Though she knew they were no more than a two-minute run into the forest, it seemed to Meg unfathomably deep. Her fear returned, but she discovered that there is a certain kind of fear that comes only with excitement and anticipation. She dreaded what might be in this forest, what Gul Ghillie was about to show them, and yet, even had the path homeward been laid clear before her, she’d not have taken it. It was a new feeling for her. She had to know what came next, cost her what it might, and so she followed Gul along with the others. But she did pick up James (tired from his run, and mercifully unprotesting) and let him wrap his legs and arms around her. Better, she thought, that he should be near.
As they walked, the night seemed to grow closer. She knew that, to see in the dark, you cannot look directly at the thing you wish to see—peripheral vision is better in the gloom. So she unfocused her eyes, and found that, though she could not look straight at any of her companions and distinguish them, she could keep track of them all out of the corner of her eye. Movement registered more clearly than shape…but as they walked, all about them seemed movement. The tree limbs danced, and even the bark on the trunks appeared to shimmy. It seemed at times that creatures moved beside them. But, no, when she looked there was nothing, only Gul and Rowan and Silly and…Where had the others gone? She could not find Finn or Dickie.
Serves Finn right, she thought as she hastened to keep Gul in view. But poor Dickie!
Not so very far off from the Morgans, Finn was following a sound and a light, and Dickie was trailing after him. “This way! This way!” a voice that seemed to be Gul’s called from just out of sight. Behind the bracken, a golden haze shone, and Finn assumed Gul had lit a lantern. He quickened his pace, making Dickie run and wheeze after him, but he never seemed to draw closer to that glow, that call, that lured him onward. “This way!” Finn heard again, more faint this time, and he dashed ahead, stumbling over ground-growing vines and tearing his clothes on thorns. And then the light was gone, and no one answered his call. He was alone in a wood suddenly darker than ever. It was almost a relief when Dickie staggered into view, clutching at the trees for support.
“Where are the others?” Dickie asked, a tremor in his voice.
“Oh, they’re around,” Finn said. He was breathing hard, but he wasn’t frightened.
“Just playing a trick on us. Morgans thought they could lose us.” Maybe it was rage that kept any fear at bay.
“But I have a trick for them! Come this way, back to the Rookery. I’ll get there first, and they’ll find all the doors bolted. I’ll be snug in bed, and they’ll be locked out till morning, and the crazy Ashes will know what they’ve been up to.”
He set out in what he was sure was the right direction. “We should try to find the others,” Dickie said, sounding miserable. He had used his last Kleenex at the Red Hill, and now was forced to resort to his sleeve, which was already growing damp.
Finn only scowled at him over his shoulder and didn’t slacken his pace. Dickie took a few uncertain steps after him. He certainly had no wish to be left alone in the forest, but he felt an obligation to search for the Morgans. Surely they couldn’t be far off. He’d tell them what Finn was planning, and with Gul to guide them homeward they could reach the Rookery first. Maybe then Finn would be the one sleeping in the garden or on the cold stone steps! Dickie ran in the opposite direction, calling out the Morgans’ names. But though he shouted as loudly as he could, he never heard an answer.
Meg suggested looking for the others, but Rowan and Silly seemed glad to be rid of Finn, even at the expense of Dickie. Gul only laughed and told them again that there was naught to fear in the forest.
“A will-o’-the-wisp led them away,” Gul said. “There’s no real harm in a wisp, only fun. They lead folk astray, but seldom to danger.” Meg didn’t like the sound of that “seldom.”
“We had to be rid of them. There’s things to see that are only for those of your bloodline. We’ll meet up with your friends later.”
“Finn’s not my friend,” Silly insisted hotly. “More like an enemy.”
Gul turned on her with a piercing gaze and asked her, “Has this Finn Fachan ever tried to kill you?”
“Well, no, of course not!” Silly said, looking away in some embarrassment.
“If you were hanging off a chasm’s edge, would he pull you up?” Silly spat on the ground and said, “I wouldn’t ask him to!” But she found she couldn’t look Gul Ghillie in the eye.
