Then the last piece of luggage found its place, the sun vanished, and they clattered down the stairs to supper.
Afterwards, they rearranged the vast drawing room, pulled chairs and couches and cushions taken from other rooms as close to the enormous fireplace as possible. They took turns reading out of ancient volumes they had discovered around the house: obscure poetry, a farmer’s journal, a collection of local folktales. Marwood Stokes, who had a fine and fruity voice, was reading about a pesky household hobgoblin whose tricks could drive people to leave their homes, and who would pack itself in among their possessions and follow them along to the next, when someone pounded at the door.
Ned, half-listening, heard Noakes’s footsteps on the flagstones, and then a brief exchange. Then the drawing room opened and there stood Bram Wilding, smiling genially upon them.
“Sorry I’m late.”
They all stared at him wordlessly. Then Adrian threw a cushion at him. “You weren’t invited, Wilding. Go away.”
“I know,” he said imperturbably. “I’ve got a room in the village. But I couldn’t let you have all the fun without me. Nor did I want my Boudicca out of sight, though I promise—” He held up his hand as Ned and Adrian protested vigorously and incomprehensibly at once. “I promise I won’t ask her to work as long as she is here.” He looked at her; she sat motionless in an old rocking chair, her face colorless and expressionless. “May I stay?” he asked her. “I only came to paint a landscape.”
She shifted slightly, let her hand slip beneath the chair arm to rest lightly on Ned’s shoulder, where he sat on a cushion beside her. “Here I am not Boudicca,” she said softly. “I am Emma Slade, whom you barely know. You are my brother Adrian’s friend; it is of no interest to me if you stay or go.”
“Oh, Adrian, let him stay,” Winifred, who hardly knew him, said kindly. “He has come so far. And country darkness is so—dark.”
Adrian cocked a brow at Bram. “If my sister says you go, you go. Is that agreed?”
Wilding bowed his head, added cheerfully, “I brought gifts of appeasement from the city. Bottles of brandy, baskets of fruit, and Valentine DeMorgan’s latest book of poetry, fresh from the press.”
They all exclaimed at that. “Produce it,” Coombe demanded. “Read and prove your worthiness.”
Mrs. Noakes put her head through the doorway. “Pardon me, Mr. Bonham, am I to make up another bed?”
“Mr. Wilding has a room in the village,” Ned said firmly.
“Oh, dear. Mr. Noakes misunderstood and sent the wagon on its way back to the village. Should he wait up, then, to take Mr. Wilding back?”
Ned sighed. “He’s liable to be waiting all night.” He hesitated a moment, then said tersely to Wilding, who was trying to look meek and penitent and not succeeding well at either, “You can stay tonight, if Mrs. Noakes can find you a bed.”
“There’s a narrow bed in an attic room,” Mrs. Noakes suggested doubtfully. “It leaks in the rain.”
“That sounds perfect.”
“You are too kind,” Wilding murmured.
“I,” Emma said, rising abruptly, “think I will say goodnight. I’m very tired. Come with me, Winifred?”
Her cousin joined her with a rather wistful glance back at the party and the fascinating newcomer. He smiled cordially at them, then stretched out on the carpet in front of the fire as the door closed behind them, and promptly began to read about a young woman wasting away from a broken heart as the violets He had given her withered before her eyes in their vase, a poem of such sweet and lugubrious melancholy that Wilding had most of the party weeping with laughter within a dozen lines. Adrian, sipping port and watching Wilding, did not find him amusing; nor did Ned.
But there was nothing to be done that night, and Emma, he reminded himself, might prefer to find her own ways of dealing with Wilding in the light of day.
Ned rose early, trying to be quiet as he gathered his sketchbook and watercolors and boots and took them all downstairs. As always, Mrs. Noakes was earlier; the sideboard was laden with hot tea and scones, boiled eggs, smoked salmon and sausages, and strawberries from the garden.
As Ned stood in his stockings, drinking scalding tea and eating a sausage with his fingers, the door opened and delighted him with the unexpected vision of Emma.
“I heard someone creep past my door, and looked to see who it was,” she said. “I hoped it might be you.”
