Guardian of the Green Hill (29 page)

Which is why there are far more alligators than there are Jenny Greenteeths. Alligators eat first and ask philosophical and epicurean questions later, so their prey rarely escapes. Gwidion, charging up to the pond, didn't see that his job was about to be done for him, only that his prey was in his reach. His long, sinewy arm reached down and plucked Meg out of danger. Jenny Greenteeth lunged and raked at the interloper with a clawed hand, catching him on the forearm, but was left with no more than a faint taste of blood. Swearing foul fairy oaths, she sank beneath the waterweeds, and in a moment, you couldn't tell either she or the pond was there.

Gwidion dragged Meg away from the bank and threw her down.

“I've worked my whole life for this, girl, and I won't let you thwart me.” He stabbed downward but slipped on the dripping algae and sprawled on top of her. For a moment no one knew where the knife was or whose arm was whose, then Meg was on her feet again, squelching away in her waterlogged sneakers, with Gwidion close on her heels.

She'd half expected fairies to spring to her defense. Wasn't she going to be their Guardian, their protector, their advocate? The least they could do was turn her pursuer around on a stray sod or befuddle him with some glamour or trap him in a—

“That's it!” she said aloud with the last spare breath she'd have for some time. Now if only she could find it. She set off running again with new purpose, if not with renewed speed.

She shed her metal as she ran. First a little silver chain with a mother-of-pearl butterfly pendant, then her watch. It was very like Meg that even with a murderous man behind her she tried to toss them in conspicuous shrubs so, should she survive, she could recover them later. She did a mental inventory as she ran in what she fervently hoped was the right direction. She felt her pockets for any unknown coins and was relieved to recall her pants were a loose pale linen with drawstrings instead of buttons and zippers. It would have been awkward to shed her pants, but she would have done it. Otherwise, the oak coppice would tear her to pieces.

The old oak of Gladysmere Forest had been wise and happy … until one day two drunken men had a bet to see who could chop through the mighty tree first. It took them three days, and in the end the oak got its revenge. One man fell to his friend's ax, then the tree crashed down on them both.

But old oaks are hard to kill. In spite and gall, new shoots sprouted from the roots, and the oak was reborn a monster thicket of saplings with a hatred for man and the metal that had been its doom. Meg and Dickie had been stuck in it once, and it was only when they shed all metal that the vengeful coppice let them go. If Meg could get Gwidion to follow her into the coppice, he wouldn't be able to escape.

Meg had been through the forest on a number of occasions, both day and night, but navigating through darkness at a run is difficult, particularly when the price of slowing down or getting lost could be death. She jogged by a jagged alder stump that looked familiar and veered to the right past a cluster of faintly glowing mushrooms.

Ahead, she heard a sound like the wind through a stand of bamboo, a grinding and cracking of wood on wood. There was no wind. The coppice, sensing their presence, was rubbing its arboreal hands together in anticipation.

“Oh-ho,” Gwidion said from much too close for comfort. “So the vixen thinks she can go to ground. Well, my pretty, I'll find you, and when I do…”

She didn't hear his threat, because a voice rasped in her ear,
Hard metal on my bones, cruel metal in my heart. Cold metal severed me, and I will sever you.
Woody hands grasped her roughly by the arms and started to tear her in opposite directions. For the first second or two, it was actually pleasant (as is the rack, they say), loosening her ligaments and stretching her muscles like a good warm-up.
I cut you. I fell you
, the coppice snarled, and pulled harder. She strained against it for all she was worth, but what is the strength of a girl to that of an oak?

Why was it attacking her? Before, once she was free of metal, it had let her go at once.
Metal, metal, biting my flesh
, the oak whispered, and began to slowly separate her arms from her body. She heard a crunch nearby—at least Gwidion had followed her. At least he'd be torn apart too. She had saved her family.

“Come out, come out, wherever you are,” Gwidion taunted in schoolyard cadence. “Ready or not, here I come.”

Her shoes! There was metal on the tips of her shoelaces. Just before serious damage was done, she kicked her shoes off and the tree released its deadly hold.

“Thank you,” she said, patting one of the slender new saplings rising from the roots before squeezing through the tight canebrake to freedom. “Olley olley oxen free,” she said to herself.

