Guardian of the Green Hill (32 page)

One separated himself from the horde, evidently the small gentleman Wooster had mentioned. He was a head shorter than Meg, with the torso of a diminutive, perfectly proportioned human male and legs coated in woolly curling hair with flowers woven into it. His feet were pointed goat's hooves. Horn buds peeked from the brown curls of his head. He crept up to Meg and the others, looking frequently over his shoulder at a pack of commingled satyrs and centaurs who urged him on with encouraging gestures.

“Um … ahem … I … that is to say we…”

With great difficulty, Meg suppressed a smile. It was a relief to encounter someone more nervous than she was.

“Go on,” she said gently.

“You spoke to me!” He looked over his shoulder. “She spoke to me!” There was a smattering of applause and a few hoots.

“Of course I did. May I help you?”

The faun—for indeed that's what he was—closed his eyes, turned his head heavenward for a moment, and exploded into what was evidently a rehearsed speech.

“Oh, most gracious and benevolent benefactress, we hail you and honor you and thank you for doing the great deed that freed us from our assorted prisons. You have awakened the sleeping, unchained the bound, welcomed the banished. You have brought us back into this world! Ever after, you will be honored among us. We come to offer you our fealty and obedience. At least”—and this part was evidently not rehearsed, and was said in an undertone too low for the crowd to hear—“I will be obedient, though there's more than one in this motley assembly would be better left in irons. Don't turn your back on them's my advice.” His voice rose once again. “Before we scatter to the four corners of our earth, though I am told now that the earth is round, or rather spherical, which it wasn't in our day, we would make our obeisance and genuflections before you and tell you this: from today forward, we consider you our Guardian and guide in this strange new world that has gone on so long without us. Already we see things to astound and dismay us, and we will need your help to find our place.” To Meg's own astonishment and dismay, he lowered himself to groveling prostration at her feet, and behind him all the others bowed or curtseyed or kowtowed or salaamed or made some other form of courteous submission.

They held their awkward positions, waiting.

“Say something,” Phyllida prompted.

Meg took a step forward, almost treading on the faun's outstretched hands. She looked over the assembly. What had she done? Centaurs loose upon the world? Minotaurs? Valkyries? They certainly didn't look safe. Even the unicorns weren't quite what she'd imagined. They looked like they would rather gore a knight than lay their heads quietly in a maiden's lap.

Who must do the hard things? Well, I guess that would be me, she thought with resignation.

She saw the faun rolling his eyes up at her from the ground at her feet. “Psst … the Nemean lion is hungry, and the minotaurs have short attention spans.”

She took a deep breath, let it out, tried again, and said as loudly as she could, “Thank you.”

Luckily she didn't have anything else to say, because the tennis courts erupted in cheers and yowls and roars and bellows and hisses and a clanging of swords on shields. The spell of reticence was broken, and they swarmed around Meg and the others. There were so many beasts and half beasts and quarter beasts that Dickie started to sneeze. Meg scooped up James lest he be trampled. They crowded and pressed and nuzzled the family and pumped their hands and rubbed against their legs and gave them gifts. Meg accumulated a great store of innocuous-looking pebbles that were said to do wonders, but by the time the day was over, she'd forgotten what most of them did. They wound up in a cigar box.

Near evening most of the creatures were gone. The fairies too had packed up their kits and trooped back to the Green Hill. The lawn had been torn to pieces by the revelers, and there was a fine mess of centaur dung for the gardeners to clean up the following day (though they found it made excellent fertilizer).

Lysander was lowered into the earth at sunset, calmly and without further ceremony, with only villagers and servants in attendance, and Phyllida retired to her room to be alone with her memories. Rowan took up Lysander's ax and set to work chopping down his ash tree.

At long last, Meg could drag herself upstairs to the blessed solitude of her room. As soon as the door was shut, she peeled off her clothes, tossing them into a careless pile. They were too dirty to salvage. She wanted to bathe but was too sleepy, and after a moment's hesitation, flung her grimy self into bed, telling herself she'd personally wash the sheets tomorrow to save the maids any trouble.

But she couldn't sleep. There was a smell.

She tried to ignore it. Whatever it is, I'll deal with it in the morning, she thought, and put the sheet over her nose. But the smell easily filtered through the fine linen. She covered her head with the pillow and still couldn't escape it.

At last, with an exasperated groan, she dragged herself out of bed and sniffed around until she found the source—not the drains, as she'd suspected, but under the bed.

“Oh, of course, the Bake-Neko present. I guess the wrapping is rotting nicely.” She got on her hands and knees and pulled the box from under the bed. A wave of bluebottles rose and settled irritably against the window, and blackbeetles fled in rustling scurries.

