Guardian of the Green Hill (20 page)

Meg's heart sank, but she laid a hand on Phyllida's arm. “Don't worry, you'll be able to do it. I believe in you.”

It was all Phyllida could do to keep from breaking down. If only she could tell Meg, encourage her to start looking for James herself. But no—by tradition, it must come entirely from Meg, unprompted. Phyllida managed to control herself just long enough to say, “Go wait for me in the garden kitchen, there's a dear. I want to look up one more thing.” Only when Meg was safely gone did the tears fall.

I'm a horrible old woman, she thought bitterly. I deserve to die alone, with no heir. It's wrong, wrong, wrong! She trusts me. She loves me. James is imprisoned under the Green Hill, waiting for us to rescue him, and because I keep to the old ways and stay mum and fool Meg, no help is coming. Can't I at least encourage Meg to look for him herself?

The whispered voice of Angharad, the first Guardian, came to her.
That is not the way. You must test her as I was tested, as you were tested. The life of a Guardian is not easy.

Phyllida scowled at the voice in her head. Bloody right it's not easy, she thought. But because I love her, I want to smooth the way for her. Most of all, I want to keep her trust. I was lucky. I didn't find out the truth until my mother was gone. I never knew that she was forbidden to seek Bran, my father, her husband. And yes, I hated her at first for deceiving me … but I couldn't hate her long. She had to pretend to seek him, waiting all the while for me to realize the test was mine. She died without her love. What would I be without my Lysander? I would lay myself down and never rise again.

With heavy steps, she followed Meg downstairs.

Everyone but Rowan was gathered in the garden kitchen, that bright, cheery place where the line between growing food and eating food was blurred. Silly, with the green fairy still wrapped around her throat and refusing to look at anyone, was animatedly telling Lysander about their adventures.

“And he tried to kill me, but I got away, and then when he almost caught me again, Meg saved me. Oh, you should have seen her!”

She summarized for Phyllida's benefit, then told them both about the bunyip. “And he smelled just horrible, like rotten meat and swamp gas, but he was so polite. He even offered to eat someone for Meg.”

“I didn't let him, though,” Meg said hastily. She pulled the pebble out of her pocket. “He gave me this and said he had been in the Dreamtime, though I didn't wake him up exactly. Did I bring the bunyip back into the world from wherever he was? I didn't mean to do that. If he eats people, I think he should go back to the Dreamtime.”

“I still don't know what it's all about,” Phyllida said. “Bran said the currents run all through the world, like the Cherokee spirit, so maybe … I just don't know.” Her head was starting to ache, and she had other, more pressing worries. The things that sought Meg out didn't want to hurt her, quite the contrary, so they could be set aside for the time being. “I'll have to ask Bran when he's feeling better.”

“Where is he?” Meg asked, guilty that in the day's excitement she'd forgotten about him as well as James for a while.

“Oh, Dr. Homunculus came and gave him a sleeping draught. He wouldn't take it, of course. We had to sneak it into his drink. You know him. He said he had wood to chop and tried to get up with blood running down his chest.”

“It's my fault,” Meg tried to say, but Lysander hushed her.

“It's no one's fault but his own, child. If he'd be sensible and rest—”

“Sounds like someone I know,” Phyllida said wryly, looking at her husband with eyes full of worry and love. “You've been working too hard of late. I should slip
you
something.”

Lysander chuckled. “That's why I make my own drinks, woman! I've long suspected you of trying to drug me.”

Meg saw him take Phyllida's hand under the table. It was true, he had been working too hard. Her fault as well, no doubt. She could see his other hand tremble as it brought a spoonful of mutton and barley soup to his mouth, and he looked pale and tired. They were so old, she realized, wondering why she'd never seen it before. Phyllida's skin looked paper-thin, and for all she was vigorous now, there would come a time one day when she was not. She seemed distracted, almost flighty, depressed and nervous.

