I’m dying, Meg thought as the freezing water enveloped her. Maybe the banshee wail was for me. Maybe …
But then the vortex spit them out, and they were warm and dry and standing in the middle of a massive, ring-shaped banquet table. Members of the Seelie Court were seated around the table, dining on savory delicacies from plates of gilded porcelain. At one end of the table, Meg saw a whole cooked peacock with its feathers cleverly reattached; a roasted black swan with its wings spread was at the other. A piglet lounged on a silver tray with a pomegranate in its mouth, and a crispy duck led a clutch of equally crispy ducklings around a jellied orange pond. There were cakes and sweets, marzipan mushrooms and chocolate forget-me-nots on spun-sugar stems.
All around was the gay, lively chatter of the diners at the table, and in the center with Meg and Finn, dancers moved in light, precise steps and servants (as finely dressed as their masters) carried trays laden with yet more exotic comestibles. She heard piping and fiddling and, beneath it all, a mournful bass continuo from something that sounded like a cross between a bagpipe and a harpsichord. Someone was singing a song that didn’t seem to go with any of the three or four distinct melodies floating through the air.
No one noticed Meg and Finn, or if they did, they were so accustomed to people appearing from nowhere that they took it for granted. A saffron sash floated across Meg’s face, and the owner, a willowy dancer in orange and gold gauze, murmured an apology but kept dancing. When the veil lifted, Meg spied the Seelie queen and dodged between the dancers and servers to reach her.
She gathered her courage and drew a deep breath to demand her brother back, but before she could say anything, her words, then her thoughts, then her feelings themselves seemed to slip out of her grasp. Her white-hot fury toward Phyllida vanished. She hardly remembered who Phyllida was. Her fears about James diminished. Of course he was fine. Weren’t they all among friends?
She stared into the queen’s soft gray eyes and knew there was something terribly important she’d meant to say. Remarkable, she thought, how much the Seelie queen looks like my mother, though when she’d seen the queen last time, she’d had fair hair. Illusion! some voice in the back of her mind chimed. Glamour! Fight it! But the resemblance made her feel so safe that she didn’t want to fight. Mother and home were all she was longing for, and now that she was looking into her mother’s kind eyes, she forgot why she wanted them in the first place. Everything was going to be all right, she thought. No, everything already was all right.
She turned, feeling a tap on her shoulder. A lissome young man with auburn curls offered her his arm, and before she could protest that she didn’t know the steps and had no coordination anyway, he led her into a quadrille.
The first thing she noticed was that her nails were clean. She followed the line of her arm from her escort’s shoulder to her own and found no trace of her journey through mud and worms and water. Instead she found a flowing dress in shell pink, studded with carved coral, skirts and overskirts and underskirts and petticoats in such profusion that she wondered with a giggle if her legs were still under there.
“I’m so glad we make you happy,” her partner said wistfully, and as the music changed, he whirled her to another man, who took her hands and bowed before turning her back over. They formed a line, men on one side, women on the other, and partners danced between them to cheers. Meg saw (with the only twinge of real feeling since meeting the queen’s eyes) Finn leading a pretty milk-white creature clad in emerald silk in sashaying steps down the gauntlet, and he didn’t even look at Meg. Then she was back in her handsome partner’s arms, held close as her feet magically followed the intricate steps.
All was color, all was sound, blending so the dark violet of her partner’s eyes hummed a cello baseline to the tinkling of the ruby jewels at his throat, and the piper’s melody floated across her eyes like bluebirds. She felt weightless, tireless, but so parched. When the music ended, she would have to get a drink. But the music never ended, and she whirled first with her partner, then another, an older dashing fellow in black, then someone she thought was the prince himself, her friend Gul Ghillie in his other form, laughing, panting, joking along with the fairy court.
At last at the end of the wild dance, someone whirled her into another man’s arms. She leaned against his chest for a moment, resting and laughing to herself at nothing in particular, and when the music resumed—a slow waltz—she looked up to find it was Finn.