Gwidion was a pathetic sight, but she tried very hard not to feel sorry for him. He had several pieces of metal that she could see and obviously had no idea why the tree was attacking him. He stabbed at the grappling saplings with his dagger, enraging the tree further. It had hold of his arms and legs and was doing its best to quarter him, all the while lashing at his face with its most supple switches.

“That,” said a voice beside her, “is why he should never be the Guardian.” Pazhan eyed his master with a detached insouciance.

Meg jumped and ran behind a tree—a quite friendly little hickory. Pazhan's horns were still dark with Lysander's blood. But the goat didn't seem at all threatening now.

“You're … you're not going to help him?”

“If he tells me to help him, I must.” Pazhan watched his master fight being torn into pieces until Gwidion happened to see him.

“Help me, you blasted goat!” he screamed as he pulled against the gripping branches. With something like a shrug, the goat waded into the fray and began biting through wood. He tossed aside branches with his powerful horns until Gwidion could struggle through the coppice. The tree whacked him one last parting shot to the rump and rasped,
No metal, never metal. He wants to fell the sapling, but the sapling is strong. Unroot yourself, sprout!

Taking this (rightly) as a message to herself, Meg ran again, slowly, jarring with each stride.

“I can't keep up. Stay with her!” Gwidion ordered his goat, and Meg heard the thud of hooves in the dirt grow closer.

“He doesn't think about what he says,” Pazhan pointed out when they were beyond Gwidion's sight. He trotted easily beside her, and after a while without violence, Meg gave up trying to elude him. “Another reason he oughtn't be Guardian. If he tells me to kill you, I must. Be ready for that.”

She slowed to a walk. “Whose side are you on?”

“Side? Are there sides in this? I am a fairy, but I have served Thomas men for seventeen generations.”

“You're a fairy?”

“Do goats you know talk?”

“Well … I thought…”

“A brownie, like your own family brownie, and bound to serve Thomas men until the day one sets me free.”

“Which he won't do, I suppose.”

“Don't be so sure about that,” said the goat with a canny wink. “Now, follow me.”

“Why should I?”

“I serve now because I must, but when my servitude ends, I will be a free fairy once more … and mayhap I am tired of being ruled by Thomas men. I wouldn't wish it on others of my kind. Look here. Step in that.”

Meg skidded to a halt before a ring of pale mushrooms. “Are you kidding? You
are
on his side! I know what will happen if I step inside a fairy circle.”

“Aye, good, then you also know what will happen when he steps in to follow you. He'll be trapped—”

“Along with me, and he'll kill me.”

“He'll certainly try, but I've led the wild dances in a fairy circle, I've captured mortal girls to be my partner, and I tell you that anyone'd be hard-pressed to catch their breath or collect their thoughts once inside. One fairy will grab your hands, another will take hold of his, and you'll be whirled into madness until they release you.”

“Which might not be for a hundred years,” she said. “No thanks.”

“I give you my oath, when the sun is about to rise, I will free you both, and you can run to the Green Hill to make your declaration. It will feel like just a few moments to you, lost in your dance.”

I can't run anymore, Meg thought. I have to trust him. If I can see my way to dawn, anything might happen.

She crouched just outside the mushroom ring, rubbing her ankle as though she'd twisted it. This, she thought, is the stupidest thing I've ever done.

Gwidion crashed through the trees, emerging like the wild man of Borneo, with his hair disheveled and bloody welts across his face and arms.

“Got you!” he said, and lunged at her. Meg let herself fall backward, expecting at any moment to feel the knife.

But cool hands gathered her up and draped her with garlands, laughing and exclaiming at her free hair and bare feet, the water-weeds on her skin and the wild look in her eyes. “You're one of us already,” said a girl her own age with flowing brown locks and bare feet beneath short skirts that appeared to be made of lacy leaf skeletons.

“Dance with us and be free,” said another, whose own skin seemed to be dappled with duckweed.

“But there's someone after me,” she said, or tried to say, as the surprisingly strong hands pulled her into what looked like a grassy meadow, as close-cropped as a croquet lawn and lit with will-o'-the-wisps. She couldn't see any distinct edges. Was all of this inside the mushroom circle, then? Fairy space must work as strangely as fairy time.

