Meg munched the treat and almost choked as she rushed to swallow it and ask more questions. “Where did fairies come from? And what are they, exactly? I mean, they’re not all like the brownie, are they?”
“You ask things that would take a lifetime to answer, and even then I’d just scratch the surface, and likely be half wrong in the bargain. Fairies are…fairies. They have always been in England, a part of the land, like the dirt and the boulders. I don’t know that they came from anywhere. Perhaps they once lived alone in this land. There are those who say they arrived—or were born, or created—at the very moment man set foot in England. They depend on humans in strange ways. I’ll tell you more of that later. When the Christians came, they said fairies were fallen angels who were too good for hell, too bad for heaven, and lived a half life on earth. That’s hogwash, of course. They were here long before anybody thought up Christianity. Some say they are old gods grown weak for want of worship, some that they are nature spirits, protectors. But I don’t know where the fairies came from, only that they belong here, and if one day they are ever gone, this land will not thrive.
“As for what they are…why, they’re everything you can imagine. They can be beautiful and kind, or beautiful and cruel. They can be fanged and horrid, but thresh your wheat for you. They change shape at will, and they change temper even faster. They have laws, but they can break them. You don’t dare trust a fairy, of either court, and yet, if you do not trust them, they will never deal with you squarely. They have a society that in part mimics our own—they have a royal court, lords and ladies, and you may see them in clothes and fine jewels such as a human noble might wear, eating rare foods and sipping nectar. But those same fine fairies may on another day seem sallow and sick, clad in leaves and rags, and tearing at toadstools and moss. Which is the true form of Fairy? Both. Or neither.”
“It’s awfully confusing.”
“Indeed. And sometimes dangerous. Most fairies won’t want to hurt you, but their morals are not like ours. If they take a fancy to you, they might honor you by inviting you to dance with them. You’ll step into a fairy ring—that’s a magical circle of mushrooms—and they’ll put a spell on you so you can’t stop dancing. You’ll dance until you’re weary, and beyond. They’ll take their merriment with you, and you will dance in that charmed circle until you die from exhaustion. Or they’ll steal you away from your friends, your family, to keep you with them, and make you believe you’re happy. You’ll think you’re just sitting down to a feast with them, but when you’ve finished eating and they let you go, you’ll find sixty years have passed in the outside world. That’s another fairy peculiarity—time moves differently for them. They hardly age at all, and don’t always understand, or care, that our lives are so fleeting. Yes, there is joy beyond imagining to be found with the fairies, but sorrow and suffering, too, and you cannot tell which lot will be yours.”
“Is that what happened to Bran? But he didn’t grow old.”
“Another perversion of fairy time. Hush, I said I would not speak of him now. Take another macaroon—they’re good for the digestion.”
Phyllida Ash stood up, and it seemed harder for her than usual. She crossed to the window and talked to Meg with her back turned.
“That is why I give you so many warnings, Meg Morgan. There is no reason to think the fairies mean you any harm, but it is best to avoid trouble. There are dangerous things that live in the pools, and creatures in the woods you ought not to meet. Fairy food can make you a prisoner, and so I tell you not to eat the food of strangers. Even knowing your name can give them a power over you—though you knowing their names can give you a power, too. So promise me, child, and promise me again, that you will heed my warnings!” She wheeled around and held Meg in a gaze so powerful the girl trembled.
“I will! I promise!” Too late! she cried to herself.
Oh, how Meg wanted to reveal the truth! Maybe, she thought, Phyllida can fix everything. If she knows the fairies so well, surely she can keep Rowan from fighting. Yet she hesitated. She was ashamed they’d violated Phyllida’s rules—Meg was no lawbreaker at heart—and what once seemed like a mild act of disobedience now seemed a crime tantamount to treason. I should tell her, Meg thought. But she didn’t, not quite yet.
Phyllida softened immediately. “I suppose you’ll tell all you know to the others?”