Perhaps they heard different music from those around them, for they moved as if they were underwater, while everyone else twirled in a frenzy. Meg tried to say something to him, but her voice sounded very far away, and he just smiled and shook his head. When the tune changed again, he would have pulled her deeper into the heart of the dancers, but her dry throat cried out for relief and she signaled to one of the servants, a handsome, sturdy woman in dark red. She took a jeweled goblet and handed one to Finn. They pledged each other with their eyes and raised the glasses, secret smiles on their lips. Then a hand shot between them, the goblets fell with a clatter, the burgundy nectar inside splashing oblivious dancers, and the servant said, “Are ye daft? Din’t yer ma teach ye better than that?”
It all came rushing back to her: James, Phyllida, the Green Hill, her journey below. Her hand flew to her mouth as she remembered what would happen if she tasted one drop of fairy food. She peered around her. The dancers were still whirling, but they were different. If she didn’t look too closely, they were still lords and ladies of the Seelie Court. But if she managed to focus on one of the dervish figures, she saw a hoof, or a tail, or a withered hand, or a face like a fish with one round eye. The colors changed too. At the edges of her vision, they were still shining metals and flashing jewel tones, bright silks and deep brocades, but there was a gray tinge to everything now, a misty haze as if the whole scene was polluted somehow.
Finn tried to snatch another glass from the tray—he was more susceptible to the glamour than Meg—and she had to dig her nails into his wrist to make him stop.
“Hey, what do you think you’re doing?” He jerked his hand away, and he was a grubby little boy once more. She looked down at herself and was a little dismayed to find she was muddy and sodden again too.
“Come with me,” the servant said.
“I have to see the queen!” Meg insisted.
“Fool, do ye think ye can look at her again and not be ensorcelled? Ye’re lucky I was the one serving drinks, or ye’d be stuck here like me. Not that it’s been such a bad lot.”
“You’re human?” Meg asked.
“Aye. Now come. We have no time for this folderol. There’s a lady as wishes to see you. Another human,” she added with a wink.
They ducked under the round table. Beyond the gaudy hubbub of the feast, the air was a smoky lavender. The festivities died away, and they entered a glade of fireflies and clover. Meg looked up but couldn’t see a ceiling, only shifting constellations of lights that might have been stars or more fireflies.
The servant led them on again through a corridor that pulsed with a red heartbeat. They came to an arch with an obsidian keystone.
“My Lady Angharad, I have brought the children,” their guide said, and bowed low before retreating.
The First Guardian
ANGHARAD…? WHERE HAD MEG HEARD that name before? They stepped tentatively under the arch and found a woman sitting cross-legged in an alcove that was draped in soft, spotted lynx furs. She wore a gown of rough green wool and had amber beads in her hair. She looked both young and old, and it was only after studying her for some time that Meg guessed she might be forty, though her cheeks were sunken with missing back teeth and her hair was thin.
She suddenly remembered who Angharad was. “You’re the first Guardian!” she blurted out.
“Not the first,” Angharad said, gesturing for them to sit. The pelt purred when Meg settled on it. “Though I do believe I am the first Guardian to be known by that name, to write down her memories, and so the
y honor me as the beginning of a long line. The first, if such she was, came thousands of years before my time.”
“When was your time?” Meg asked.
“By your reckoning, a bit more than two thousand years ago.” She moved a buff spotted fur aside and revealed that they sat on a darkly shining obsidian platform. “Look you here, daughter of my daughters, and also you, son who is not my son, and I will show you where you come from.”
Two pale faces leaned over the volcanic rock and saw nothing more than their own reflections. Then shadows appeared and resolved into other faces, not theirs. It was murkier than the ice-cold pool, but overall more comfortable.
Meg saw forests, thick as the forests of Gladysmere but stretching from one end of the isle to the other, and in the forest were people, small, clad in skins, painted and tattooed. They hunted, they dug in the earth, they foraged for larvae and frogs, and they in their turn were killed by beasts and disease and starvation and other people.