“Call no man your enemy until he has proved himself so, and even then, you may have to change your mind. You are very young”—coming from one who seemed only a few years older than herself, this seemed too much—“and you are quick to anger, swift to resent, and slow to forgive. But, however strongly children hate or love, it is no more than play, though they always think otherwise.” How strange it was to hear such words, which were better suited to old Uncle Ash, spring from Gul Ghillie’s curling lips.
“There are greater things afoot this night than Finn Fachan will ever know,” Gul continued. “Follow me another little way, and hide in the thorns as you did before, and you will see what it means to be of the Lady’s line. She would keep all this from you, I think. Duty has always been an easy thing for Phyllida Ash when it concerns only herself. But she is too apt to take on burdens to keep them from others. You are children, but you are of her blood, the only ones, I believe—save Bran, her father, who longs only for what he has lost. Someday it will fall to one of you…or it will fall away altogether. But you understand none of this!” He laughed like rippling water, and skipped a merry jig.
“And why should you? Not yet! Come, and see the wonder of the Green Hill!”
Meg heard bells from quite nearby, and she thought the May Day procession had regathered and looped back through the woods. But the bells sounded somehow sweeter, as though they had been forged and beaten out by hands that understood both precious metals and music, too. The children stepped forward, and this time Gul did not bid them crouch and hide. Rather, they stood, somewhat obscured by the boscage, perhaps, but in plain enough sight to any who cared to look for them.
For the second time that evening, Meg heard the clomping of hooves, muted now by crushed and rotting leaves, and the sound of a joyous company. They seemed to speak a strange language, in voices so sweet it was like singing, and Meg felt tears come to her eyes. Before them was another hill, washed in pale starlight and filigreed with dewed spiderwebs. Ringed all around with the forest, it rose more steeply than the broad, sloping Red Hill, and seemed more a crafted dome than a work of nature. It was bare of all foliage save low-growing herbs and grasses, as though the trees and vines did not dare intrude upon such a place.
And then the hill opened.
The Fairy Rade
A trick of the dark, Meg thought, a play of shadows, for how could a solid hill open as though a portcullis had been drawn, as though the green sod hid a vaulted door? A great archway had opened in the Green Hill, and she could see a pale light emanating from within, and white columns that rose to unseen heights. Glowing balls like fireflies hovered about the door, and the singing grew louder.
The music changed, and from the hill came a fanfare of horns and flutes.
“My queen!” Gul breathed beside her, and Meg thought with some dismay that she’d be forced to hear the boys gawk and stammer over another May Queen of questionable beauty. But when the figure emerged from the Green Hill’s heart, even Meg found that she trembled and her breath seemed to catch in her throat.
The woman, or the form of a woman, was mounted on a tall charger with a pale-gray dappled coat, a beast as much beyond the clumping plow horses of the May Day march as this woman was beyond the May Queen. Her mount was arrayed in jewels of white and green that seemed not merely to reflect light, but to give off light of their own. He pranced on legs that appeared too delicate for such a tall animal—he stood as high as a draft horse, with a broad chest and haunches that bunched with power held in check. He seemed aware of t
he value of his burden, and walked so lightly that his gilded hooves bent no grass, left no mark of his passing.
What can be said of the woman he carried? When the children spoke of her afterward, none could quite agree on her features. Her hair fell over her shoulders, and it was fair, but where Rowan saw spun gold, Silly saw cascading moonlight. Was she tall? She seemed a giantess to Meg, and yet the others said, no, she was no bigger than their own mother. Was she lovely to behold? Who could say that she was not, though each saw her differently. Meg felt no more jealousy looking at her than she’d feel looking at a bird of paradise or a tawny jaguar, and it was a beauty that somehow didn’t make her feel plain in comparison. Rowan would have run to the peasant-girl May Queen’s side if he could have, but had there been a sword at his back he wouldn’t have presumed to take a step unbidden toward the Fairy Queen. She was clad in green and silver, with silver sandals on her feet, and jewels in her hair. At her side, depending from a belt of linked emeralds as big as walnuts, was a long knife sheathed in a jeweled scabbard. “Though why she carried a knife I don’t know,” Rowan said afterward. “There’s no one in the world that would harm her—or could, I think.”
