The Magicians and Mrs. Quent

by Galen Beckett

  “Chambley!” I cried out. “Clarette!”

  The fog stifled my voice. I ran in the direction I had seen them go, calling for them until my voice was ragged. There was no reply. The wind snatched at my hair, and the mist dampened my face and slicked the stones beneath my feet so that I nearly fell a dozen times as I ran. Still I did not see them. What had possessed them to go out into the storm?

  But I knew. Chambley dreaded to leave the house; only Clarette could have compelled him to leave. And why would Clarette go—unless she had been called?

  “Chambley!” I shouted again, suddenly certain that, even if she heard my voice, Clarette would not answer me.

  I had reached the edge of the ridge. I turned around, wiping damp hair from my eyes. All I could make out were indistinct shapes. The house was a hazy patch behind me. I saw no sign of them.

  Just as the weight of despair threatened to press me to the ground, a gust of wind rushed over the ridge. The clouds broke apart, and a low shaft of heavy gold light fell through, illuminating the moors. In an instant I saw them: two small shapes below, picking their way east across the fields and bracken. Beyond them rose another slope, and the sun caught upon the twisted shapes that crowned the hill, tingeing them red, so that they looked for all the world as if they were afire.

  “No,” I tried to cry out, but my voice was a hoarse whisper. “No, not there!”

  I ran down the slope, over clumps of heather and patches of scree, so that it was a wonder I did not go tumbling and break my neck. By the time I reached the bottom, the gap in the clouds had closed again.

  The land turned upward, rising in a steep slope. In a flash of lightning I made out black shapes twisting above me, and below them a gray line. I used my fingers as much as my feet to propel me up the face of the hill, so that soon my hands were raw and bleeding.

  Another bolt of lightning rent the clouds, and in that brief moment I saw them: two little figures standing hand in hand. They had reached the old stone wall not thirty feet above me. The lightning faded; I was blinded by the darkness. Then came another flash. A figure all in white fluttered above the children, as if floating among the branches that drooped over the mossy wall.

  “No, get away!” I shouted, but the words were lost as thunder shook the air. I ran toward the wall, but my sodden dress pulled me down, tangling around my legs. I clawed my way upward on all fours.

  Again lightning flashed. I did not know how it could be possible, but I was sure the branches that hung over the wall reached lower than they had a moment ago. I could no longer see the figure in white. Despite her ghostly appearance, she had not been floating, I knew, but rather had stood atop the wall. Only she was no longer there. The gloom closed in again, only to burst apart a heartbeat later in another flash of light. Now the branches reached so far that they nearly brushed the ground. The children looked upward, their mouths open in fear.

  A grimness came over me. I was no longer afraid or weary. I sprang up the slope, covering the last few feet in an instant.

  “Get away from the wall!” I called out, and this time they heard me, for they turned around, their faces white as moons. Chambley flung small hands out toward me, and a moment later, to my surprise—and fierce delight—Clarette did as well. I gripped their chilled hands and pulled them toward me. They were shivering.

  “Hurry!” I said. “We must go.”

  However, as we turned from the stone wall we found a curtain of branches hanging before us. They wove in a tangle, barring the way. I tried to move along the wall, but more branches drooped down to either side of us. A creaking rose on the air, and the wall shuddered at our backs. Wet leaves fell in a black snow. Clarette screamed.

  Another tremor shook the wall. Clarette twisted away from me. I tried to tighten my hold on her, but our hands were both slick. Her fingers were wrested from mine, and she stumbled into the web of branches.

  “Clarette, come back!” Chambley cried.

  His hand slipped free of my own, and he dashed after his sister. I tried to grab for him, but a wind rose up, whipping the branches, and I was forced to use my hands to thrust them away from my face.

  Lightning flared. I saw that he had managed to wriggle under the boughs to his sister. However, Clarette was not as small; she could not similarly escape the cage of branches. They huddled together. I tried to go to them, but the branches tossed back and forth under the force of the gale, thrusting me back against the wall.