“I’d like to,” Meg confessed. “I won’t if you say I can’t.”
“You won’t be able to stop yourself. I was a girl once, too. And it will help them understand how serious it all is. Perhaps you shouldn’t tell Finn and Dickie. They have no part in all this.”
“No,” Meg said, “I won’t tell them.” She hovered in the doorway, unwilling to confess, unable to leave. “Auntie Ash, when’s Midsummer?”
Phyllida looked at her sharply. “Why do you ask?”
“Oh, when I saw the brownie, Bran said Midsummer was dangerous. I just wanted to know when I should be extra careful.”
“You should be extra careful all the time, but Midsummer is the twenty-first of June.”
“Why is it so dangerous?”
“Oh…,” Phyllida began, and stopped as if she was sorting through truth and lies and evasions, deciding which would serve best just then. She settled on a vague version of the truth. “It’s another holiday, like Beltane. The fairies have a…a ritual they do on Midsummer. Nothing you have to worry about.”
A ritual? She must mean the Midsummer War for which the queen recruited Rowan. Meg’s mouth gaped and closed as she tried to decide whether to tell Phyllida. I’ll tell her, Meg decided. I’ll tell her right now. Or in just a minute. She bought herself a more little time by asking, “Is the ritual very important?”
“Oh yes. Everything that lives depends on it. If something happened to interfere, nothing green would ever grow again. But don’t you fret, dear. Things have gone on for millennia; I assume they’ll go on a while longer. You children just be sure you stay inside on Midsummer Night and you’ll have naught to fret over.” She patted Meg on the head and sent her off with a fistful of macaroons.
As soon as Meg was out the door, she slumped against the wall and gulped, her hands tightening until the cookies crumbled. Nothing green will ever grow again. She was close to panic at the thought. She had no idea the Midsummer War meant so much. If something happened to interfere…Would it be interference to get Rowan to back out of the War? She remembered Phyllida’s intensity when she talked about the fairies, and that deliberate carelessness even Meg recognized as evasion when she mentioned the War.
I’m afraid she won’t stop it, Meg thought miserably. If I tell her about Rowan, things might be even worse. From what she said, it’s her job, the job of all her ancestors, to see that things like the War happen as they always have. Maybe she won’t help me. Maybe she won’t let me interfere.
She wanted more than anything to tell Phyllida, for part of her trusted that she would be enfolded in her great-great-aunt’s soft arms and told that everything would be taken care of. Another part of her wasn’t so sure. She hadn’t known Phyllida long, after all.
For now, Meg took the easiest and most dangerous route a person can take—she decided to decide later. There’s more than a month and a half until Midsummer, she thought. Plenty of time to figure out if I should tell Phyllida.
Immeasurably relieved at deferring her responsibility, she ate her macaroon crumbs and went to find the others.
Around the Rugged Rookery the Ragged Rascals Ran
There is nothing quite so much fun as exploring someone else’s house without the owner’s watchful eye, and what is fun in six rooms is even more so in a hundred.
Whatever secrets the Ashes had were not concealed in the house, and they gave the children full permission to go through every room to their heart’s content. “Just tell me if you find anything particularly good,” Phyllida had said at dinner the night before. “I haven’t been in half the rooms since I was your age, and for all I know, there m
ight be great treasures somewhere about. Or skeletons. I don’t know which.”
“What’d she want you for?” Finn asked when Meg returned from her talk with Phyllida in the parlor.
“Oh…she wanted to see if we needed any more clothes.” Meg was amazed at her own facility for lying.
They all trooped up to the third floor and began to open doors. The first few revealed nothing more exciting than bedrooms. These were good enough in themselves, with old tapestries covering the walls and grand canopied beds raised up on daises. They had their own curiosities, for those who cared to look—one had a chamber pot shaped like a fat carp’s head, another held a peculiar mirror with etching on the back of the glass, so that, when you looked into it, it always seemed there was someone behind you, peering over your shoulder. At the moment, though, the children had higher hopes than mere bedrooms, and they sallied onward.
