Under the Green Hill

by Laura L. Sullivan

  He abandoned the ritualistic words and scrutinized the Black Prince. “I do not ken with what base trickery you convinced the noble Bran to fight for you. But know this. The outcome will be the same. Blood is yet blood, life is still life.” He looked—sadly, it seemed—to the lone, dark monolith on the hill. The outline of an ax was clearly visible, silhouetted against the star-speckled sky.

  The Black Prince laughed. “It takes no trickery to let a man do what he wishes! My champion came willingly, as they all must.” His face turned sly. “But what of yours? The little man-child. Has your mighty champion changed his mind? Does your hero quake in his cradle? Come! The sun is set, the Midsummer War must begin! Where is your warrior?” And he laughed again, looking over the human gathering and seeing no more than an old woman and man, two girls, and a small child. He did not notice the Hunter’s Bow in the elder girl’s hand, nor did he discern the grim resolution in her countenance.

  There was a flurry through the crowd, a hushed murmur from the Seelie and low rough sounds from the Host. The Seelie prince stood in his stirrups and raised his hand for peace. “The time is come!” he cried into the night. “The time is come, but not the man! Who stands as champion for the Seelie Court? Who will kill, or die, on the Green Hill?”

  “I will,” said a small voice that was almost lost in the strengthening wind. And then, “I will!” cried with something like a warrior’s strength. From the cluster of mortals walked a girl as slim as the crescent moon, with the full moon’s own glow upon her face. She stood upright, graceful, and sure. In her left hand she held the finest bow ever crafted. Already she had an arrow nocked to the string, and the deadly tip, crimsoned with her own blood, pointed at the earth. Into utter silence she called out again, “I will stand for the Seelie Court!”

  Lysander had to grab Phyllida to keep her from falling backward in a faint. Silly screamed, but the fairies, taking it for some banshee war-cry, lifted their own voices in wild yells and ululation. From all around Meg came the glorious sound of a thousand swords being drawn, that slick hiss of metal on metal, and the harsher sound as the fairies beat their weapons against shields or their own armor in a martial tattoo, and advanced upon their foe. The Midsummer War had begun.

  Now that she was committed, Meg was at a loss. Was that all the preliminary? Was she to go now and slay Bran if she could? He still stood there on the unravished summit as, all around the base and into the shadowed woods, Seelie fell upon Host and Host hacked at Seelie in a jumbled, disorganized melee. It was like the fairy dances, frenzied and, she would have said, joyous, were it not for the horrible things she saw going on all around her. She flinched as, to her left, a one-legged, one-armed, one-eyed member of the Black Prince’s court smashed a mace into a creature that looked a great deal like the Rookery brownie. Beyond them, several grimacing Redcaps had banded together to drag a knight of the Seelie Court off his rearing and foaming horse. They piled on top of him when he hit the ground, and she never saw what became of him.

  The Seelie Court was more than holding its own. Knights and ladies skilled in warfare charged through the ranks of the Host, lopping off heads and dealing deadly blows. But not a single weapon touched Meg, nor did the fairies seem at all aware of her. They had their battle to fight, the two humans theirs. Only once did a fairy pay her any mind. The Seelie prince, his sword blooded, reined in his horse at her side just as she’d decided the only thing for her to do was climb the hill and face Bran. He bent in his saddle, and for a moment his face shifted and he was the impish Gul Ghillie she knew so well. The sight reassured her somewhat.

  “Have no fear, Meg Morgan. This was meant to be, though I could not see it. There are others, perhaps, greater than you or I, who knew this would come to pass. Trust them. But trust more in yourself. I’ve seen you split a hempen thread at a hundred paces.”

  He galloped off with a savage cry before she could tell him that merely hitting her target wasn’t the problem. The problem was that the target was Bran. As fairies fell all around her, their strange blood like quicksilver on the wild thyme, Meg mounted the hill to her fate.