  Or was it really the storm that propelled the limbs of the trees? For they seemed to strain and bend as would best hinder our movement, without any regard to the direction of the wind. Again the stones shuddered at my back, violently, as if they would split wide open.

  Clarette and Chambley screamed. Then I saw it too. Something pale fluttered beyond the black web of branches.

  “No,” I murmured. “No, this will not be.”

  I had said I would keep them safe. I had promised them. I had promised him. An anger rose in me such as I had never felt before in my life. I thrust my hands at the boughs before me.

  “Let us go!”

  A crack of thunder rent open the sky, and cold rain pelted down as a wind rushed among the trees. The branches heaved and shook, groaning as they bent under the gale.

  I twisted myself free. The branches tossed back and forth, then lifted, and I was able to rush forward. I grabbed the children by their hands and pulled them with me as I ran down the hill. I do not know if it was dread or if something was really there, but thought I saw a glimmer of white out of the corner of my eye. I gripped the small hands in my own, so hard I was sure I was hurting them, but they did not resist. The children were weeping, their faces bruised and marked by red lines. I was weeping as well.

  Together we careened down the slope as the fury of the storm was unleashed upon us. Just as we reached the bottom of the hill, there was a clattering noise, and a dark form reared above us. Red light flared. The children cried out, and we went tumbling to the ground in a heap.

  A strong hand clasped around my wrist. I gasped, raising my head, and blinked against the red light. It was a lantern, I realized, and as my eyes adjusted I saw a familiar, bearded face above me.

  “Miss Lockwell,” said a deep voice. It was not angry, as I might have imagined, but low, even regretful.

  I could only gaze up in wonder.

  “I’ve found them!” he called out now, and I heard the sound of a horse as another red light bobbed toward us in the gloom.

  “Mr. Quent,” I said. I wanted to say more, to tell him to see to the children, to take them to Heathcrest at once, but I could do no more than repeat the words. “Mr. Quent.”

  He pulled me to my feet, and I had to throw my arms around his shoulders to keep from sinking back to the ground. The children clung to him at either side.

  “What has happened, Miss Lockwell?”

  I looked back over my shoulder, at the dark shapes on the hill above us. A bit of white fluttered among them, then it was gone.

  “She’s in the wood,” I murmured. But I do not think he heard me above the storm.

  “By God, you’re freezing,” he said. “All three of you are freezing. You’ll catch your death.”

  The other lantern drew near. It was Jance on horseback. “Take the children,” Mr. Quent said to him, and he handed them up as easily as if they were sacks of flour.

  “I can walk,” I said, or tried to say, recalling the way he had been forced to carry me once before, not wanting him to have to do so again. It was no use. Mr. Quent lifted me up and set me on his horse, then climbed up behind me. I leaned back against him. He was warm and solid, and despite all that had happened, all dread and worry left me.

  For a moment he went rigid. Then I felt him breathe out, and his arm encircled me. With his other hand he flicked the reins, urging his horse into a canter. I shut my eyes and pressed my cheek against his chest, and all the way back to the house I felt not rain, or wind, or any tremor of fear.

  TH
AT NIGHT WE took ill, the children and myself.

  My recollection of what happened after we returned to the house is dim: visions glimpsed through a fogged window. I remember I could not stop shivering, though I was set before a roaring fire, and that I trembled too much to drink the tea Lanna brought me. I remember how the children’s faces were like marble as Mr. Quent carried them upstairs, Mrs. Darendal following. Their eyes were shut. They looked like little angels carved of stone.

  When he returned, I had presence of mind enough to tell him what had happened; I do remember that much. I did not hold anything back or attempt to deflect any blame from myself. He paced in front of the fire as I told him how I had been cross with the children, how I had found them gone from their room and had seen them out the window running toward the Wyrdwood.

  I told him also what I should have told him long ago, about the figure in white. I explained how it was my belief that this being had been in communication with the children, or at least with Clarette, and that I feared it was due to the urging of this trespasser that the children ventured out into the storm.

