing alley until they found an open paved spot sprinkled with bits of crumbled masonry as though a building had once stood there and been demolished.

A tattered banner at the makeshift gate read
CARL COTTAGER'S ODDITIES AND FREAKS OF NATURE
. For the first time in her life, Silly didn't know what to do or where to look. She was filled with curiosity, an overwhelming desire to just stare, but countering that were pity and embarrassment. She felt ashamed of herself for wanting to look, ashamed of her fellow man for so eagerly seeking out society's poor unfortunates, and yet, she did not walk away. She couldn't. She and Dickie handed over their fifty pence and walked into a realm that could have been filled with denizens of the Green Hill, or the creatures from a painting by Hieronymus Bosch.

A young black-and-white heifer with an extra leg growing out of her back lowed mournfully in a dirty pen. A man in striped satin pantaloons thrust a two-headed snake at any squealing girl who passed too close. He wiggled the poor beast to make it look more menacing, but the snake hung his heads and tried to hide up the man's sleeve. A headless chicken in a cage continued to scratch at bits of grain. Strange, lifeless creatures floated in jars of formaldehyde.

“Ugh! The poor things. This is terrible!” But Silly couldn't look away. And anyway, she had spent her fifty pence, and why be half shocked when she could be wholly shocked?

She didn't know which was sadder, the helpless animal entertainers or the human ones who might be thought to have a say in the matter but in point of fact had few other options. Some were merely performers—a sword swallower, a contortionist—some obvious frauds, like the bearded lady, but others had been born with deformities so grotesque that they only felt at home with other grotesqueries. They perched on stools atop raised platforms, covered with curtains so that spectators could only get limited glimpses of them.

“Some of them look like fairies, don't they?” Silly said. And it was true. A single-armed young man's legs were fused so he looked like the one-armed, one-legged creature whom Silly had seen wielding a mace in the Midsummer War. And a woman with huge, puffed and swollen feet resembled a fairy who'd lumberingly capered behind the Seelie rade on the night Silly saw her first fairies. But that big-footed fairy had almost instantly shifted to a lissome, gazellelike creature, and that monster with the mace chose his form for its frightening appearance. Fairies could be anything they liked and laughingly change when the fancy struck them. But these poor people were trapped forever in their misshapen form and had decided that the only way to survive was to let people stare at them for money.