Revenant Eve (13 page)

On the first of May, the kids were granted a half-holiday. James had planned to go fishing and offered to take the girls along if they brought a hamper of food.

Aunt Kittredge saw them off after issuing scolding reminders to Cassandra and James to watch out for Diana, and, in a determinedly nicer tone, tucking all kinds of “dears” into it, reminding Aurélie to stay out of the sun. “It’s in your best interest, as I am certain your dear mother would agree, once we hear from her.”

Aurélie bobbed a curtsey, uttering her French-accented thanks, while her gaze kept stealing toward the garden border.

At last they were released, Aurélie and Cassandra carrying the hamper between them.

James led them to the old garden gate. When I say “old,” I mean ancient, far older than the house. The stones were covered with moss that didn’t quite hide the faint indentations of Celtic knotwork, half-hidden by a tangle of climbing roses whose blood-red hue reminded me of Dobrenica. Sorrow—regret—worry about Alec suffused me, as I watched Diana brush her fingers over the dark green mossy indentations.

“Ugh!” Cassandra slapped her sister’s hand away. “You needn’t get filthy before we’ve gone ten paces.”

They passed through the gate and walked on. James led them over the top of an old hill, so thick with tangled growth that little sunlight penetrated. The air was cool and still. Diana fretted about branches hitting her face and thistles in her stockings.

“You wanted to come,” Cassandra said. “I told you that you should remain in the nursery, like the baby you are.”

“I’m not a baby. I cannot see them.”

“Of course you can see them. Anybody can. Stop putting on airs to be interesting, or we shan’t bring you again.”

James ran ahead. A few moments later, his glad shout ended the squabble. “Here!”

He pointed with pride of discovery to a grassy bank under the shade of a willow. “Oh, capital!” Cassandra cried, and took charge of spreading out the cloth and unpacking the hamper. She handed plates to Aurélie to set out, and put Diana in charge of unfolding the cloth wrappings from the food, which short-sighted Diana was able to do.

James put together his fishing rod and tramped off to the stream in search of a good spot to sit.

Aurélie carried James’s share of the lunch to him, then rejoined the sisters. For a while, all was quiet as they chose among the cold meats, cheese, bread, and tartlets that had been packed up for them. The food and the cool shade revived them.

After they’d eaten, Cassandra volunteered to repack the hamper before ants could discover it. Aurélie carried the pitcher down to the stream to fill with water, and Diana wandered around from sun splash to shadow, bent over as she examined dainty violet sprigs of bellflower, blush pink dog roses, and yellow iris along the stream bank.

Aurélie kept glancing in one direction as she helped put away the leftover food. When they were done, she said, “Who else shares this wood?”

James, who had pretty much ignored the girls thus far, gave a guffaw. “The fairies!”

Cassandra heaved a loud sigh. “Do not be a simpleton, James. You
know
how angry Mama will be if Diana starts prating of that nonsense again.”

James turned his head. “Diana, you are old enough to know that talk of fairies is a taradiddle, are you not?”

Diana tossed her head in a fair assumption of her sister’s gesture. “
I
know better than to talk about fairies to Mama.”

Cassandra turned a sour look James’s way. “Very well. But I don’t see
why you need mention them at all.” She then said to Aurélie, “This is our land. Though sometimes the farm children will come up here. Why, did you hear them? You have very quick ears if you did, for I’ve heard nothing except birds scolding.”

“The singing,” Aurélie said. “And a fiddle.”

“There’s no singing,” Cassandra stated. “Or a fiddle. It has to be birds.”

“Might I go a little ways down that path, just to see?”

“I want to go with her,” Diana said.

“Now look what you’ve done,” Cassandra said crossly to Aurélie. “She’ll be pouting about it forever.”

James called, “Recollect we’ve an equally long walk back.”

“And I think it’s going to rain,” Cassandra added, looking around. “The air smells of thunder.”

“I was used to walk much longer,” Aurélie said. “I don’t mind at all.”

Cassandra looked up at the treetops and sighed. “If you must. But stay within hearing distance, and be quick about it.” She turned fiercely on her sister. “And
you
help me to pack the rug.”