  I described then what took place at the wall by the Wyrdwood. Or I attempted to, for by then my head was already filling with a haze and my teeth clattered so violently I could barely speak. I tried to describe how the wind had tossed the branches of the trees so that they bent down further than seemed possible, trapping us among them, then how the wind had changed and we had been able to escape.

  Except that wasn’t what had happened, was it? The wind hadn’t changed; indeed, the gale had blown more fiercely every moment. I had thought us lost. Only then I had shouted, Let us go! And the branches had lifted.

  Yet how? I wanted to explain these things to him—perhaps he would understand—but by then my shuddering had grown so forceful I could not speak.

  His face was grim; in truth, it was more stern than I had ever seen it. He gripped his left hand—the maimed one—inside his right. That he must be furious I was certain. I had failed to tell him of the trespasser, had failed in my most fundamental duty to keep the children safe. However, when he spoke, it was only to say that I looked very ill and that I should go to my room.

  To my credit, I was able to ascend the stairs on my own, but I would not have been able to undress myself without Lanna’s help. She stripped me of my sodden dress. After that I could do no more than fall into my bed, for by then the fever had come upon me.

  What can I tell you of what followed, Father? I fear you know better than I the labyrinths in which an ill mind can be lost. In a fever, nothing seems as it really is. One gets tangled up in the tatters of thoughts and phantasms even as in the bedclothes. The shadows were a cage, coiling around me like black branches.

  Here and there were lucid moments. I remember once I rose from the bed and stumbled to the window. Outside, a red light bobbed along the ground, and for a moment in my delirium I wondered if the new red planet had fallen to earth. Then I saw a second light, and I knew it to be Jance and Mr. Quent, that they were walking around the grounds of the house with lanterns.

  I crawled back into the bed. My bones ached, and in my dreams I imagined them bending and twisting into new shapes like willow branches in Mr. Samonds’s hands.

  WHEN I OPENED my eyes again, gold light slanted into my room. For many minutes I lay in bed, watching the light move upon the ceiling, until I realized it was not morning but evening.

  I turned my head and saw that I was not alone. A figure sat in the bent-willow chair. It was not Lanna.

  “Well, there you are,” Mr. Quent said, sitting up straight. His coat hung on the back of the chair. He wore only a white shirt, open at the throat and turned up at the wrists, and his same riding breeches from the night before. Dried mud still caked his boots.

  I sat up, but as I did a dizziness swept over me. I would have fallen back but in one swift move he was beside me, and eased me down, and set pillows behind me. Whether it was illness or wonder that had rendered me speechless, I could not say.

  “The doctor told me you would not wake until tomorrow at the soonest,” he said in his gruff voice. “However, I said to him, ‘No, you do not know our resourceful Miss Lockwell. She would never stay away so long, not when she is needed.’”

  He did something then I could scarcely have imagined, let alone comprehend. He smiled at me.

  I was so astonished I could only stare. Was this the Mr. Quent I knew? His curly hair was wild, falling over his brow; his teeth were a fierce white crescent amid his beard; and all I could think was that I had never seen him look so well.

  “I’m so sorry,” I started to say, but at once his expression grew somber.

  “No,” he said. “No, please believe it is I who am sorry, Miss Lockwell.” For a moment there was a look of such regret in his brown eyes, a look that rendered them so soft, that I could not bear it—not in one so stolid as he. Feigning a recurrence of my weakness (which was hardly far from the case), I leaned back against the pillows and turned my head toward the window and the fading day.

  I heard his boots leave, and when the door opened again a little while later it was Lanna. With her help I rose and bathed myself and dressed, and was infinitely better for it. True, I felt a bit hollow and light, but that was all. That I should be perfectly well in a day I was certain. I could only hope the same was true of the children.

