Elementary

by Mercedes Lackey

  • • •

  Alderscroft watched her, convinced at last she was right. And what power she had. Who would have thought a Talent over something as mundane as flowers could be so key? And now, it seemed that Talent could force entire fields of growth. But it was draining her.

  He motioned for one of the staff. The man hurried over.

  “Sir?” he asked.

  “Please ensure Miss Walsingham has sandwiches and water. Some lemonade might be nice, too. If there is a parasol available, bring that as well.”

  “At once, My Lord.”

  She sat there all day, encouraging and stroking the roses, roses that visibly crept from mere canes to mature shrubs, then died. Each wilted, tattered rose represented poison drawn from the soil. Was it enough? As each rose wilted and died, it was replaced by yet another immature cane brought by selected staff. Were there enough plants?

  Mei grew tired and ragged, her eyes bloodshot. By the time of the long dusk, she slumped alongside a row of dead English roses.

  Inside that perimeter, the peonies stood proud, bright and healthy.

  • • •

  Mei awoke to voices in the next room. Her surroundings were unfamiliar; she was not back at the boarding house where she lodged. The room was bright and airy, featuring a floral wallpaper and late afternoon light streaming into the room. The last thing she remembered was the gardens and then darkness.

  “. . . Look, I don’t care how she did it; it could be magic for all I care. Those peonies are now right as rain. Those so-called diplomats were wrong about Miss Walsingham, and you know it!”

  “The problem, Burkill, is that while I, King Edward, and now you, all knew the value of those peonies, no one else does. Except whoever is trying to kill them off.”

  “The other problem is that King Edward is dead. King George is too busy getting ready for his coronation to even know what danger he could be in.”

  “That’s my problem, Burkill. We can bring the King into the fold after things settle down a bit. Meanwhile, those peonies are additional protection until we can. They have to stay healthy!”

  “I’m just a gardener, my Lord. Miss Walsingham and I can handle the flowers; you just make sure we don’t have to deal with any of those deuced foreigners while we do so.”

  “A Cambridge botanist is not a simple gardener, and Mei is one of those deuced foreigners in some people’s eyes.”

  “Yes, that’s the other problem—now they’re saying that maybe the peonies might have contributed to King Edward’s illness. After all, there was one clutched in his hand when he was found . . .”

  The voices faded off as Lord Alderscroft and Mr. Burkill headed out of her hearing. Mei would have liked to have heard Alderscroft’s reply; things would have been much easier if she knew what he thought of such rumors. Well, it didn’t matter. She had to get up and see for herself just how the peonies were doing.

  She was still very weak, and being light-headed didn’t help her progress. They’d removed her shoes before covering her up. Bending over to lace them up almost caused her to faint again. She had really pushed her Talent past her limits. Leaning up against the door, she listened, then slowly opened it.

  “Miss?” a female voice said.

  “Yes?” she asked, turning.

  “Are you feeling better? Mr. Burkill said we was to take care of you.” The reflection of the gaslights off the housekeeper’s starched white apron almost made Mei’s headache worse.

  “I’m all right now,” she said. “Thank you. Is this his house?”

  “Yes, miss.”

  Taking her time and frequently leaning up against the wall, Mei made her slow and careful way to the front doors. She had to politely shoo the housekeeper away. She’d be fine. She just needed to get back to the Gardens.

  She hoped the cabs were still running in this neighborhood.

  • • •

  The brief rest in the cab restored Mei enough for her to walk with some semblance of her normal energy through the entrance to Kew Gardens. While she kept to a decorous pace, inside she could hear her peonies crying out, “Hurry, hurry, hurry.” She knew something was wrong. Everything in her felt it. There was a gathering of energy ahead, a swirling of air and a spattering of rain where the sky had been largely clear shortly before.

  Undeterred by the weather, she approached the peony beds. The area was deserted as the visitors took shelter from the sudden storm. Weather had never bothered Mei. Even though she couldn’t see them, her father’s Air allies watched over her still. A quick pause to reach down and touch the earth confirmed her feeling of something amiss. Earth, too, was troubled and for the same reason that Air was troubled: magic was stirring ahead—dark magic.