Her gaze seemed to sweep over the children, and there was a faint smile on her lips that looked as though it never left, but she gave no sign of having seen them. She rode on for a bit, then reined in her steed with the lightest touch.
A drum like a heartbeat sounded from within the Green Hill, and though it almost hurt the children to tear their eyes away from the woman, they turned to see a host of figures spill out of the archway. Many looked perfectly human, and rode on horses that were either gray, or cream-white with strange pointed red ears. They rode with dignity and looked out on the world like aloof nobles, upright and fair to behold.
But among them (and it was a wonder to Meg that the horses did not rear and bolt) capered such creatures as made the Rookery brownie seem quite natural by comparison. A few looked almost human, until you found a shocking grotesqueness—one arm alone, emerging from the chest, or a huge nose but no mouth. Still others had fur, as though they had only just missed being badgers or hounds. Some were tiny and squat, some elongated like a Modigliani painting, with spidery fingers and wild hair. Side by side were the unspeakably beautiful and the unutterably horrible—and, indeed, the children were speechless as they watched this company caper around the mounted lords and ladies. They seemed to be mad, dancing and pinching one another and swapping hats and pulling hair, a mass of terrible jesters to entertain the two dozen or so who perched on their horses in absolute dignity. Meg thought, though she wasn’t quite sure, that some of the creatures were changing shape and size.
“The fairy rade,” Gul Ghillie said, in a voice that surely must have been heard by the odd company, if indeed they weren’t phantoms. “Tonight, while the land is ripe, the Seelie Court will traverse the forest and traipse across the hills, to revel in fruit and flower, in earth and stream. Let all see them who might! The glory of the queen, the fairness of her court, her prince and consort, who has stood at her side since the first wren hatched from the first egg.”
The children saw no prince at her side, but again the queen’s eyes seemed to pass flickeringly over them.
Gul lowered his voice to a whisper. “Tonight, my little friends, you have seen that which few others have witnessed, and kept their eyes after! A sharpened hazel twig would be the just reward of any who spied unwelcome on the queen and her court when they gather on such a purpose. Yet Phyllida Ash has seen this, and her mother before her. And Bran…” His voice grew tight, though they couldn’t tell which particular emotion he was holding in check. “Bran once rode with this company, fair as any fairy lord, and well beloved. He will not return. And now you children have seen it. Look well, and remember, for this is but the beginning.”
Was it sorrow in his voice? Meg placed a warm hand on his arm, as she would soothe James when he fell, or an unhappy kitten. The boy who had been saying such mysterious things looked at her, and for an instant he was a boy no longer, but a man, both young and old, with a regal bearing and a troubled face that was yet unlined by care or time. She blinked, and he was Gul Ghillie again, and his staring eyes were laughing and kind.
“It might well have been you, and not your brother,” the boy said. “But he is the eldest, and it is his right. You are made for other things.” She frowned at him in perplexity. Before she could ask him to unravel the riddle, there was a new disturbance on the Green Hill.
“The Host,” Gul breathed. “The malevolent ones.”
From out of the darksome woods came a shrill neigh that made the dappled horse toss his head and lay back his ears. Where Meg was sure there had been no one (for even the colors and caco phony of the Seelie Court could not mask such a horde) came a phalanx of fierce and beautiful men in steely black mail riding close abreast. Two carried scarlet banners, and the others held glinting pikes. They rode toward the queen, who seemed hardly more aware of them than she was of the children, and their ranks parted to reveal a single rider, a black-haired fellow with fine features who reminded Meg a little of Finn.
He sprang down from his horse and walked toward the queen. He drew a breath to speak, but before he could do so, the queen bent her head to him in welcome and said, in a voice as serene as snow, “Why do you come dressed for war on this night of merriment?”
He bowed to her, low, though his eyes never left her. “The Black Prince is always ready for war.”
Meg, watching with the others, unseen, remembered the Black Prince of history. In her mind, he’d looked nothing like this.