“Ugh,” she said. “Whatever's in here can wait.” She took it to the window and was about to balance it on the outside sill, not really caring if it fell to the rosebushes below, when the desiccated and mostly consumed remains fell open, revealing what looked like a small nut inside. She crouched down on her knees and held the box to the moonlight.

It was a walnut, carved like an ivory puzzle ball with intricate layers of dragons and chrysanthemums in miniature. Inside she could just see something moving. She pressed one eye to the nut. It was a pale, translucent maggot.

“Ew,” she said, though she didn't really mind maggots. She tried to shake it out onto the carcass. “Go back and finish eating.”

“The maggot is your present, ignorant infant,” purred a voice from across the room. The Bake-Neko strolled out of her closet, his twin tails swishing.

Meg stood quickly and pulled a sheet off her bed.

“The protuberances and declivities of your species don't interest me. Or perhaps you hide your ungainly hairless body in natural shame, for beside lovely me, what an unsightly creature you are. Still, as there must be admirers and admirees, I do not begrudge you your existence.”

“I thought you were going back to Japan … I mean, Nippon.”

“I was, but a fit of weariness overcame me and I settled down for a nap in your antechamber.” He yawned, covering his mouth with a velvet paw. “That treasure you hold so carelessly, barbarian, is a grub of Izanami, our lady of the underworld.”

“What does he do?”

“Do? Must a gift of the gods do anything? That's like asking if precious I do anything. I exist. It is sufficient.”

Meg peered at her grub again suspiciously.

“Well, I suppose it does
something
, though why anyone would want to talk to the dead is beyond me. Still, to each his tastes. Farewell, oh, blissfully ignorant child. When you compose songs and sagas in my honor, please try to mention my otherworldly beauty. And my softness. And the piquant curl of my whiskers.” He sauntered out the door, popping his head back in once to add, “And of course the luxurious symphony of my purr.”

As soon as he left, Meg ran to Phyllida's room. She pounded on the door until Phyllida emerged in a white wrapper and pink cashmere shawl with curling papers in her hair.

“Here,” Meg said, placing nut and grub into her hand.

“What is it?”

“Put it to your ear. His voice is very low.”

Puzzled, Phyllida listened, while Meg watched her expectantly, almost dancing on her tiptoes.

“Hello, my love,” Lysander's voice said through the grub's mouth.

“Oh!” was all Phyllida could say, and she gently closed the door on Meg.

*   *   *

Now, of course, Meg still couldn't sleep. There was one thing left to do, the hardest of them all. Mommy, I'm not coming back. Mommy, I've released things into the world, terrible, wonderful things, and I'm responsible for them, and for the fairies too. Mommy, I'm scared. I need your help. Mommy … Mommy …

She took out an ivory sheet of parchment and an old-fashioned fountain pen from the escritoire at her bedside.

Dear Mommy
, she wrote, but the rest was all inkblots and teardrops.

Acknowledgments

All of my thanks to my first editor, the gracious, supportive, fiendishly clever Reka Simonsen, and to my second marvelous editor, Noa Wheeler, who fearlessly stepped into the breach. Like most writers it took me a while to warm up to the idea of editing, but these pros made it a pleasure. Thanks also to publisher Laura Godwin, who read the Omnibus and survived, and to Sarah Dotts Barley for all her help and good cheer.

Since you
do
judge a book by its cover, I would like to express my admiration for the two artists who have contributed to the Green Hill books. David Wyatt did the cover of
Under the Green Hill,
and line illustrations for both books, and Jon Foster did the incredible cover you now hold in your hand. Some people think storytellers are magicians; well, artists are just as magical, and I'm pretty sure the fairies have whispered a few secrets to these two gentlemen.

Thanks to Babaloo for being my first reader and best friend, and to Marla for being my second reader and other best friend. And deepest appreciation to The Boy With Many Names for taking long naps, without which this book would not have been possible.

Love and respect to E.N., G.M.F., A.T., J.A., M.W., and the gang. I couldn't have done it without you.

But most of all, thank you. I wrote this for you. I hope you enjoy it.

 

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Text copyright © 2011 by Laura L. Sullivan

Interior illustrations copyright © 2011 by David Wyatt

All rights reserved.

Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data

Sullivan, Laura L.

Guardian of the Green Hill / Laura L. Sullivan ; [illustrations by David Wyatt].—1st ed.

p.       cm.

Sequel to: Under the Green Hill.

ISBN 978-0-8050-8985-1

[1.  Supernatural—Fiction.   2.  Fairies—Fiction.   3.  Brothers and sisters—Fiction.   4.  Superstition—Fiction.   5.  England—Fiction.]   I.  Wyatt, David, ill.   II.  Title.

PZ7.S9527Gu 2011    [Fic]—dc22        2010029231

First Edition—2011

eISBN 978-1-4299-7565-0