She brought her sketchbook down as well, her pencil case and a broad, well-weathered hat. He happily poured her tea, brought it to her as she sat.
“I’m going down to the lake to see what I can make of the water and those rocky hills in the distance,” he said.
“Oh, good. I’ll come with you.”
“Yes.”
“We could take a boat,” she suggested eagerly. “Row out onto the water and draw. Shall we?” She rose, began filling the pockets of her painting smock with scones, strawberries wrapped in a napkin, and a couple of eggs. “Let’s go now before anyone else is up; the sun is rising and it’s so beautiful out there now.”
“All right,” he said, managing to gulp tea and put his boots on at the same time. Like children trying to be quiet, they only succeeded in dropping things and snorting with laughter as they made their way out of the house into the morning.
A low mist still hung over the lake, obscuring the water, but the clouds were fraying above their heads, and sunlight broke through from behind the hills, illumining the jagged slopes. Raindrops sparkled on every tree branch and grass blade. The air smelled of strawberries and bracken. Ned took deep, exuberant breaths of it as they made their way across the lawn toward the water. In the boathouse, someone moved. Noakes, Ned saw, as the old man raised a hand; he had probably brought the fishing gear down.
Emma came to a sudden stop, gripping Ned. “I saw something,” she breathed.
“That’s just Noakes.”
“No, something in the mist—something white moving across the water.”
“A wild swan, maybe.”
“Maybe.” She started moving again, her long strides free and confident, he saw, when she was in the open. Sunlight touched her hair, turned it into an aura of gold around her face, and his breath caught. Entranced, he stood still, watching her move across the morning. Missing him, she turned, laughing, walking backwards and beckoning him on.
Then her face changed, became guarded, inexpressive; he guessed at what she had seen behind him and sighed.
He turned. Wilding, his own steps lithe and quick, was gaining on them. He, too, had a sketchbook under his arm, a pencil case in his pocket.
“Good morning,” he called cheerfully.
“It was,” Ned muttered. Emma had already started on her way again, firmly ignoring the interloper. She went down the path to the boathouse, causing Wilding to ask promptly when he caught up with Ned, “Are you rowing out? What a splendid idea.” He clapped Ned lightly, irritatingly on the shoulder, his eyes following Emma. “Thanks for the bed, by the way. Creaky thing; my feet hung over the end. But amusing.” He had continued his brisk walk before he finished talking, leaving Ned in his wake. “I just need a word with Miss Slade—”
“Wilding!” Ned protested, hurrying after him. “She came here to rest.”
“I know,” Wilding called soothingly over his shoulder. “I know. Miss Slade!”
She didn’t answer. She had nearly reached the lake, where the mist, beginning to burn off, revealed reeds near the boathouse, a strip of water, and a flock of baby ducks paddling after their mother. Ned, flushed and angry, caught up with Wilding, nearly plowing into him as Wilding stopped abruptly.
“Look at that,” he said breathlessly.
Nick, seeing for the moment only Wilding’s excellently tailored back, stepped aside and looked over his shoulder.
A horse as white as the mist stood on the shoreline. Emma had seen it, too; she walked toward it slowly, one hand outstretched. Ned heard her speaking to it, half-laughing, half-crooni
ng, and remembered the country girl she was, raised among all kinds of creatures and not likely to be afraid of a wild pony.
It looked quite a bit bigger than the local hill ponies; Ned wondered if it had escaped from someone’s pasture. It stood very still, watching Emma come, mist snorting out of its nostrils. It looked like a hunter, Ned guessed, realizing how big it was as Emma, his rangy goddess, moved closer to it.
“It’s perfect,” Wilding whispered.
“What?”
“I wanted a horse just like that to put behind Boudicca.”
“Good. You’ve found it. You paint it while Miss Slade and I go rowing.”
“No, I need her—” He started walking again, calling, “Miss Slade!”
She shook her head as though at a midge. The horse nuzzled her fingers; she stepped closer, running her hands along its mane. Wilding, hurrying so quickly he was nearly running, cried her name again.
“Miss Slade!”