And look there—Gwidion, caught by three other little girls, who pulled at his hands and clothes until he was trotting in an awkward hopping dance. One of them plucked his knife and tossed it away. It promptly disappeared outside the ring … though Meg couldn't see the mushrooms anymore.

Tiny butterfly fairies, just a bit bigger than the moth pixie Finn had seen, cavorted on the turf under Gwidion's feet. “Unhand me!” he said, and tried to stomp on the little fairies. They shrilled screaming giggles of delight and danced just out of reach.

With the last of his strength and free will, Gwidion lurched across the meadow toward Meg, dragging the laughing fairy girls behind him. “This is your doing, vixen. When I catch you…” But their partners pulled them apart, and some unseen piper struck up a lively air.

This was entirely different from the court ball under the Green Hill. These girls were wild maenads, stomping their bare feet and flinging their locks about with abandon. Meg fought them at first on general principle, but it wasn't long before she forgot Gwidion, forgot the terrible danger before her, the terrible tragedy behind her, and gave herself up to the dance. It was delicious to be moving her limbs and tossing her head. Even when Gwidion passed close by, burdened by his lively fairy partners, she wasn't afraid. She knew dimly, like a childhood memory, that her legs were aching and sore, that she was so sleepy she was about to drop, but she danced on.

Then, worse than the pain and shock and confusion of a newborn drawing his first breath to yowl his protest at all the world, Meg was dragged out of that happy dream. Hard goat horns butted her backside, shoving her from that merry musical place of ecstatic peace to the dark, dangerous real world. No, not utterly dark. To the east rose the faintest glow that presages dawn. She gasped, then flinched at the rawness of the air, so unlike the fairy air that had floated over her lungs like soothing balm.

“Go, at once. You just have time,” Pazhan said, giving her another butt. “I have to get my master out now, but I'll delay him long enough for you to get to the hill.”

She didn't stop to wonder why Pazhan had to get Gwidion out … after all, Gwidion hadn't had time to issue an order. Perhaps the goat had a scheme of his own.

Her legs were rubbery, her mind a jelly. Part of her was still stuck in that wild whirling dance, and as for the rest of her, it moved leadenly. She staggered a step or two before she got her bearings, then ran off with a strange gait that consisted of falling forward and catching herself just in time with one leg, then repeating the process with the other.

She crashed through the blackberry thorns, and when she emerged on the other side, her skin was a mess of her own blood and sweet blackberry blood. She snapped off a handful of canes, pricking her palms deeply.

“Stop her!” came a voice from the woods as she laboriously climbed and staggered and fell her way up the hill.

“Fool,” said the goat, trotting to her side. “He didn't say when to stop you, or where.” Meg ignored him, saving all her concentration for putting one foot, then one knee, in front of the other. “Will right here do for you? A little higher?” Meg was locomoting by grabbing handfuls of sod and hauling herself up to the summit inches at a time. “Here, then? Okay, consider yourself stopped.” And the goat sat down on his haunches to see what would unfold.

Meg was struck with an unaccountable stage fright. She was tongue-tied. Why hadn't Phyllida told her what to say? Declare her intentions, she'd said, no magic spell or ritual words needed … but this was a moment of such gravity, Meg didn't want to bungle it, and she was suddenly sure she would.

“I…,” she began, then used the excuse that it wasn't quite precisely sunrise to buy herself a bit more time to think what to say.

Then Gwidion pushed his way through the thorns, and it was too late for more thought.

“I am the…,” she started to say, forcing herself to sound confident, then the knife flew point over hilt and hit Meg in the chest. Luckily she was struck only with the heavy double-goat pommel, but still it hurt enough to silence her momentarily. She turned to run again, but Gwidion tackled her from behind, knocking the wind out of her as she fell. She rolled to her back and kicked out at him, but he caught her ankles in one hand, as easily as you'd catch a baby's to change its diaper, and pinned her to the ground with his body. That alone was almost as unpleasant as her fear of imminent death, for he smelled nastily of sweat and turpentine and goat, though in all fairness Meg herself smelled of sweat and fear and stagnant water. She thrashed at him with the blackberry brambles but he just laughed and tore them out of her hands.