The Accidental Highwayman (23 page)

That afternoon, we stopped in a quiet place overlooking a forest of oak. I required some time to repair a broken trunnion-pin on the wagon, in which effort I was joined by Willum and Gruntle, who found mechanical things fascinating. Fred went about collecting grubs, Morgana studied the tarot cards and received bees, and Uncle Cornelius conversed with a wild pony that had come to inspect Midnight.

Lily was within the wagon. As I was beneath it, I could hear her moving about, and thought little of it. But then there was a sort of barking sound, and rapid footfalls, and the back door was flung open.

“'Oo's got it!” Lily shouted.

“Got what?” Uncle Cornelius asked.

“My comb! My good tortoise comb!”

“You can't comb a tortoise,” Gruntle said. “Bain't got no hairs on 'em.”

“The manlings have a very famous story about a tortoise and hair,” Willum pointed out. They began to argue over what Lily meant. I crawled out from under the wagon to find it out for myself.

“My loverly comb,” Lily said, weeping at me. “Gift from a hadmirer, it is, and the one thing of value what I possess. Now it's gone!”

“None here can have taken it,” I said. “Nor would they. The wee fellows have been with me ere we stopped, Morgana's 'round the other end of the wagon, and your uncle has been discussing the architecture of Seville with that pony over there.”

“Well it wasn't Fred, if that's what you mean,” said Lily.

“I wasn't suggesting Fred took your comb. I forgot to mention him, that's all. He's on the roof, making a salad with worms in.”

“There's but one here who might take an interest in a pretty thing like my comb,” Lily said, her eyes narrow. “One what misses fine things, pr'aps, or don't know the value of 'em, raised among riches as might be.”

“Lily, stop. This is beneath you,” I said, and took her by the shoulders. “You are not yourself these past few days.”

There was a strange light in her eyes, and it occurred to me that she could be going mad. It ran in families, after all. I noticed her uncle stayed beside the horses, picking wildflowers. He might be insane, but he knew when to keep out of something.

Morgana came around the wagon, tucking her cards away.

“Wert thou speaking of me?” she said, and fixed Lily with a glare that would have slain me on the spot.

“I
was,
” Lily huffed. “This gentleman 'ere seems to think my fine tortoise comb walked off all by itself, and I was thinking, you being of the female persuasion like myself, that you might have some idea where it's gone to.”

Morgana had no idea what Lily meant by this. “Art thou saying it's been enchanted so that only a woman might find it?”

“Only a particular individual woman of my acquaintance, to be precise.” Lily sneered. “One what has access to the little table in there and might have thought I wouldn't miss a bit of shell. But I
did
miss it, and I'd like to know where it is!”

With this, Lily thrust her fingers into the Gypsy sash wrapped around the top of Morgana's skirts, sending the tarot fluttering all about us. I was astounded, and caught up her wrists. Morgana was briefly shocked, and then outraged, and threw up her hand, with the heel of her palm first. There was a flash and a bang and Lily flew several paces and tumbled to the ground, confounded.

Willum and Gruntle emerged from under the wagon. Gruntle went on foot to Lily, she being conveniently located on the ground, and Willum flew up and perched beside Morgana.

“What ho?” said Willum.

The fury washed out of Morgana as suddenly as it had poured in. There were bright blushes on her cheeks, but she was more sorry for the magical blow than upset that Lily had accused her, I think. Still, she was so thoroughly hurt by the accusation her friend had made that she didn't offer her a hand to get her back on her feet. Instead, she ran off a little way and sat down beside the pony, arms folded. Uncle Cornelius offered her a bouquet of flowers. She gave it a sharp look and the blooms wilted and turned brown.

“I don't know what caprizel she tooken, but she tooken it right between the eyes,” Gruntle said. “She's comin' 'round, though. No 'arm done, I think.” Lily was struggling to sit up.

“How came I here?” she gasped. The strange look was gone from her face. She was my good Lily again.

“You lost your tortoise comb,” said I, helping her to rise. “You made a rather unkind accusation. I suggest you owe your friend Morgana an apology.”

“Gorblimey, my head ain't half spinning,” Lily remarked, and sat heavily on the step of the wagon. The apology would have to wait. But as she sat down, Willum emerged from inside.

“This comb of yours, it's a sort of red and black thing with teeth? Bit like a batwhale's baleen?”

He was gripping the very article in both hands.

“
There
it is!” Lily cried, and took it from him. “Oh, you're a pet. Thank you so much. I'd kiss you but I might swallow your head,” she added, and tucked the comb into the bun of yellow hair at the back of her head.

“Never fear,” said Willum. “Confirmed bachelor, I am.” With this, he flitted away to see to Morgana and inform her the crisis had passed.

“Willum,” I called after him. He paused in his flight like a hummingbird. “Where exactly did you find the comb?”

“It was on the table beneath the looking glass,” said he. “Right in plain sight. Don't know how she missed it.”

While everyone else worked on the problem of reuniting the two upset ladies, I went inside the wagon and stared at the little table. It was an ordinary thing, with ordinary things upon it: a pot of mustard, some scraps of paper, a quill, a jar of ink, and a dish of skin cream made of goose fat. It would be difficult to miss something such as a hair comb in that assortment.