She glanced at him finally, her face set and colorless. Then someone else shouted—Noakes, who never raised his voice. She gripped the thick mane, pulled herself up as she must have done countless times as a child, riding the placid farm horses bareback, with an eye-catching flash of knee above her boot before she settled her skirts.
The horse gathered its muscles, turned, and leaped so cleanly into the mist over the lake that Ned did not hear a sound from the water, and the hatchling ducks floated serenely by, undisturbed. The silence seemed to spread over the world, through Ned’s heart; he couldn’t find a word, a sound, for what he had seen. Beside him, Wilding was as still; he didn’t breathe.
Only Noakes made noises, dropping something with a clatter, calling incoherently and puffing as he ran out of the boathouse. He stared at the quiet water and cried again, a shocked, harsh noise. Ned moved then, trembling, stumbling, his heart trying to outrace him as he reached the boathouse.
“Noakes—” he said, gripping the old man. “Noakes—”
“What was—What happened?” Wilding demanded raggedly.
“We must go out there—You take one boat, Noakes, we’ll take the other—Hurry!”
“No time to hurry,” Noakes said, wiping his twitching face. “No place to hurry to. Never,” he added in a whisper, “saw that before in my long life. Heard about them but never thought I’d live to see one.”
“One what?” Ned cried.
“Kelpie,” Noakes said. He wiped at his brow, trembling, too; his cap fell on the ground. “I’m sorry, lad.”
“Kelpie—What’s a kelpie?” Ned asked wildly.
“What you saw. That white horse. A water sprite. No mercy in them. They lure you onto their backs with their beauty, they carry you into the water, and then—and that’s the end.”
“What end?” Wilding asked sharply.
The old eyes, gray as the water, gazed back at Ned with a sheen of tears over them. “In all the tales I ever heard, you drown.”
Emma, after the first gasp of shock from the horse’s sudden plunge into the cold water, was holding her breath. They were going down, she realized, down and down, deeper than the shallows of the lake had any right to be. She had slid off the horse’s back, but her fingers were still locked into its mane. Water weeds trailed past her, and schools of startled fish. The horse, which was behaving like no horse she had ever met in her life, dragged her ruthlessly. It galloped in water effortlessly; she was as buffeted, roiling around its body, as she would have been on land. Sometimes, flung over its outstretched head, she glimpsed a black, wicked eye, a widened nostril, its great muscular neck snaked out, teeth bared. It shook its head now and then, trying to loosen her grip, she thought; she only clung tighter, her lungs on fire, her eyes strained open, round and staring like a fish’s, unable not to look at what could not be possible.
If I must breathe, so must it, was her only coherent thought; she clung to that as well, ignoring all the implications of the horse’s magic. Beneath that thought lay a confused impulse, a fragment from some fairy tale or another, the only thing shaken to the surface of her mind as the monstrous horse surged into impossible depths and she twisted in the water like an eel clamped to a writhing fish.
Don’t let go.
And then the pain spilled through her, burst out of her until it must have filled the world, for she felt nothing else, not water nor motion nor the coarse mane, long and wet as sea grass, in her fingers. She closed her eyes at last, and drowned in pain.
She woke again, at which she felt vaguely surprised. Drenched and limp as a bundle of beached sea kelp, she lay on sand in what must have been the bottom of the world. A hollow of rock rose around her; a cave, holding air like a bubble. Beyond it, she saw the gray-green glimmer of water, shadowy things moving among trailing weeds.
The great horse loomed over her, its long white head with its onyx eyes and great dark nostrils swooping down as though to bite. Its mouth stopped an inch from her cheek. It only scented her, once, fastidiously, as though it were uncertain what she was.
“Am I dead?” she asked. Her voice had no more strength than a tendril of water moss.
“You should be,” its eye told her, or its thoughts; she couldn’t tell exactly where the voice came from.
She sat up slowly, pulling herself together in piecemeal fashion, bone by bone off the fine white sand. It crusted her hair, her clothes; she tasted it on her lips. The horse backed, stood watching her motionlessly. She saw a glimmering, moving reflection in its eye, and turned stiffly; her bones might have been there for centuries, they felt that creaky.