  After Lanna left, I took a moment to use the little mirror above the chest of drawers to arrange my hair, and I pinched my cheeks to bring color into them. Why I did these things I was not certain. All I can say is that when a knock came at the door, I was not surprised, though my heart gave a leap in my chest all the same.

  “Come in,” I called out, and he did.

  Like myself, Mr. Quent had changed. He no longer wore his riding gear. Instead, he had put on gray breeches and a dark blue coat I had never seen before. The coat was a close fit, as if it had been cut for him in younger days, though I cannot say the effect was ill.

  He told me that he expected I was in want of supper, and since I might not be ready yet to venture downstairs, he had taken the liberty of bringing up a tray. I could not have been more shocked or my expression of thanks more sincere, for I was suddenly very hungry.

  He brought the writing table into the center of the room, arranged the willow chair for me, and sat himself on the edge of the bed, and we had our supper that way. There was soup, hard-cooked eggs, and roast pheasant from a bird he had shot that day, and every sort of thing that was suitable for an invalid. I confess, I was not dainty; I ate ravenously, though I could only think he had already supped, for he touched almost nothing.

  We spoke little, and he seemed content mostly to watch me, though he did inform me that the children were resting. They, too, had succumbed to a fever, and the illness had gripped them more strongly that it had me. However, the doctor had assured him they would recover, perhaps more slowly than I had but just as fully. I was greatly relieved.

  “I want to thank you, Miss Lockwell,” he said at last.

  I set down my cup of wine for fear of spilling it. “For what?” I finally managed to say.

  It seemed difficult for him to formulate his words. He rose, moved to the window, and peered at the night. At last he turned to look at me. “There are few who could have endured what you have endured here at Heathcrest, Miss Lockwell. This is not, I know, an easy place to dwell, and the task you were given was not a simple one. That it was too much to ask of you, I knew. That to invite you here could only be an act of selfishness such as I had always scorned in others, I knew as well. Yet I invited you all the same, and when others would have been driven off by what they found here, you stayed. For that, I thank you.”

  I was struck dumb. That after all that had happened, after the way I had failed him, he could thank me—it was too much to comprehend.

  “You must know now why I was reluctant to bring them here,” he went on. “This is…it is not a place for children. However, the aunt and uncle who I had hoped w
ould take them had at that very moment lost a daughter of their own, and the sight of a small girl was something their aunt could not bear. So I was forced to take them instead. Knowing how often I must be away, my one hope was that I could arrange for someone who could properly care for them under the most difficult, the most trying of circumstances.”

  “But I have failed!” I said, unable to endure such misplaced praise any longer. “The children nearly caught their death of a fever last night. Don’t you see? I nearly lost them!”

  He regarded me with a serious expression. “No, Miss Lockwell, you saved them. Had it been any other person I had hired, had it been anyone else who had followed them when they ventured out—as they were eventually bound to do—then truly they would both have been lost.”

  I sat back in the chair, gripping the braided wood beneath my hands. Once again I saw the children huddled before the wall, their faces pale and scratched, the branches whipping in the wind. And the figure in white fluttering in the trees above.

  “It’s Halley Samonds, isn’t it?” I looked up at him. “They said she was lost. But she’s there, in the Wyrdwood.”

  He nodded.

  “The children have seen her more than once. She showed herself to them. I think she’s been speaking to Clarette. They believe she’s a ghost. But she’s no wraith, is she? She’s alive.”

  “So I believe.”

  “Of course,” I said, more to myself than to him. Halley Samonds. The daughter of Miss Samonds’s brother. The sister of Mr. Samonds the farrier.

  The great-granddaughter of Rowan Addysen.

  “I should have told you sooner,” I said to him. “I knew they had seen someone, but I wanted them to feel I trusted them, so that they would trust me in turn. It was wrong; I should have told you.” I shook my head. “Except you already knew.”

  He moved back to the table, though he did not sit. “Knew? Perhaps I did know. I certainly suspected it after her disappearance. And I knew if ever she had a wish to reach me, the children would present a way.”