“
Bon
,” Aurélie said happily and scampered down the path.

All I heard were her steps on the path and the quiet hiss and rustle of her skirts as she pushed past long, tangled grasses and wildflowers. For a time she plunged deeper into the blue-green shadows of the wood, making me wonder if she was going to get herself lost, until splashes of golden sunlight appeared between the tree trunks.

Aurélie slowed when we reached an enormous oak that bordered on a sun dappled dell, the mighty over-arching branches pleached with those of a hawthorn in lacey bloom across the dell to the left; and to the right, the square-cracked, knobby branches of an ancient ash. Sunlight shafted down through those branches onto a circle of tall green grass and wildflowers, about which butterflies dipped and flickered.

Aurélie halted at the verge, gazing in wonder at betony and bluebells, columbine and loosestrife, muskmellow and snapdragon, just to name a few—an impossibility of wildflowers.

Then she said to the empty dell, “Who are you?”

Between one blink and another (not that I had eyes for blinking) there They were.

Shelley’s lines come close to the shock of their glorious appearance, limned in golden shafts. I heard the music at last, an elusive, compelling melody.

Aurélie clapped her hands in delight as the magnificent winged chargers and their airy chariot descended gently from the sky, large as life, ethereally glowing.

The chariot touched down to the grass so lightly that no flowers bent, no grass was crushed. The horses tossed their heads, manes rippling, and sparks flew where they pawed the ground, though not a blade of grass stirred: they were lighter than thistledown.

From the chariot stepped a tall woman whose moonbeam hair flowed in silken rivers to her heels. Her gown floated about her, swirling wisps of smoke and starlight. Next to her, a male who made Tolkien’s Legolas look coarse and uncouth by comparison, his clothing as unabashedly tight and revealing as hers, except for honest-to-Romantic Poets ruffled shirt, with lace cuffs to his knuckles. His hair, the color of flame, was almost as long as hers. I swallowed hard and pulled my gaze away with a pop I could practically feel.

“Welcome!” Princess Moonbeam said, lifting her hands in a gesture of benevolent invitation. Her eyes glowed. Really glowed, like gems with sparks of fire in their depths, shifting to different shades as she moved: sapphire, emerald, topaz.

Her skirts flared and settled as from the trees danced a host of figures nearly as beautiful as she. The melody shifted up a half step, then repeated its enthralling pattern, livelier than Pachelbel’s
Canon in D
, more captivating than Ravel’s
Bolero
. From the shadows emerged the
musicians playing on wind instruments of gold, and silver hammers on crystal, ringing the sweet sound of chimes.

The figures were an amazing variety, among them dryads with bark skin and leaves for hair, others more like the moonbeam and flame couple, as they formed in circles and began to dance.

Like a flight of butterflies released, a troupe of little girls appeared, and took hands to ring Aurélie. They danced around her three times, then broke their ring, two girls reaching. She took their hands and joined the circle to dance with them, her husky squawk of a laugh charming among their giggles like tinkling chimes.

Princess Moonbeam walked straight up to me.

“Welcome to our dancing dell. Please join us.”

“You mean, you can see me?” I asked.

“See you!” Her laughter was as sweet as the silver hammers on glass. “Why should I not?”

I looked down, and there I was! I stuck out my sandaled foot. There was my chipped toenail polish. Above that, my favorite blue skirt, swinging at my knees. I smoothed my hands down the embroidered linen blouse I’d bought at Madame Celine’s exclusive shop in Riev, and suppressed the desire to give a whoop of pleasure.

“Join me,” Princess Moonbeam said with another of those inviting gestures, “in refreshment. You must be hungry, so very long separated spirit from flesh.”

She indicated a table festooned with fantastic flowers, and set with plate after plate of mouth-watering delicacies, but the first thing on my mind was Alec.

“Very long?” I asked, my pleasure chilling. “How long?”

“Come. Eat and drink. We can discourse at our leisure, whilst the young disport in play.”

I looked into her lovely topaz eyes, her joyful smile, and said slowly, “Okay, I’m trying to catch up as fast as I can, here, but one thing I do remember. If you people—beings—are who I think you are, then the food thing might not be a great idea.”