  Quickening her pace as much as she could in her long skirts, she reached the peony beds around the Pagoda. Those closest to her appeared to be unharmed, and she sighed with relief. Reaching down, she stroked the leaves and flowers of the shrub nearest her. The peony practically screamed into her mind. Shocked, Mei staggered back, then noticed a furtive figure skulking near the beds closer to the Pagoda.

  Near the crouching figure, there was a ripple of color running through the white peonies. They were changing from white to red and then to black. Without pausing to think, Mei approached the unknown person. Straying slightly to the side of the paved path, she grasped a hoe one of the planters had left behind from the planting yesterday. With her steady stride muffled by the rising winds, the figure was too involved in whatever he was doing to notice her.

  Hesitating slightly at the vague sense of recognition at the man’s clothing and the touch of the magic spilling over, she stood poised above him with her hoe—and then she swung.

  • • •

  “Earth and Air, our daughter. Earth and Air will find you. Earth and Air will aid you. Earth and Air will bind you.” Mei-Hua Walsingham heard her parents’ voices in the caress of the wind on her check. She smelled her father’s pipe and her mother’s favorite flower carried on that breeze.

  Then she was awake.

  She looked around. She was in a tower looking out over the gardens. She was in the Pagoda. How did she get here?

  A gust of wind slapped at her, and she turned while clutching at the wall. She was on the top balcony, and the man from the garden was standing near her.

  “Mei-Hua Wang, you have been most aggravating,” he said in Mandarin. But his accent placed him to Shandong, where the Boxers arose. “Your ancestors would not approve of you consorting with guizi.”

  Guizi. Foreigners. But she was English, too, caught between worlds.

  She wasn’t sure if the wind had been Elemental, but he hardly needed it. He could loft her over the balcony in a moment. If he was a Boxer, they were called that in the West because they were skilled in Kung Fu.

  He started chanting and staggered, almost as if drunk, but she knew that was a fighting technique, and that it hid spirit possession.

  She leaped lightly back and had to steady herself again against the balcony rail. She needed a way back inside the building, and then perhaps she could race down the stairs.

  A voice said, “We’re with you, miss.”

  She stole a glance over her shoulder to see Mr. Burkill, with a pruning hook. He sounded nervous, but sure.

  The Chinese man was in full fury, now, swaying and waving and whirling. She understood some of his incantation, calling for spirits to possess him.

  Then she heard Lord Alderscroft’s voice. “It is spirits you want? Then you shall have them, sir. Miss Walsingham, you must focus on the wooden dragon.”

  Unsure what he meant, she cast her eyes about. There, at a roof joint above them, was a stub. At one time in the past, it had been a carved dragon. Each roof peak had had one. They were rumored to have been gold and sold off, but they’d been lacquered wood that rotted away.

 
Wood! But it was dead wood. She had no Talent over it. However . . . was that a hint of moss? A few vines?

  She did focus on it, coaxing it, urging it to grow.

  Trees were a product of Earth and Air, her parents’ elements. This was dead wood, but there was plenty of air, and the decay under the moss was earth, and it was growing.

  In a moment, the lump flowed and shifted, and she yelped in fear, but it resolved as a dragon’s head with a twisting body and furled wings of moss and ivy—an Imperial dragon.

  Her attacker staggered and shouted, and the wind rose to a howl.

  Then Lord Alderscroft said, “Air, sir, against a winged dragon? But I am a Master of Fire.”

  The dragon twisted and wove, blocking the space between the Chinese mage and them. Then it snorted a breath of sulfur, and followed that with a burning blast that singed Mei’s hair.

  The heat rolled over her, with the smell of scorched and dried wood and fumes, and the wind dropped to a hot breeze, then to nothing, and the dragon evaporated into dust, fragrant with the smell of damp moss.

  The mage had disappeared.