“There was no Guardian then.” Angharad’s voice came from far away. “They took what they needed from the land, and the land took them back. Their lives were short and brutish, but they did not interfere with the Good Folk, and the earth loved them.”
They vanished, replaced by other taller people clad in both leather and cloth decorated with quills and beads. They hacked at trees with broad stone axes, set fire to vast fields, planted, reaped, and ate the things they grew. Disease didn’t touch them quite as frequently, and the children did not starve in the winter. Beasts killed them less often; other men killed them more often.
“When the first seed was planted by the hand of man, the ties that bind humans to the earth began to fray. Man became a separate thing, and the earth something to be controlled, dominated. The fairies drew apart from man. It was at this time that the conflicts began, when men harried the fairy folk and the fairies first made their mischief and took their revenge. There were people, those who stayed closer to the earth, who felt things others could not, who mediated between humans and the Good Folk. They kept the peace for thousands of years, though man grew farther and farther from his earthly roots.”
The farmers vanished, replaced by others, also farmers, but with metal swords and armor, chariots, faces painted blue. They fought with men who arrived on ships.
“Then there came a time of great pain, when the magical creatures—nymphs and fauns, half-beasts and strange spirits and all the rest—were crushed and cast aside. They disappeared, killed or vanished, stolen or sleeping, neglected or unneeded, who can say? But the world became quiet and empty without them, silent save for the constant clamoring of man. Fairies were not quite like the other creatures. They were here first, of the earth, not from it. But I saw … my people saw … that the fairies would soon disappear like the others. I was a little girl then, four or five, youngest in a family of seers and shamans, those who walked with both fairies and humans.”
Meg saw four women gathered in the heart of a deep forest. There was a woman, old and young like Angharad, standing with a younger woman and two girls, one about twelve, the other a small child. Around them stood the two fairy courts.
“We made a sanctuary for them,” Angharad said. “A place where they could be safe among us, so we humans would not suffer from their loss. And we made a place where the fairies would be bound, so they could not smite poor, foolish man for the wrongs he has done. We cannot live without each other, you know, though we would fain destroy each other.”
The old woman in the stone raised her arms, and the earth rose with them, the trees falling away as the tumulus climbed high and verdant above the woods.
“The Green Hill!” Meg breathed. She was witnessing its very creation.
The fairies sank into the soil as if it were quicksand, and then three of the women did too, leaving the girl-child alone on the hill.
A teardrop fell onto the obsidian, quickly wiped away by a bronze-ringed hand.
“I lost them that day—my mother, my grandmother, and my sister. They gave all their power to raise the Green Hill, to lay charms upon it to keep man and fairy safe.”
She sighed, the pain of two thousand years past still fresh as a knife slice. “And so I was left alone. I became the Guardian, and I taught the people about the fairies for thirty years. I bore nine children. Four survived their first year. One lass was killed fighting the Romans. My youngest girl died in childbed, but my other two daughters learned all I knew, and the eldest succeeded me, as her child followed her, daughter to daughter, until it came to Phyllida. And then you. This I foresaw while I lived, and then when death was near, I entered the Green Hill to find my kin. They are not here, though I feel them all around me. I think they are part of the earth now, though that is small comfort for an old woman who still feels like a little girl and longs to have her mother’s arms around her just one more time.”
She sniffed, then composed herself. “This is your heritage, Meg. Now you have seen into your past. And you have seen what may be in the pool of possibilities.”
“Possibilities? Do you mean that those things may not happen? I saw terrible things, cities that made me feel like I was choking, people being attacked, killed … only they weren’t people. I don’t want it to be like that.”
