Under the Green Hill

by Laura L. Sullivan

  Meg crept quietly into the room where Phyllida was still bent over Bran’s body. I did that, a little voice chastised her. That terrible thing…I did that. But he would have killed me. No, he wouldn’t have. But I killed him. The guilt of a child obeying its elders or a soldier following orders is particularly poignant.

  Meg made a little sound, and Phyllida turned, flinching like a frightened animal. How can I look at her and not hate her? Phyllida thought. And yet how can I look at her and not thank the powers that she’s alive? Meg stood at her side, mourner and victor, and looked down at the lifeless man, wondering, as all do when a vital thing grows still, whether it was not some illusion. Oh, if only it were another fairy glamour, Meg thought.

  “I wonder…,” Phyllida began softly, but trailed off.

  “What do you wonder?” Meg asked.

  Phyllida said, as if talking to herself, “I wonder if it would have been best to leave him where he was. He was happy under the Green Hill. His return brought happiness only to me. He found none himself.”

  She fell silent, and after a time, unbidden, Meg told her the day’s tale. Phyllida was momentarily roused from her sorrow when she heard of Lemman’s restoration to fairyhood. “Bewitched the boy, did she?” Phyllida said with the barest glimmer of a smile. “And now he dreams that his deed is done. Has she gone? I’d like to see her, to wish her well. But no doubt she’s eager to quit this place.” She dabbed at her eyes with a handkerchief embroidered with thistle heads, and pulled herself away from Bran’s body with some effort. By force of will, she became at once practical and businesslike. She was the Lady of the Rookery, the Guardian, and she had duties to do.

  “Get Silly and James, and Rowan if you can rouse him, and come to the ash grove. We must cut down Bran’s ash tree.”

  Rowan slept on, a faint smile on his face, and though Meg was somewhat alarmed that she couldn’t wake him, he seemed otherwise healthy. Part of Lemman’s glamour, Meg thought, and assumed it would wear off eventually. She gathered Silly and James, and on the way found Dickie. Since he’d played such a vital part in the previous night, she asked him to come along.

  “How did you get away from the Nuckelavee?” Silly asked him. “It sounds terrible.”

  But Dickie shrugged it off as if it were no great matter. “Nothing’s so bad if you know what its weaknesses are. A Nuckelavee can’t cross freshwater, ’specially if it flows south. They come from the ocean, you know. This one must have taken quite a circuitous route to get here without crossing any. Anyway, I just ran until I came to the stream—which happens to flow south at that point—and then thumbed my nose at him from the other side. My friend Tim Tom was there. He’s a Urisk. He doesn’t look like much, but the Nuckelavee seemed to be afraid of him. Tim Tom sprang across the stream, and the Nuckelavee galloped away. Nothing to worry about, really.” Still, he basked under Silly’s admiring gaze.

  They met Phyllida on the lawn by the ash grove, and stood with her until Lysander strode from the shed with an ax that reminded Meg unpleasantly of the past night. But this one was heftier—a woodsman’s ax, with a thicker, duller head and a wooden haft worn smooth in the shape of Lysander’s hands, which were nearly as strong at eighty-six as they had been at twenty. He presented himself before Bran’s ash tree as though it were a person, taking off his hat and bowing.

  “Bran is felled!” he called. Did the mighty tree tremble, or was it only the morning breeze that made its limbs quake? “Bran is hewn! Bran is dead!” And he raised his ax to smite the tree that was Bran’s partner, that held a piece of his life.

  But the ax never fell. Even in the bright morning sunshine, a new radiance was seen, pale gold and glowing as it came from the forest. Lemman walked like a wood goddess, a serene divinity come to ease their woe. For there was no doubt in the minds of those who saw her that any pain would be lessened, any trouble made lighter, just by her presence. Lysander froze at the sight of her.

  “Stay your hand,” she said. There was a gentle smile on her lips, as though she had an amusing secret she thought she might share. “Would you deny Bran his last chance at life?”

  Phyllida stepped forward. “Bran was killed at the Midsummer War, slain by the Hunter’s Bow. His body lies within the Rookery.”