  For the first few steps she could still hear the fierce fighting just behind her, the clash of swords and cries of the wounded, and, scarcely heard but even more terrible, the low sounds of bones being crushed under bludgeons. She spared a thought for Dickie, somewhere out there, pursued (though perhaps not pursued anymore) by the Nuckelavee. There was bravery. In the moment of crisis, insignificant, ignored Dickie had shown his mettle and very likely given his own life for her sake. She didn’t know what made him do it, and was sure that she, in such circumstances, could never be capable of such heroism. She did not consider standing in Rowan’s place to be particularly heroic; it was simply something that had to be done. She did not realize that necessity lies at the heart of most bravery. In any case, she did not feel very courageous now. Her legs trembled so she could hardly negotiate the slope.

  As she walked, the sounds of battle grew dim behind her, until, halfway up the Green Hill, they were muffled to no more than the dull, constant roar of waves beating the strand. When she looked back, she found that a mist had settled over the lowlands, obscuring the fighters. None of them ventured up the hill. She and Bran were alone.

  The woods might be shrouded in fog, but the hill stood in unnatural clarity, vivid in an uncanny light. Bran recognized it as the twilight of the fairy kingdom beneath the Green Hill—never in sunshine, never dark, but existing always in an eerily bright half-light. Colors were too sharp, but outlines were muted, so everything seemed somehow less real, more beautiful than nature had made it. The thyme and pennyroyal Meg bruised beneath her feet were brighter than spring’s first leaves, and the leopard spots of the Hunter’s Bow glowed like radiant amber. The air itself seemed bright and sharp—they might have been submerged in an unrippled spring, or in a block of clearest quartz. Bran was the only dark thing on the hilltop, and he stood immobile, ax at his side, a pillar carved of wood.

  I could shoot him now, Meg thought. He’s standing plain in the open—it would be an easy shot. All the more so because at this distance she could not see his face through the shadows that seemed to cling to him. It would be just like hitting a target. Forget that he’s a man, forget that he’s even alive. Just place the arrow where you want it, as you have so many times before. Forget that he has suffered. Forget that he’s Phyllida’s father. Forget that he’s your own great-great-grandfather. Forget that he is tall and handsome and alive, so very alive, as you are now, as you hope to remain. And remember what Phyllida herself has said to you, that he will not hesitate to kill you, and what the Seelie prince said, that one of you must die this night.

  All of this she told herself as she stood midway up the Green Hill, looking at Bran, her opponent, her enemy. But she did not draw her bow.

  “There must be some other way,” she said aloud, and the air around her seemed to shiver, like a still pond when a minnow leaps for joy. Just because the same thing had happened every seven years didn’t mean it had to happen this time. This strange world might be in Meg’s blood, but a lifetime spent away from it, nurtured in Arcadia’s intellectual hills, deep pondering gorges, and lively skeptical streams, had taught her that tradition is only good to the extent that it makes people happy or serves a purpose. And history is not a course to be repeated but, rather, a litany of mistakes to help shape a better future. The gravity of ritual and the overwhelming force of the expectations of others had for a time stifled her powers of reasoning. She went along with all this—the Midsummer War, the kill-or-be-killed—because everyone around her seemed to assume that there was no other way. She forgot for a time that she was Meg Morgan, not a slave to tradition, not a pawn in this game between fairies and humans. With new strength, the strength not of a warrior but of a diplomat who is yet ready to fight should negotiations fail, she marched up to join Bran at the summit.

  They stood perhaps twenty feet apart, just enough so that Meg would have time to draw the
Hunter’s Bow to meet even the swiftest charge. Her bow was down, but there was still an arrow to the string and three fingers curled around it. She could fire a killing shot in an instant.

  Bran wore plated armor of some strange, darkly luminous metal, like silver when it tarnishes. A close-fitting helm capped his head, and his shaggy locks, escaping, curled back over it. The ax in his hand was wrapped in red-dyed cord, and the blade was flecked with a crusted, dark substance, for by tradition the Host weapon was never cleaned after it had done its job. Bran’s full mouth was set in a grim line, and as she neared he shifted his grip on the ax. Meg, sure that he was set to attack her, half drew her bow. Before she could fully raise it, she looked into the eyes of the man she would have to kill, expecting to find bloodlust there, something hard and stern and unfathomable to her. But there was only sorrow in Bran’s golden eyes, and something like the despair she felt herself. She lowered the Hunter’s Bow.