Angharad pointed to the arched entrance of her alcove. “Look to the stones on the left. They are the past, the deeds that cannot be undone. Look to the stones on the right. They are the days to come, unknown, unknowable. Now look to the stone in the middle. That is the keystone, without which all other stones would tumble. You are that stone, Meg Morgan. All the past was waiting for you, all the future is depending on you. You have already wrought such change to this world that people will be astonished for generations to come. But what next, little one? Do you take up this sword you have forged, though it may cut your hand, though it may smite those you love? Or do you lay it down for some other to pick up and use as he will? The world is changing, Meg. The world has changed, because of you. You would like to undo what you have done, but you cannot. You would like to run from what you have done … and that you certainly may do. But would it be wise? Would it be fair?”
With those two words—wise and fair—she appealed to the keystones of Meg’s nature.
“But I’m young. I don’t understand all this. There must be someone who can do a better job.”
“And many who would do worse. Will you take that chance? If you are not Guardian, some usurper will take your place, and what will happen then? Remember what the pool showed you.
“You are so young, Meg,” Angharad said, stroking her head. “Though I was but five when I took up the mantle of Guardian. Don’t decide now. You shouldn’t agree out of guilt and dread. Wait until you are sure … but don’t wait too long.”
“Phyllida is dying, isn’t she? I heard the banshee wail for her.”
Angharad looked at her in a way she couldn’t interpret. “Indeed, the banshee weeps for Phyllida in a way. But do not think overmuch on that. It is yet another thing you cannot change, and why dwell on those when there is so much you can change?”
Meg took a deep breath, and the brownie’s words came back to her again. Who must do the hard things? She who can. Once before she had taken a heavy duty on her own shoulders because she thought someone else wasn’t suited for it. No matter how terrible the consequences, she’d had to fight in the Midsummer War to keep her brother from harm. Or was that really her reason? Was it because she knew she would do a better job, do the things he could not? The hard things?
“Phyllida has been a fine Guardian, one of the best, all things considered, but her time is passing. You have ushered in a new era, and your world will never be the same. Go now, and find your brother. He is safe … safer than you would be, if not for my handmaiden. To think the fate of the world turned for a moment on your dry throat!” Angharad laughed and covered her obsidian bier with the lynx furs. “You’ll find him seated at the banquet table next to the queen.”
“But I was
there. I looked right at her and didn’t see him.”
“You looked at the queen and saw nothing else—as she willed it. All of this is glamour, all illusion. Don’t forget that. Don’t let yourself fall under their spell. Your bloodline—our bloodline—has the power to see things as they truly are. Thank you for seeing me. When I forget who I am, where I am, this place is a paradise. But when I fight the mist and mirage and am only my tired, old self again, it is lonely.”
“I’ll come back to visit you,” Meg said.
“Oh, no, don’t do that! You might not escape again. If the loneliness gets too hard to bear, I’ll just go to the surface and have one last glimpse of sunshine before I turn to dust. But not quite yet. There are still a few more things I must do.”
She shooed them out of her alcove to where her human servant was waiting. As they headed to the banquet hall, though, Angharad called Finn back.
“Poor Finn, you’ll need as much courage as Meg. In times to come, you will do a great evil, for a good cause, and the world will despise you for it, though you are their salvation. You will be reviled as a traitor, a criminal. But Meg will know the truth of it. That must be your comfort. You will have no other.”
And with these cheering words of farewell, she sent him to join Meg.
“What did she say?” Meg asked, to which Finn wisely replied, “Nothing.”
This time when Meg regarded the merriment in the feast hall, she forced herself to see the truth (which then, as in most cases, was simply a matter of will). The table was there, with some people seated and others dancing, but the entire character of the scene had altered. There was a deathly pallor about the place now, in the mist that once glowed silver but was now an ugly gray, in the faces of the revelers, once so blithe and rosy, now wan and desperate. There were humans among them too, scrawny, sickly specimens who nonetheless whirled and danced as if they couldn’t stop themselves. Meg saw now that the splendid food was no more than bark and toadstools, the cordial that had sorely tempted her was merely green stagnant water with a scum of slime on its surface. It turned her stomach to think how she had longed for just one taste of that nectar. And it frightened her, because if she let her attention wander just a little bit, the glamour fought to return.
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