They gossiped for a while about events at the festival, and Meg won high praise from the Ashes for saving Fenoderee from another year of servitude. “I should have done something about it myself,” Phyllida admitted. Another failing, she thought. If I cannot pass on my responsibilities to another soon …

Then Meg remembered what had happened the night before, forgotten in her concern for James. “Just before we saw James at the Green Hill last night, we saw something else. It was a woman. I thought it was Moll at first, but now I'm sure it wasn't. She wore a hooded cloak, and she knelt by a stream. Oh, she made the most terrible sounds, like wolves and wildcats and weeping. She had bright red eyes and nothing else on her face. Nothing, no nose, no mouth. And she was washing—” She heard Phyllida gasp, and Lysander went limp against his chair. “What? What's wrong? Who is she?”

Weakly, Phyllida asked, “What was she washing? Could you see?”

Meg was alarmed now. Phyllida looked terrified, Lysander like he was about to faint. “That was the strangest thing. I'm pretty sure she was washing the shirt you gave me, the pretty white one with the silver stitching. It looked like it anyway, only it had blood on it. I decided I didn't want to paint, so I gave it to Rowan. He was wearing it earlier today. I saw him in it before we went to the festival, so it couldn't be the same shirt.”

Phyllida and Lysander exchanged looks and made an obvious effort to pull themselves together. But Meg could see from the tension in Phyllida's arm that her grip on her husband's hand under the table was painfully tight.

“What does it mean?” Meg asked.

“Oh, oh, nothing really,” Phyllida choked out. “Just a washerwoman fairy. Not very common.”

“That's it,” Lysander said with the most ghastly attempt at laughter Meg had ever heard. “She probably saw all the paint splashed on it and tried to wash it off. Nothing a fairy hates more than a mess. Well, you young uns can fend for yourselves for the rest of supper, eh? My lady and I have work to do.” He pushed himself up on his gnarled cane and all but dragged Phyllida to her feet.

“Come on, dear girl,” he said softly. “Let's leave youth to its pleasures.”

The children looked at each other, confused. All except for Dickie, who looked almost as frightened and shocked as the Ashes.

“You saw a banshee,” he said when they left.

They'd all heard the term but didn't know exactly what it meant.

“They're connected to a particular family, like a brownie,” Dickie went on, speaking evenly like he was giving a lesson. “Banshees are mourners. They foretell when a member of that family is going to die. They wash the clothes of the doomed. Whose shirt did you say she was washing?”

“Well, Phyllida's, I guess. She gave it to me, though, and I gave it to Rowan.” Her eyes widened in understanding. “Do you mean one of us is going to die?”

Dickie nodded.

Silly gasped, and even the little fairy peeked his head out. Finn didn't know where to look. It seemed like a private family moment, and he wasn't needed. All the same, he had to be there. Meg could die? It wasn't possible.

Meg swallowed hard. “Which one of us, then? It could be any one of us three, right?” Please, not me, she thought, then realized that the alternatives were only slightly less terrible. Still,
not me, not me
, her instinct cried out.

“Well…,” Dickie began, then faltered. He felt like he was pronouncing a death sentence himself, as if he personally were condemning one of them. Meg, Silly, and Finn all leaned toward him anxiously. “I think … I'm not sure, but I think that it means whoever actually owns the shirt. Phyllida gave you the shirt to use, but it's still her shirt, right? You were borrowing it and would have returned it to her when you went back to Arcadia. I think the banshee means that Phyllida is going to die.” Feeling like an executioner, he put his head down on his folded arms.

Silly, who shunned tears, burst into them now, and even Finn felt his eyes get heavy and warm in a way that didn't shame him like yesterday's tears had. Only Meg remained stone-faced. She rose and said, “If you'll excuse me,” and slipped out of the room.

She had to be alone; she had to think. She headed for the wardrobe in the spare room with the secret door in the back—a passage not to Narnia but to a narrow stone staircase leading to the Rookery roof. The young birds, who hadn't seen her for a while, fluttered their sleek ebony wings when she walked out, but the wise old rooks with gray in their feathers merely eyed her cannily and turned their beaks back toward the declining sun. She perched on the parapet and let her legs dangle off the edge. She'd never been brave enough to do that before, but having just cheated death, as it were, she felt no fear in her lofty perch.