  “Why do you prolong it?” Bran said, his voice low and tight, lips scarcely moving. There was pain in that voice, but also a sort of savagery, like the pitiable beast caught in a snare. “Why didn’t you finish me from down there?” He gestured to the base of the hill with his ax, swinging it in a wide arc. Meg flinched and again raised her bow, but held her ground. “It would have been easier for both of us. We shouldn’t have to look into each other’s faces…at the end. Shoot! Now!”

  Meg looked at him without comprehension. Bran spread his arms wide and advanced on her. “This armor is nothing to a bow like yours. End it—now. Quickly, as you love me!”

  And then it dawned on her, as she watched Bran come nearer, his face a mask of anguish and bitter expectation. He had never betrayed them. He had not forsaken his family to regain the paradise he had lost. No, Bran served the Host only as willing sacrifice. To keep Rowan from being slain, he made sure the Host champion was the one man who would let himself be killed in the Midsummer War. Bran had fooled the Black Prince, who thought to purchase his services with a promise of rewards. Midsummer comes, and my time draws near…. Soon my pain will be ended. On Midsummer Night, I will know if such a price can buy me peace at last! His longing to return to the fairy world under the Green Hill was like a sharp-toothed beast gnawing at his vitals. He would indeed pay a great price to escape the daily suffering he endured. But the price was not slaying his kin. It was his own life. In death, he hoped to win the peace that he could not find in the dry, colorless world.

  “Bran…oh, Bran!” She could say no more.

  “Don’t hesitate, girl! Don’t think about it. Draw and shoot. There is no other way!” His armored chest was laid bare, and the Hunter’s Bow quivered in her hand.

  She steeled herself. “I won’t kill you. And if you won’t kill me, then there’s nothing they can do.” She glanced down to the battlefield at the foot of the hill, but she could see no signs of life. “We’ll just go down there and tell them. No one will die this year.” It seemed perfectly reasonable to her. After all, the fairies could not force them to do battle—despite what she had once believed.

  But Bran, to her amazement, only laughed grimly. “You think to change the order of things? You think the sacrifice will not be made merely because you say so? Even if we lay down our weapons now, one of us will die at dawn. My life is theirs, as is yours. At dawn, one of the eggs that hold our lives will be crushed.” (But my life isn’t in an egg, Meg thought. Only yours and Rowan’s. What will that mean in the end?) “It will be mine, for your will to live is strong. And then I will die a death more horrible than any your arrow can inflict. Kill me, Meg. Better to be slain cleanly by a friend than to have my life ripped away from me, my body torn apart by the rabble. I am not meant to see the dawn. Do me the kindness of letting me die as I wish, cut down by the Hunter’s Bow. It will be an easy death.”

  Meg, stunned by his words, backed up a pace. “I won’t…I can’t! I’ll tell Gul…I mean the Seelie prince. He’ll understand.”

  “Do you think they care for you, Meg Morgan? Or for me? We are nothing to them. We live for an instant in a brilliant flash, then fade away. What is that to one who will live as long as the earth itself? The war to them is only another bacchanal; they have no understanding of what it means to end a life, to fall at the hands of another. They ape our lives and our deaths down there, but it is no more than mummery. Come tomorrow, they’ll all be the same as ever.”

  “But…I saw them fighting. I saw fairies being killed.”

  “You saw what they wanted you to see—as we all do. In the fairy glamour, you saw a war, you saw Seelie and Host kill each other. But it’s no more real than a dream, Meg. No more real than…than the years I spent under the Green Hill. You and I are the only real things here. And soon it will only be you. There is no other way, child.” His eyes were suddenly kind and pitying.

  “It should have been your brother. You should have been spared this. But it does not matter now. Do what you must, Meg Morgan, and do it quickly.”