“Well spoken.” Her laughter was surprised, intimate. “You are quite
welcome to partake, but I bow to your caution. It is always wise to step warily when one is in new country.”

“Well, this country is not new to me, but this time is. If the past can be new. And this situation. The Kittredge family doesn’t seem to know about you. Why are you here?”

She gestured. “This is a traditional dancing dell. The wood is ours and has been, though your folk occasionally come through.”

“So you don’t interact with the Kittredges?”

“Is that who lives in the barren domicile? They took down the old dwelling, which was filled with charms,” she said, “and built that new shell. The people who passed out of life were long our friends. You know the dwelling was once called Undrentide.”

“Undrentide? I was told that the house is called Undertree. Or maybe ‘Undertree’ is the modern form?”

She laughed softly. “
Undrentide
means
midday
. It is always midday here.”

She seemed unthreatening enough, and I was thrilled to be
me
again, that is, visible to someone else. “May I get back to my question? How long have I been away from my time? Do you know?”

She spread her pretty hands. “What is time?”

“To you, I have no idea. But my life is governed by the ticking of the clock,” I said. “I thought my coming to the past like this meant I’d be restored to the same moment I left. So how long have I been gone? Unless,” I added carefully, “this is all some kind of glamour thing, and none of it is real. One of my favorite books when I was growing up was Elizabeth Marie Pope’s
Perilous Gard
.”

Princess Moonbeam flashed her hand up in the fencer’s acknowledgment of a hit. “You are discerning. With your leave, we shall dispense with the glory.”

An eye blink—this time I really could blink my eyes—and the guy was now short and round, with a cap of wavy nut-brown hair. He wore homespun clothes of the sort seen on common Western European folk of that period, his manner no longer the dangerous Prince of Air and
Darkness. He took up a fiddle, and joined the musicians now circling the dancing kids.

The music stepped up a chord, minor to major.

Princess Moonbeam was now a small woman maybe in her mid-thirties, wearing a peasant blouse and an aproned skirt. Her hair was a pleasant chestnut, pulled up into a bun. I was the tallest person there, a fact I found oddly steadying.

The dell was an ordinary clearing under the spreading branches of three trees, the picnic table just that, set with doughnuts and jelly tarts and puddings, in the center a bowl of ordinary fruit. The kids dancing with Aurélie were just kids, some with flowers stuck behind their ears, wilting in the warm air. The dryads were gone.

The very ordinariness of the scene was a kind of relief. So
these
were fae, and the dell was obviously one of portals between the Nasdrafus—the world of magic—and the world I’d grown up in. I could deal with this.

“Thank you for your forbearance,” my hostess said. “The glamour is traditional. It is expected. But it requires a great deal of effort.”

“I appreciate the effort,” I said. “I really do. I’ll never forget your arrival. But this…seems more real.”

“And so it ought,” she said watching a butterfly alight on a bluebell a few feet away. “Now, to your questions.”

“Instead of answering them, can you send me home, just long enough for me to let my loved ones know where I am and what I’m doing?”

She smiled. “It would take me a great deal of effort to send you home. But I can do it.”

“Is there some hidden cost? Is that what you’re hinting?”

She opened her hands. “Not to me. And you would be returned to your loved ones.”

“So there is a cost. To whom?”

“There is no cost in the sense that I believe you mean. Perhaps I should make a demonstration.” From a pocket beneath her apron she pulled an oval mirror set in plain wood, and handed it to me.

I looked down, my nerves chilling when I recognized Alec. He sat in my room in Ysvorod House. There was the cream-colored wall with the border of acanthus leaves and laurel painted under the ceiling.

“Is this real? I mean, now?”

“This very moment. Though time does not mean to me what it does to you, I cannot bend it.”

Alex sat in one of the armchairs, his head bowed, his profile closed in. I knew that face. It was his Mr. Darcy mask, which he put between him and the world when he was hurting most.

“Why—where—” I gabbled as I tipped the mirror—and nearly dropped it.

She had stretched out a hand as if to stay me, but I turned away, aghast as I stared at my reflection in the mirror. It wasn’t the me standing there in the dell, I was in that room with Alec, lying on the bed, my eyes closed.