Then my eye fell upon the looking glass that hung on the bulkhead above it. A chill crept over me. It was a common sort of mirror of the type tinkers sell, a circle of glass backed with silver and framed in wood. There wasn't anything to cause me unease. But when I looked into it and saw my reflection there, I had the distinct feeling that something was inside it, peering through the eyes of my image, regarding me with malevolent will.

 

Chapter 23

THE FELL REFLECTION

A
T LAST
we were one day's march away from a market town where we might stage our inaugural performance of Puggle's Spectacular. It was the evening of that penultimate night when things reached a head with Lily, and a bizarre discovery was made.

Lily and Morgana weren't speaking to each other since the disagreement of the previous afternoon. I was unable to account for Lily's behavior.

Morgana climbed up beside me during the last march of the day, still careful not to let her skirts touch me. For a while she stared at her fingers, absentmindedly snapping them now and again, each time sending sparks whirling through the air.

I was about to break the silence (or rather, the clop of hooves, the creak of the wagon frame, the croak of the harness, the rattle of the wheels, and the squeaking of the axles) when she began to speak, very quietly so that she should not be overheard from within.

“What Lily said is true,” she began. “I have been selfish, and the plight of my people has come second to my own interests.”

My first instinct was to babble denials, to say her interests
were
the interests of her people, and that she was making great sacrifices and so on. But that's not what I said.

“I cannot tell that, for I know nothing of your people, but what you do next is what matters most,” is what came out when I spoke.

“You understand me well, Kit,” she said, which was not at all what I'd expected. I thought I'd made an appalling blunder.

“Well, I mean—”

“I feel as if my entire life has been a mistake until now, or founded on one. I have drifted like a cypril leaf upon a stream, floating along on privilege and obligation. Did you know, until I met Lily, I'd never had a friend? Never in all my decades. And now that I have one, I'm neglecting the vital affairs of Faerie because we've had a tiff.”

“If you've never had a friend, then you know not what happens between them,” I said.

“Do they often fight?”

“Sometimes. And sometimes not. It is a matter of the mutual characters of the friends, and thus each friendship is as different as it is alike, the same as people.”

“I'm only just learning people. Lily broke my heart into two pieces when she said those things, because they were cruel, and spiteful, and true. Now I scarcely understand whether we're still friends, or if we're not. And I don't understand how Lily seems to have changed so! Or is it me? Have I changed in ways of which I am unaware? Do people change without knowing it?”

“People become who they are without knowing they do so. After that, when we change we usually have some sense of it. That's what puzzles me. This isn't the Lily I know. She's not herself. And yet she seems altogether unaware of it.”

“So it's not entirely me?” Morgana said, with a pathetic note of hope in her voice.

“You're doing very well—for a princess,” I said.
That
was the wrong thing to say.

Morgana stared at me awhile with her mouth pursed, then ducked back inside the wagon without another word. I cursed myself: What right had I to tell anyone else about friendship?
I
clearly hadn't any idea how it was done. At least Midnight liked me.

*   *   *

We camped in a rather sinister gorge that night, for we had heard the faraway cry of a gryphon not long after Morgana stopped speaking to me. The walls of the gorge overhung the cart track at the bottom, and there were tall trees there. These would hinder attack from above. Our stopping-place was near the far end of the gorge, so if there was pursuit on foot we might escape that way. Still, it was not an ideal place to stop, and certainly it was an unhappy vale. The trees were gaunt and narrow, the stone walls of the gorge blackened with mildew and perpetually damp. There was no undergrowth, only moss. I doubted the sun shone into that place for more than an hour or two in the day.

Nightfall came with a deep darkness. We elected not to light a fire, as the walls of the gorge would light up and make our resting-place uncommonly visible, but stumbled about with bits of candle in our hands. The feyín had no trouble at all—they could see fairly well at night to begin with, but in addition, their hind ends provided them with enough light to read by, if they could read. Perhaps Willum could.

Our agreed-upon sleeping arrangement placed the ladies in the front room with the bunks. Uncle Cornelius, Fred, and the feyín slept in the back room—the old man on the floor, the ape in a drawer, and the feyín anywhere they pleased. I slept outside on the driver's seat.

In practice, however, Willum slept outside the wagon, huddled inside one of the rear side lamps with his feet hanging out the door. He didn't like either end of the vehicle to go unguarded.

So that night, Fred went a-hunting as soon as it was dark. The rest of us, listless and uneasy, whiled away our time at trifles, eating a cold meal, each of us alone.

When things began to happen, Uncle Cornelius was in the back compartment of the wagon, writing a memoir. Willum was sitting in his lamp, impersonating a candle. Lily was in the bunk compartment, Gruntle I knew not where. I was cleaning Midnight's hooves by candlelight.

A little distance away, Morgana was whispering up a nearby tree. She issued what sounded like the sort of orders one gives to couriers. She kept repeating passages as if to help someone memorize a phrase, but I couldn't hear what she said, only the tone of her voice. I supposed she was talking to feyín—but why? Then it came to me. I knew there was a flaw in the bee-mail system! Bees are a diurnal species. No messages at night!