  “I won’t!”

  “One of us must die this night! Do it!”

  “No!”

  “Then I will give you no choice,” he whispered, and with a wild war-cry swung his weapon once around his head and then charged at Meg, ax poised to lop off her head.

  Her eyes were closed when she loosed the arrow, but her aim was true. She opened her lashes to a brilliant dawn, not knowing if she’d stood on the Green Hill a minute or a year. Before her lay Bran, pierced through the chest by a white-fletched arrow, his arms splayed wide, the fell ax on the grass near his lifeless hand. A black cloud rose from the direction of the Rookery, grim against the golden sky. The rooks were coming to the battleground.

  The Ash Is Hewn

  Six lords of the Seelie Court bore Bran’s body home. The Seelie prince himself carried the unconscious Meg in his arms and laid her in her bed. She’d collapsed as the first crows settled on the fairy remains strewn at the foot of the hill.

  Had she been awake, though, she would have seen a strange sight. Just a few minutes after dawn, as the survivors of the Midsummer War were regrouping, the corpses began to stir. Decapitated bodies groped the ground blindly in search of their missing heads. Fairies got into heated arguments about whose severed limbs were whose, and accused others of trying to get better arms and legs than they’d started out with. When body parts and owners were reunited, they snapped seamlessly back into place and worked as though they had never been sundered. Soon not even a bruise or a bent leaf on the ground indicated that there had been a fierce battle the night before. Bran was right. However terrible the war had seemed, it was in truth no more than a pantomime, a mockery of human life and death. The dead fairies were revivified, the injured healed, and all was exactly as it was before. Except for Bran.

  According to the custom of the countryside, they laid Bran on the dinner table, for in most farmer and shepherd households that (or the marriage bed) is the only furnishing stately enough to display a body. The fairies left them, and Phyllida and Lysander stripped Bran of his armor. With gentle hands, as though any roughness could hurt him, any pain reach him, his daughter worked the arrow free and bathed the wound. When the blood was wiped away, there was scarcely a mark, only a narrow slit on his left breast. It did not seem possible to Phyllida that so small a wound could cause the demise of a man as great as Bran. Even on the endless banqueting table, he seemed imposing. Even in death, there was grandeur to his body, power in limbs now pale. Her father, her mountain! He had been gone from her life those many years, and she’d not lost hope. But what hope was left to her now? She bent her head to his chest, and wept for a father twice lost to her.

  Upstairs, Meg was just coming around. At any other time, fainting would have been a matter for harshest ridicule. Now Silly was sympathetic and uncharacteristically tender with her sister. She petted her head and held her hand until Meg sat up and looked around. Silly expected her to burst into tears—and wouldn’t have blamed her. But though Meg’s face was ghastly, she did not weep. S
he felt drained and empty, too weary for words. If any emotion remained in her now it was anger—with possibly just a little relief when she remembered that Rowan’s life had been preserved.

  “Where is Rowan?” she asked.

  “In his room,” Silly said. “Asleep, or something like it. I shook him, but he wouldn’t wake up.”

  “Dreaming of his victory…,” Meg murmured, then, “Dickie! Oh…he…”

  “Dickie’s downstairs. His clothes are a mess, and he looks a little smug, but he’s fine other than that. What happened to him?”

  Meg told her the story as far as she knew it, from finding Lemman’s otter pelt to Dickie’s heroism. Silly was fascinated by the horrible Nuckelavee and utterly overcome by the thought of Dickie’s rash bravery. “And to think I’ve been making fun of him all this time, laughing at his sneezing and wheezing.” And she made a noble vow never to think badly of anyone again…a resolution she managed to keep exactly one day.

  “Did they bring Bran back here?” Meg asked.

  “Yes. He’s downstairs.”

  She swung her legs out of bed. “I’m going down to see him.” Silly caught her arm as she was leaving. “Don’t be too hard on yourself, Meggie. You did what you had to do.”

  “Did I? That doesn’t make it any better.”