  Lemman looked at Phyllida with mingled kindness and pity. “Ah, Phyllida! In all your years as the Guardian, haven’t you learned that things are not always quite as they seem?”

  “But he’s dead, Lemman! He’s been dead for hours. I tell you, he lies in the Rookery, and now his ash must be cut down.” She felt as though Lemman was mocking her.

  “But how can he be dead, good Guardian, if the egg that holds his life is yet unbroken?”

  “That cannot be,” Phyllida insisted. “It was broken at dawn, pushed from the nest by the bird that hatched from the other egg.”

  Lemman laughed, and the sound filled Meg with unlooked-for hope. “The two courts are in a tizzy, running mad through the woods!” Lemman said. “Never has such a thing happened. This child has stirred things up to no end, and now the cauldron bubbles over.” She blessed Meg with a smile. “The white-feathered life-egg keeper has fled the country in disgrace.”

  “What do you mean?” Phyllida asked, knowing, but unwilling to let false hope tear at her heart.

  “The two life-eggs can’t be found!” Lemman cried, joyous at the joke. “The keeper’s friend Micawber swears they were fine the day before the Midsummer War. The White-Handed Birch Lady says nothing, though I think she must have been asleep. Someone made off with the eggs, and the ritual cannot be completed. Though his body lies dead, Bran’s life is held…somewhere. Who can say where? If his body and his life can be united, then it must be that Bran will live again. Even the laws of the fairies must bend to the laws of nature. He is not really dead as long as his life is preserved in the egg.”

  “Rowan’s life is in an egg, too,” Meg said. “When I took his place, it happened so fast—weren’t they supposed to put my life in an egg? What’s to become of Rowan now?”

  At this, the faintest line appeared on Lemman’s brow. “A life-egg only hatches when one wins the Midsummer War—then the bird flies back to the body, and the person is whole again. Now both eggs are in limbo. If Rowan’s is broken before it is returned to him, he will die.”

  Meg stifled a cry in her hand. Would it come to this, that, despite the sacrifices, she would lose them both? “Where could they be? Who would take them?”

  “Even the fairies do not know, though they search the woods now. The only thing certain is that Rowan’s egg is yet whole, for he lives, though he sleeps between life and death. The charm I laid on him is passed, and now a greater spell holds him. His egg at least must be found, lest two are sacrificed in the Midsummer War.”

  “We’ll find both of them,” Phyllida said resolutely. All traces of tears were gone. She was a woman of action again. Bran was not dead, any more than when he’d lived under the Green Hill. For the moment he was out of her reach, but now that she knew there was a chance to win him back, no force on earth could stop her.

  Let the eggs be discovered! Meg thought desperately. Let my terrible deed be undone!

  “How can we find them?” Luck had brought her Lemman’s otter pelt, but who could find two tiny eggs in all the world?

  “The fairies search the forest,” Phyllida said. “If they get the egg first, won’t they…?” She looked to Lemman.

  “Yes. According to the rites of the centuries, they will break Bran’s egg, and he will pass forever into unknown places. But Rowan’s egg they will return, for his life is no longer forfeit.”

  “Will you help us, Lemman?” Phyllida asked, beseeching.

  “What I can do, will be done,” Lemman said. “In return for the kindness you have shown me in my captivity. But should my people find the eggs first, it will be as I have said. So it has always been.”

  “I’m sick of things being the way they’ve always been!” Meg shouted suddenly, and glared fierc
ely at Lemman, as representative of all her folk. Meg stormed off to the house. What could she do? How could she find them where all the fairies had thus far failed?

  As she went through the Rookery, she slammed as many doors as she could. This made her feel a lot better for a little while. She had to do something to feel as though she was helping, but she really had no idea where to begin. She was on the verge of frustrated tears again when Finn, roused by the commotion, poked his head around the corner.

  “’Sup, Meg? Skin yer knee? Didn’t get invited to the fairy ball?” But she shot him a look of such ferocity that he sobered and asked her, with more sincerity than he generally displayed, what ailed her. Another time, she might have been softened by any genuine interest from Finn, but on that day she snapped at him.

  “Get out of my way! I’m looking for something!” She tried to shove past him—though there was really no more reason to look in that room than any other—but he blocked her path.