She stared unseeing at the rolling hills, the dry stone walls, the woods. “If Phyllida dies … when Phyllida dies…,” she said aloud, “I can't. I don't want to.” She closed her eyes and swayed on the parapet. “I have to,” she said at last, firmly. She felt trapped, desperate, like the vast and limitless life that once stretched before her had closed suddenly to a pinhole, through which she could see a tiny, ordered, predictable existence. No, not entirely predictable. Fairies can never be predictable. But every other possibility was closed to her. Career, travel,… love? Yes, maybe even love, for how many men would choose to be consort to the Guardian of the Green Hill? Any man she loved would be trapped, just like she was.

“But I don't have a choice,” she said aloud.

“Of course you have a choice,” said a voice behind her.

She almost fell off the roof. The brownie leaned against a long, stiff-bristled brush, examining her. He'd evidently been scrubbing up the crow muck, and his square bare feet were white with the powder of dried droppings.

“You could turn tail now. You could jump off the roof into the topiary. Or you could do what you want.”

“What I want?”

“Do you even know what you want?”

“No.” Of course not.

“Then why do you complain because someone gives you a direction? You have nothing better to do.” He shoved the pushbroom into a crusted pile of guano.

“But I don't want someone else to decide what I'm going to do with the rest of my life. I want to decide for myself.”

“So decide.”

“It's not that easy. Phyllida is … is going to…” Finally the sniffles started, but she fought them back. “Phyllida is going to die. The banshee said so.”

“She did, did she?” he snorted. “Overdramatic, that one. And so we get another Lady, another Guardian.”

“And it has to be me. There's no one else.”

“That sister of yourn?”

“Silly?” She almost managed a smile. “No … maybe someday, but not yet. Oh, why does this have to happen?”

“Everyone dies.”

“But why now?”

“Mighty inconvenient for you, dearie, ain't it? Powerful selfish of someone to up and die just when it suits you least.”

“I didn't mean that. It's just…” Now she felt even more terrible. Of course it was worse for Phyllida. “And if there's no one to follow her when she goes, no next Guardian … I have to do it. But it's so hard! Why does it have to be me?”

“Who must do the hard things? She who can.” He gave a last sweep and vanished, broom and all.

“She who can,” Meg repeated in a whisper. That settled it. She changed her bedraggled clothes in her room and went downstairs to find Phyllida, to tell her unequivocally that she would accept her role as heir. If she had any misgivings, she would hide them; if she had any regrets later, she would ignore them.

Phyllida and Lysander joined them in the parlor, looking red-eyed but composed. They never stopped touching each other, not for a second. When Phyllida let go of his hand to reach for her glass of cordial, the other hand automatically found a place on his knee. When Lysander lit his pipe, he leaned his shoulder into hers.

Meg had assumed the Ashes would break the news to them, the news they already knew, but no one broached the subject. Probably the sad faces they saw when they walked in the door told them it was no secret. They talked a bit more about the mowing festival and asked after Rowan, who still hadn't put in an appearance. They chuckled at his outlandish attire and wondered with the others what he was up to.

Then Meg stood. She felt as if she should make a formal speech and was more nervous even than when she had climbed the Green Hill on Midsummer Night. This was a promise to someone she loved. It was more than a night of bravery, it was a lifetime of bravery of a totally different kind.

“Phyllida, Lysander, I've decided I will be the next Guardian.”

Silly, not one to allow a moment of stunned silence even when it was appropriate, shrieked, “Hooray! Now we can stay! Or I can come back to visit you, anyway. I was sure once we went home we would never be allowed back again, especially not if Mom heard what's been happening. Now you get to stay here forever and ever, Meg. You're so lucky! I almost wish it was me.” Even she was wise enough to know there might be drawbacks—labor, responsibility, heartbreak. As sister of the Guardian, she would have all the privileges with none of the onerous duties.

Dickie whispered, “Congratulations,” in a way that sounded more like a question and laid a hand fleetingly on her arm. Finn didn't say anything. Around them all loomed Death, mocking and imminent.

Relief now mingled with Phyllida's sorrow. “If you mean it, if you truly are sure, then you must go to the Green Hill at daybreak and declare it. But only if you are certain, my own Meg. Once you have made your intentions known to the Green Hill, there's no going back. Though you may hate it, and hate me for it, you'll be bound for all your life.”