Meg had a great deal to tell her siblings, but there was never a moment when Finn and Dickie were out of earshot. She managed to tell them only that Midsummer was June 21, which was an innocent enough thing to say. Even at that, Finn sidled closer and wanted to know what was so special about Midsummer. “It’s just another holiday, like Beltane,” she said, as lightly as she could, echoing Phyllida’s words. Finn, suspicious of everything now, and thinking every word held a clue to what he wished to discover, would have pressed her harder, but just then Dickie found the library.
There were actually two libraries in the Rookery, and they had already met one of them. It was on the first floor, a cozy, leathery place rather like the smoking room but without the billiard table, and lined all around with novels. Some were rare early editions from the days when people first realized they could write novels. On other shelves were books by the Victorians, with practically a whole wall of the prolific Anthony Trollope. They had a good selection of everything worth reading written before World War I, as well as a few pretty books about birds and plants. It was a fine library for any reader…but the third-floor library was another animal entirely.
Dickie could tell it was extraordinary just from the smell. An odor of knowledge permeated the air, ghosts of arcane secrets wafted about by the breeze the children made when they opened the door. Here were books more rare than any first editions. Many were bound in calfskin, and not a few had solid metal covers, so that they seemed more like treasure chests than proper books. Some were locked, and some placed so inconveniently high on the shelves it was obvious they were not meant to be disturbed very often. A large mahogany desk and a worn leather wingback chair were the only furnishings. The air seemed stale, as though no one had visited that room in decades. But, oddly, though there was dust on all visible surfaces, the library didn’t make Dickie sneeze. Books have their own peculiar kind of dustiness, which didn’t catch in his nose the same way cat’s hair or thistle pollen might.
Even Finn was briefly impressed by this room, for it had a grandeur that would not be denied. He was particularly intrigued by a globe on the floor in the corner. It was as big around as his arms could reach, fashioned out of jewels and semiprecious stones. The Atlantic was lapis lazuli, the Pacific soft jade. England was a rough-cut emerald, and the fjords of Norway might have been crystal, or they might have been diamonds.
There was a scurrying behind the shelves, and Finn said, “Ugh, rats!” But Dickie, whose nose was as keen as a hound’s when it came to allergens, could detect no trace of the ammonia smell that comes when rodents have made a place their home.
Though the others, however much they liked the library, were eager to explore the rest of the house, Dickie said he thought he’d stay, and meet them later for lunch.
“One down,” Meg said under her breath. “One to go.”
Near the library was a room dedicated to maps, with canvases unfurled on the walls and scrolls nestled in umbrella stands. It, too, had a table in the center, and on this was a map of Europe with little red and blue pin flags piercing it, and tiny models of tanks spiked like thumbtacks. A long time ago, someone had followed the movement of troops in World War I.
A few doors down was a room filled with arms and armor—they would find several such rooms, each holding the weaponry of a particular period, as though a long succession of owners had prepared for a battle that never came, and at last put their martial gear into storage. This one had arms from the time of Napoleon—cavalry sabers and antique rifles and patinaed pikes. There were tricornered hats in glass cases, with plumes untouched by moths or rot. Uniforms on headless mannequins had fared less well, and their reds (and blues) were faded, their brass buttons tarnished by time. Finn and Rowan wanted to take the arced swords off the wall, but Meg flatly refused, and something in her tone stayed their hands. They had a fierce, brief bout with rattan practice sticks they found, but Meg put a stop to that after Rowan got a nasty bruise on his arm.
“Let’s play hide-and-seek,” Meg said at last, desperate to get Finn away so she could talk to the others.
“That’s for kids,” Finn sneered. Nevertheless, it didn’t take much to convince him to play. Even when they agreed to confine themselves to the third floor, the possibilities for hiding were so vast that it promised to be a challenging game. Finn volunteered to be It, and went back to the library to count and see if Dickie would be in on the game. The Morgans dashed off, and Meg pulled them into a room they hadn’t yet explored.