  Mr. Burkill said, “His goose is cooked.”

  Before Mei could make sense of the horrible joke, he continued. “So, this is what you do for entertainment, sir and miss, playing with spirits?” He sagged back against the wall and breathed deeply.

  “I’ve partaken of spirits ever since you and I read together at Cambridge,” Lord Alderscroft said. “But we should get Miss Walsingham to the ground for some tea.”

  Yes. She found herself shaking in reaction and fear. But she felt a rush of relief under it.

  • • •

  The peonies weren’t precisely “featured” at the Coronation, but as the Royal Carriage rolled past, Mei could see a plant inside. It was one of her peonies, contrasting against all the pageantry with its brilliant white. Here and there, men wore other peonies as boutonnieres, as did some ladies in their corsages. There were enough scattered about to dissuade any interference. The beds at the Gardens were in full bloom, and that much energy should shield the whole city for now.

  There wasn’t much to see of the parade. Her main reason to be present was to see her flowers, both from pride and duty.

  Lord Alderscroft and some other ranking personages had explained the nature of Elemental Magic to the King, and advised him on several defenses, including the peonies. Her work was to continue.

  Back at the Gardens, Mr. Burkill was congratulatory in his own calm way.

  “The flowers look spectacular, miss,” he said. “You have done well, even better than I’d have thought possible.”

  “Thank you, sir,” she said. “I wish there were more I could do. People are starting to grow more peonies in their gardens, and I hope it will be enough.”

  “I hope so, too,” he said. “There has been some more work in that direction, though.”

  “Oh?” she asked.

  Mr. Burkill said, “His Majesty reviewed the events and has asked that I take a post at the Botanical Gardens in Singapore in a year or so. That will give us a broader knowledge of your Oriental flowers and their strange powers.”

  “In a year or so?” she asked.

  “Well, miss, first I have to learn what I can here, if you don’t mind sharing your knowledge. And while ladies can’t be awarded degrees, a study of natural science at Girton College in Cambridge seems like a fair exchange.”

  “And perhaps my mother’s peony could be brought back to China.” It would be fitting, she thought, ending her mother’s exile in a way. The next few years looked to be very full.

  She had challenges ahead—and looked forward to them.

  Into The Woods

  Mercedes Lackey

  Mutti and Vati were talking again. It wasn’t quite arguing, and Rosa pretended that she couldn’t hear it. Children were not supposed to hear when grown-ups were talking about them.

  It wasn’t exactly about her, anyway. It was about the fact that they were living in a cottage in the little village of Holzdorf in the Schwarzwald instead of in Wuppertal, as Mutti wanted. The reason, of course, was Rosa. Living in the city had nearly killed her; she had felt poisoned all the time and was sick all the time, and it hadn’t been until Onkel Hans and Tante Bertha had come to the house and told them about the magic that Mutti and Vati had understood that being in a city was just not going to be possible for Rosa until she was much older, at the very least. Maybe not ever.

  Mutti and Vati had only a little of the magic, so at least they knew it was real, and Vati hadn’t sent his brother and sister-in-law away with taunts of madness. But Earth Magic had never been in their families before; it had been two unbroken lines of Fire Mages until Rosa was born. A Fire Mage had no problem with living in a city. Some even found it pleasant.

  But for an Earth Mage, well . . . no wonder Rosa had always been sick and felt as if she was being poisoned. She was being poisoned. All of the industries spewing filth into the air, the soil and the water, all of the smokes and the soot, all of the nastiness caused by too many people living too closely together—all that made the Earth sick, and that made her sick. So living in Wuppertal was no longer an option, unless they wanted to send Rosa away alone—and that plan had made Mutti even more unhappy than the prospect of leaving the city.

  “It’s so lonely here,” Mutti said plaintively.