  “What are you looking for?” Anything she was that upset about was bound to be good.

  “None of your business! Shove off!” Still he stood in her way, and asked her again.

  She had enough self-control not to hit him. When she had tried twice more to sidestep him and failed, she finally said, just to get rid of him, “Two eggs. I’m looking for two eggs, okay? Now, get out of my way!” Here she did give in to some violence and pushed him, then ran past him into the downstairs library, where she hastily scanned every shelf without hope. She was about to run to the next room—she’d likely have searched every room in the Rookery until she collapsed from nervous exhaustion—but, once again, Finn barred her path.

  “Two eggs?” he asked, and there was something in his voice, a certain slyness to his face, that brought her up short.

  “What do you know?” she demanded, her body taut and her little face tense.

  “Oh…well…there’s eggs in the kitchen, and eggs in the henhouse….”

  “Finn!”

  “Making an omelet? Soufflé?”

  “Finn, please! Do you know where the eggs are? One’s speckled brown, and the other’s…Oh, I don’t know what the other one looks like, but they were out in Gladysmere Woods, in…in a birch tree, I think. Oh, Finn, if you know, you have to tell me. Rowan’s life depends on it. And Bran…he…he’s…”

  Rowan’s life depends on it, eh? Of course Finn took this metaphorically. And Bran? How did he fit in? Well, anything he could do to hurt Bran was all to the good. He hadn’t been in the dining hall that morning.

  “I don’t think I know anything about those eggs,” he said.

  “I’ll do anything!” Meg said desperately. “I’ll give you anything—anything at all! I need to find those eggs!”

  Finn was exactly where he liked to be—in a position of power. Now, what could he get in exchange for some rotten old eggs? The Morgans didn’t have any possessions he coveted, nor could he at the moment think of any suitably humiliating task for Meg to perform. Then something marvelous occurred to him. He’d found a hundred times more fairies than all the Morgans put together, for, as far as he knew, they’d never seen any after that first night. But they’d bested him in one way—they’d viewed the Green Hill. That was what he longed for—no man can get the barest glimpse of the Seelie queen and not burn for another sight of her. The weeks of searching, though they might have brought him geographically near the Green Hill, had afforded Finn no view of it. But the Morgans must know where it is.

  “Take me to the Green Hill,” Finn said.

  Meg was momentarily shocked out of her worry about the eggs. “What do you know about the Green Hill?” she asked him.

  He chuckled. “Oh, plenty. I know plenty about all the fairies. I’ve seen hundreds of ’em!” Gloatingly, he told her about the seeing ointment and all it had revealed. “And you thought you could keep it all from me. Ha! No one keeps a secret from Finn Fachan—not for long. And maybe, just maybe, I’ll let you use some of the ointment. But I won’t tell you how to make it. That’s my secret.”

  If he was expecting her amazement to last, Finn was doomed to disappointment. Once she was over the initial surprise that he knew anything about the fairies, she was not particularly impressed. After all, she had, in the past night, seen far more fairies than she cared to, and would be just as happy never to see another as long as she lived. Finn felt momentarily crushed. Though he’d never admit it, the primary goal of his existence had become impressing the Morgans.

  “If you ever want to see those eggs again, you better take me to the Green Hill.”

  Meg, though she was desperate, equivocated. “I don’t think that’s a good idea, Finn. The fairies don’t like spies. They might do something nasty to you if you see the hill without their permission.”

  “None of the other fairies cared. They didn’t even know I could see them. Come on, do you want the eggs or not? If you don’t take me I’ll break ’em.”

  Meg looked panic-stricken, and Finn knew he’d won. “I’ll take you,” she said slowly. “But don’t blame me if something happens.” The maternal instinct that arises in some girls years before they ever become mothers told her not to take him to the Green Hill. But those instincts were more strongly telling her to protect Rowan and save Bran, and she decided that if Finn wanted to play the fool he must chance the consequences.

  “All right, then, where are the eggs?” Meg said. Finn laughed at her.

  “Oh no, Meggie—not as easy as that. D’you think I’m stupid?” She didn’t deny it.