“We’re not all supposed to hide in the same place,” Silly protested, even after Meg started to reveal the tidbits Phyllida had told her. Silly had a very strong sense of fair play, and thought that if you were going to bother with a game you ought to do it right. But she eventually hushed as Meg recited as closely as she could everything that Phyllida had said.
“I really think we ought to tell her about last night,” Meg said.
“I wanted to—I almost did. But I decided I wouldn’t unless you agreed.” She didn’t want to tell them how vital it was that the Midsummer War take place. This would only add to Rowan’s stubbornness. If he thought the world might end if he refused to fight, he’d never capitulate.
“No!” Rowan said at once. “I don’t want the Ashes to know.”
“Surely we wouldn’t get into any trouble. I mean, we’re in enough already, with the fairies. Phyllida and Lysander wouldn’t do anything else to us. They’d make sure we were safe.”
“We’ll be fine,” he assured her.
“Weren’t you listening to what I said…what she said? They’re not tame and friendly, they don’t have pretty wings and flit in flowers. They’re dangerous! People have been killed by the fairies, or stolen away, or—”
“No,” he said again, firmly. “We’re not going to tell them. Gul will come back, maybe today, and we’ll explain things to him. If we told the Ashes, they might send us away.”
Meg didn’t much like that idea—their parents would be disappointed in them, and, despite her growing unease about the fairies, she felt a compulsion to know them better, if she could. “But it’s better than being forced to fight someone.”
“No one’s forcing me to fight,” he said in a strange voice. “If we left, I’d never see her again.”
“Her? Oh, you mean the queen? Yes, I’d like to see her again. Not at that price, though.”
Rowan said nothing, but he looked as if even the price of his life might not be too high to pay. Meg frowned at him. “You’re not thinking of doing what she wants. You wouldn’t be that foolish, would you? Agree to be in their silly war just to impress her? You’d die, just for her?”
“Who says I’d die?” Rowan countered. “You have a pretty low opinion of me if you think I’d go in prepared to die.”
Meg opened her mouth to speak, but she was so frustrated at his obstinate stupidity that nothing came out. It was simply against all logic for an untrained boy to agree to fight in a war, particularly one in which he had no personal stake. If someone had to fight, why not a grown-up, a soldier? And how could a battle have any effect on growing things? Yet, accordi
ng to Phyllida, nothing would grow again if this ridiculous war didn’t happen every seven years. It didn’t make sense to Meg.
He can’t mean to go through with it, Meg thought. He’s talking big now because he doesn’t want to look scared, but as soon as he realizes how real all this is, he’ll back down. Seven weeks. I have seven weeks to change his mind. It was as reassuring as an eternity.
“Don’t you think we should hide now?” Silly asked. Fairies were all well and good, but there was a game to be won. The fairies, not so immediate a concern, could wait. Anyway, she thought it rather exciting that her brother had been chosen for battle, even if she was a little bit jealous. It never occurred to her that he might be killed. Death was for other people, people who weren’t related to you, whom you didn’t know.
They agreed to play the game a bit more earnestly, though Meg had half a mind to go off on her own until lunchtime, maybe to the garden, to think things through without a bellicose sister and fairy-struck brother distracting her. Her mind was so muddled—to trust Phyllida or not, to have faith in Rowan’s good sense, or really to believe he would fight. She needed time, and, fortunately she had plenty, or so she thought.
Before they split up, Silly checked the room they were in for good hiding places. It was only another bedroom, if anything less promising than the others, but she was drawn to a large piece of furniture in one corner.
“It’s like in The Lion, the Witch and the Whachamacallit,” Silly said, opening the door.
“Wardrobe,” Meg said.
“Yup, that’s it. Look, it’s full of furs, too, just like the one in the book. I wonder if there’s a passageway to a secret world.”
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