  Rosa knew what Vati was thinking, that it would be less lonely if Mutti just tried a little harder to fit herself into village life. Her city clothing alone set her apart, and it wasn’t as if Tante Bertha hadn’t supplied her with the right costume and more than enough fabric to make more. Rosa thought the black skirt and black laced jacket with the beautifully embroidered blouse and apron and shawl looked wonderful on Mutti, but her mother would not part with her stiffly corseted, voluminous, and highly impractical gowns.

  And it wasn’t as if the women of the village would not have welcomed her! They felt sorry for the “junge Frau” who always looked so shy and sad. They were eager to share recipes and needlework patterns and gossip. They were always happy to see Rosa, and if she hadn’t by nature had a modest appetite, she would have been as round as a Christmas goose from all the good things they tried to coax her to eat. Everyone here knew of magic, even if they didn’t have any themselves, and they sympathized with the city folk who had exiled themselves here in order that their daughter might thrive and learn.

  “Liebchen, you must try harder,” said her Vati wearily. He had fitted himself right into the life of the village almost as soon as they’d arrived. Now, in his black suit, the long coat with red lapels and brass buttons, and his little round black hat, he could not have been told from one of the locals until he opened his mouth. The village had lacked a proper schoolmaster; the local priest, a very old man, had served double duty in that regard for decades, and he was more than happy to give over the position to Vati.

  And oh, yes . . . religion. That was another thing that made Mutti unhappy. The village was Catholic, mostly, and she was staunch Lutheran. Not that such a designation made any difference to the village. How could it, when there were Elemental Masters in their forest? Even the priest, gentle old man that he was, would have happily served Holy Communion to Mutti as he did to Vati, without so much as a hint that she should convert, even though his bishop would probably have died of a fit if he found out. “We are all Children of the Good God,” he would say. “The bad days that Master Luther railed about are over. We should accept one another in God’s Peace and make no fuss about names and credos.”

  Well, Rosa had faith in her father. Eventually he would wear Mutti down, as he always did. One day she would put on the pretty black dress and hat bedecked with fat pom-poms and go to visit the neighbors. One day she would meet the gentle priest and discover he was not a baby-eating ogre.

  “Rosa!” Mutti called from the kitchen. “It’s time
to visit Großmutter Helga!”

  That was what Rosa had been waiting—a bit impatiently—for. “Großmutter” Helga was not really her grandmother. Both of her real grandmothers had lived back in the city. Großmutter Helga was a very learned and very powerful Earth Master who was teaching Rosa her magic, because one day Rosa was expected to be just as learned and powerful—although no one knew yet what direction her magic might take.

  Rosa was never happier than when she was sitting beside the old woman, listening so hard her face would ache afterward. And sometimes—sometimes she was allowed to do a very little magic herself. Or try. Sometimes it didn’t work. She didn’t seem to be very good at coaxing things to grow, or at healing. Großmutter said that this was all right, that not every Earth Master was adept at nurturing.

  And when Rosa was tired, Großmutter would make her tea and give her a little meal and tell her stories. Many of the stories were about the Bruderschaft der Förster, the Brotherhood of the Foresters, the arcane guardians of the Schwarzwald, for there were many dark and dangerous things that lived here, and the paths through the shadowy trees could be perilous. Listening to those tales, Rosa was very glad that the Brotherhood was there.

  As she entered the warm and fragrant kitchen, Vati ruffled her hair and left for the schoolhouse by the kitchen door. The kitchen—indeed, the entire cottage—was the one thing Mutti did like about their new life. Living space in the city was cramped, and Rosa remembered Vati always complaining about how expensive it was. Here, thanks to Vati’s schoolmaster job, the spacious cottage cost them nothing. It had three rooms below, and the loft where Rosa slept above. The kitchen had a red-tiled floor, a spacious hearth with an oven built into it for baking, a sink, cupboards that held all manner of good things, a sturdy wooden table in the center, and real glass windows—it was ever so much nicer than the tiny little kitchen in their city flat. They had a real parlor and a bedroom for Mutti and Vati as well, whereas in the city flat they’d had to hide their bed behind a curtain, and Rosa had slept in a cupboard-bed.