A man entered the cave. Some manlike creature, at any rate, if not truly mortal. His skin seemed opalescent, wavery gray-green, like the water; his green hair floated like sea-grass around his head. He wore a coronet of gold and pearl and darkly gleaming mother-of-pearl. In his tall grace and beauty, in his eyes the shade of blue-black nacre, he bore a startling resemblance to Bram Wilding.
She sighed. “Out of the frying pan...” she whispered. Her throat hurt, as though she had tried to scream under water. “Who are you?”
He gave her a look she couldn’t fathom before he spoke. “You are in my realm,” he answered, a lilt in his voice like the lap of waves against the shore. “This water is my kingdom.”
“How do you understand me?” she asked with wonder.
“I am as old as this water. I have been hearing the sounds that mortals make since before they learned to speak.”
“What happens now?”
He gave a very human shrug. “I have no idea.” She stared at him. “No one has ever ridden my kelpie and lived.”
“I’m still alive?”
“So it seems.”
“I wasn’t sure. I feel as though I have gotten lost in someone else’s dream. Why did the kelpie come to kill me?”
“It’s the way of things,” he answered simply. “To ride the kelpie is to drown.”
“But I didn’t.”
“No.”
She thought a moment; her mind felt heavy, sluggish with water, thoughts as elusive as minnows. “You could,” she suggested finally, “have the kelpie take me back.”
He scratched a brow with a green thumbnail; a tiny snail drifted out. “I could just leave you in here; you would die eventually. But the kelpie kills, not I. Perhaps you were not meant to die. Every other mortal dragged underwater lets go of the kelpie to swim. It swims too deep, too quickly; they can never reach the surface again before they drown. But you would not let go.”
“I think I got my tales confused,” she answered fuzzily.
“Are there rules for such things?” the lake king asked curiously. “What happens in other tales at times like this?”
She tried to remember. Her childhood seemed very distant, on the far side of the boundary between water and air, stone and light. Inspiration struck; she felt absurdly pleased. “We might bargain,” she told him. “You could ask me for something in return for my life.”
He grunted. “What could you possibly have that I m
ight want?”
She felt into the pockets of her smock, came up with a soggy handkerchief, some crumbled charcoal, sand, an unfortunate carp, a few crushed strawberries. “Oh,” she breathed, a sudden flame searing her throat.
“What is that?” the lake king asked.
“It was part of our breakfast.”
“No. Not that in your hand. That in your voice, your eye.”
She blinked and it fell. “A tear,” she told him. “I just remembered how happy we were, running out into the morning. We were going to row onto the lake, eat scones and strawberries, paint the world. And then Wilding came. And then the kelpie. And now here I am, and Mr. Bonham might as well be on the moon for all we can see of one another.” She wiped away another tear. “He must think I am dead. In no conceivable circumstances would it occur to him that I might be sitting in a cave under water talking to the king of the lake.”
The king came to kneel beside her, his eyes like the kelpie’s, wild and alien, as he studied her.
“You have words I don’t know,” he said. “I hear them in your voice. What are they?”
“Sorrow,” she told him, her voice trembling. “Joy. Eagerness. Dislike. Astonishment. Anger. Love.”
“Are they valuable?”
“As air.”
He was silent, his strange eyes fixed on her, his beautiful underwater face so like and unlike Wilding’s it made her want to laugh and weep with rage: even there, that far beyond the known world, she could not get away from him.
“Give me those words,” the lake king said, “and I will send you back.”
She gazed at him mutely, wondering at the extraordinary demand; it was as though a trout had asked her to define joy. Slowly, haltingly, having no other way but words in that underwater world to explain such things, she began a tale. She started with her brother, and then Bram Wilding came into it, and then painting, and Boudicca, and the women’s studio, and Edward Eustace Bonham, and how he and she had so unexpectedly fallen together into the depths of a word. All that had made her understand the words the lake king had heard in her voice, she told him, having no idea how much he understood, and not daring to hope that they might be worth more to him than a handful of pretty pebbles she might have picked up on the shore and lightly tossed into his realm.
Wonders of the Invisible World Page 8