From behind the martial men slinked shadowy shapes that refused to come within the space of light the queen seemed to carry with her. They were like the horde that followed the queen and her court—not men at all, and hardly beasts, but some creatures from nightmares. Hairy or scaled, massive, with clubs, or cringing and fanged, they seemed an altogether more unwholesome lot than even the most disturbing of the queen’s court. They were fewer in number…or perhaps they only seemed so because they lurked on the periphery of the children’s sight. But, unlike those of the queen’s court, they soon noticed the interlopers, and from the darkness beneath the tree boughs the children saw red eyes squinting their way, and heard slimy sounds suspiciously like a creature licking its lips in anticipation.
“It is unkind to remind us of what is to come,” the queen said softly. “There is time enough to gird ourselves for battle, and Midsummer is many days away.”
“I come from idle curiosity, no more,” the Black Prince said, bowing once again in his sinuous fashion. “Have you chosen your…sacrifice yet?”
Under his breath, Gul murmured, “Treacherous! Unfair! He knows she cannot lie, and thinks to profit by it!”
“The Seelie Court makes no sacrifice if it is victorious,” the queen said. “But, yes, we have chosen.” And her lovely gaze, so deep and old, like the distant sea, turned upon the children and Gul Ghillie. Only he wasn’t Gul Ghillie anymore. Standing beside Meg was the man she’d glimpsed before, so regal that there was no doubt in her mind that he belonged at the queen’s side. The dirty, lively brown boy was gone, and in his place a man in bright raiment walked to lay his hand on the dappled horse’s flank. The queen smiled down at him.
The children stood alone now, huddled close and trembling (save James, who seemed to think the whole night was no more than a particularly good play) as they watched their new friend become the prince of the Seelie Court. “They can all change shape,” Meg whispered. “Bran told me they can take any shape they want. Gul was a fairy.”
This time, Rowan did not laugh, and Silly did not think her sister a coward. They saw before them something they never would have believed, creatures that were born before time in the heart of England’s woods and hills. Memories of fairy tales fell away, notions of Shakespeare’s diminutive pixies crumbled to dust as they watched the two great trooping courts and their myriad minions meet that May eve. Here was
something almost unfathomable, a power and a danger they had never imagined, but a beauty, too, that made them stay though they wished to run. For even when they looked upon the queen, surely the most beguiling creature they had ever seen, they were almost overwhelmed by a sense of their own peril, and some instinct told them to save themselves and flee. Yet even more powerful was the allure of the fairies, lovely and horrible alike, and they could not look away.
“Who is it you have chosen?” asked the Black Prince. His features had altered subtly upon Gul Ghillie’s transformation, and now the shadows on his face shifted and contorted until he was as ugly as he had once been fair. He scowled at the man who had been Gul. “Who do you offer up in the War?”
“We have chosen our champion,” the Seelie prince said. “On Midsummer Night, shortest night of the year, when the light rises to its greatest power before succumbing at last to the darkness, he will choose his weapon and meet your champion on the fell field of battle. He will kill…or he will die. So it has been. So it shall always be, every seventh year, while the leaves grow green in this land.”
The queen spoke again. “We have chosen, but we do not know if the champion is willing.” Slowly, her eyes swept to the Morgans, and Meg felt a chill run along her neck as the sea eyes lingered on her. Kill…or die. Under the spell of that gaze, she almost felt as though she could…. Then the eyes moved away, and rested on the one beside her.
“Rowan Morgan, propitiously named, child of the Guardian, whose bones will one day lie in this earth, will you be my champion?”
Aghast, Meg turned to her brother. He seemed to be in a trance, and stared unblinkingly at the queen. No, Meg thought. Not him. Not…not kill…or die. Then some tiny voice in her called out, Me! Let it be me! I will go in his stead! I am not afraid! But before she could speak, Rowan took a step forward into the pale halo of light. Though low growls came from the woods behind the Black Prince, Rowan never took his eyes from the queen. In a voice that seemed too deep, too grand to be his own, he said, “What you command, I will do!”
Under the Green Hill Page 7