  “You take me to the Green Hill first, and when we get there, I’ll tell you where the eggs are.”

  “You really will? You promise?”

  He shrugged. “You’ll find out when we get to the Green Hill.” Somehow, this reassured her. She would have been uneasy if he’d tried to swear his honesty. When people insist too vigorously that they’ll be honorable, it generally means they’re plotting treachery.

  “Just tell me—are the eggs safe?”

  “Safe and sound. Why are they so important to you?”

  She couldn’t tell him the truth, and stammered a story that sounded plausible.

  “Rowan stole them, and there’ll be trouble if he doesn’t give them back.” If not for the sore temptation of the Green Hill, Finn would have left Rowan to his troubles. But alas, he thought, some sacrifices have to be made for the greater reward.

  They slipped out of the Rookery, and Meg led him through Gladysmere Woods to the Green Hill. It stood bare before his eyes, and didn’t look very impressive. A wren darting low above the slope was the only sign of life. But in his pocket was a little jar of seeing ointment, and soon, he thought, the fairy court in all its finery would appear to him. He imagined himself being welcomed by fairy ladies, praised for his courage and ingenuity in finding their lair, rewarded with secrets and treasures….

  “Where are the eggs?”

  “In a mousehole in a little room on the fourth floor.”

  “Which one?”

  “Which mousehole?”

  “Which room!”

  “I don’t know. It’s a nasty, dusty little place. Oh, I remember—the pear tree is right below it. You know, the one that climbs against the wall—”

  That was all Meg needed. She took off back to the Rookery at a run.

  Twenty minutes later, Meg held the two eggs in her cupped palms—Rowan’s speckled and Bran’s blue. There in her hands lay the lives of two men.

  As she rose from the dusty floor before the garret mousehole, she was seized by an unreasoning fear: What if I drop them? What if some stupid accident crushes their life-eggs? The stairs she’d run up so heedlessly were suddenly a deathtrap, a hundred edges and corners to trip her and send the eggs flying. Now that the eggs were in her hands, she was paralyzed with the fear of her own failings. She looked down at her feet, knowing they could stumble; she looked at her hands, rough and scratched, with broken nails, and thought they were not delicate enough, not sure enough, to carry such
a precious cargo. What if some tragedy should befall them on the short journey to Phyllida? Was the world really so arbitrary? She feared it was.

  “Get ahold of yourself, Meg!” she said aloud. She’d done the impossible—found the eggs. Now all that remained was to walk down the stairs and tell Phyllida. Her knees were shaking with the first steps, but her body had a bit more confidence than her mind and had no trouble walking slowly down three flights.

  “We’ll do Rowan first,” Phyllida said when Meg, sticking her tongue out for balance, found her beside Bran’s body. “Life is more important to the living.” Silly, springing around the corner and seeing her sister’s success, rushed to hug her, but Meg cringed away with a look of horror and a little scream. “The eggs!” she cried, just as Dickie pulled Silly back.

  “Here, give them to me,” Phyllida said, and it was a relief for Meg to turn over the responsibility to those strong, certain hands. They climbed back up to Rowan’s room.

  Rowan lay as the old knights lay in their crypts, decked in the armor that had shielded them in life, each with his sword, his constant companion, folded in his arms in place of a lily. Rowan’s face was very pale and his breathing shallow, but even in that limbo between life and death, he dreamed of his imagined victory, and a faint smile touched his lips. As they entered his room, Lemman appeared at his bedside and bent over him, touching his brow.

  “He is strong,” she said. “There is no question he will live. But word has spread among my people that the eggs have been found, and they send a delegation to see that the custom is followed, that the old ways are heeded.”

  “You mean—”

  “I mean that they come to take Bran’s life-egg from you, by force if necessary, and dash it to the ground, as should have been done at the first light of dawn. The Midsummer War calls for a death.” She frowned, fierce and lovely. “I cannot say what will come to pass in this world if there is no sacrifice. Blood has been spilled on the Green Hill, and that may be enough. As long as one has killed, and one has died, who can say if it matters that he is restored to life the next day? Perhaps that will cast a spell even greater than death would bring. If I knew my duty, I’d take that egg from you myself.”