Spell Hunter fr-1

by R. J. Anderson

  But the only noise Knife heard was the song of a distant thrush, and through the branches she glimpsed nothing but an empty stretch of gravel. Awkwardly she rose, one hand clasping the diary against her chest, and slipped out of the cover of the shrubbery. She hurried along the back of the house and around the corner to Paul’s car.

  But the door was locked, and Paul had the keys. She would just have to brazen it out, and pretend to be an ordinary visitor-albeit a strangely dressed one-while she waited for Paul to finish the tour.

  Knife brushed the gravel from her knees, combed her hair with her fingers, and took Heather’s diary out of the bottom of her tunic. Then with all the casualness she could muster she walked to the nearest bench, sat down, and began to read.

  “Knife?”

  Paul didn’t just sound surprised; he sounded thunder-struck. Caught off guard, Knife leaped to her feet and blurted the first thing that came into her head: “I’m sorry.”

  “But…how did you do it?” he asked. “I thought you’d used up all your magic.”

  “So did I. But I was trying to get the diary and it just”-she waved a hand at herself-“happened.”

  Paul’s eyes traveled down her body to the book in her hand. “Well, you’ve got what you came for, at least,” he said. “Did you find out anything useful?”

  “Not yet,” Knife admitted, watching him unlock the car and begin transferring himself and his wheelchair inside. “So far she’s just been meeting people and going to balls and such. What about you?”

  “They had a terrific collection of Dutch masters,” said Paul with enthusiasm as she climbed in beside him. “And a couple more Wrenfield paintings, including a portrait of a woman named Jane Nesmith. The guide was telling us-” He glanced at Knife, who had opened the diary again. “Well, never mind. You want to read.”

  “It’s all right,” said Knife, leafing through the pages to find where she had left off. “What were you saying?”

  “About this woman Jane. Seems that Wrenfield caught sight of her on the street and decided he had to paint her, and soon she became his favorite model and eventually his mistress. She was with him for three years, and during that time he turned out more and better paintings than ever before. But when she left, he fell apart.”

  “Why did she leave?” asked Knife.

  “Nobody knows.” He turned the key, and began backing out of the parking space onto the drive. “Some historians believe that Wrenfield was unfaithful, or that Jane herself found another lover. Others think he beat her-his temper was legendary. There’s even a theory that he’d started taking laudanum already, was useless half the time, and that his most successful paintings were actually finished by Jane.” He gave a flickering grin. “I like that one, though I’m not sure I believe it. But there’s no doubt that after she disappeared, Wrenfield was never the same again.”

  “I see,” said Knife absently, and turned another page.

  “The one thing nobody has been able to figure out, though,” Paul went on as they headed down the tree-lined lane, “is why he started painting faeries-”

  “Oh!” said Knife.

  “What is it?”

  Knife lowered the book, staring out the car’s front window at the distant roadway. “She’s just met Philip Waverley.”

  “Really,” said Paul. “What does she say about him?” Everyone speaks well of him; his manner is most pleasant, and he shows not the least inclination to melancholy or ill-temper; I would scarcely have known him for a poet, but in truth he is a very fine one. He gave me a copy of his Sonnets on an English Garden, and I have been carrying it about with me ever since…

  “She likes his poetry,” Knife replied in a distracted tone, finding it difficult to read and talk at the same time, “and she hopes they’ll meet again so they can talk about it.” She was silent then, absorbed in her reading, until Paul said, “And did she?”

  “What? Oh-yes. Quite a few times, actually.” She read a few more paragraphs, then added slowly, “It looks like they’ve become…friends.”

  “You sound surprised,” said Paul.

  Knife gave a wan smile. “I suppose I am.” She had thought that her friendship with Paul was something special, perhaps even unique in the Oak’s history. But if Heather had been able to talk to Philip in a similar way, then perhaps humans and faeries were more alike than she had supposed…and she wasn’t quite sure how she felt about that. I am overwhelmed with roses-Lily declares that she has never seen such handsome ones, and their fragrance lingers about me as I write. They were brought to my door this morning by a little messenger boy, bright as a robin, who bowed prettily and presented me with a card:

  Receive this gift, O gentle Muse,

  And Heaven’s poetry peruse;

  For mortal tongue can ne’er compose

  A sonnet sweeter than a rose. Which is not perhaps quite up to Mr. Waverley’s usual standard, but I am very well pleased, nonetheless.

  “So what’s happening now?” prompted Paul.

  “She’s…started writing poems,” said Knife, looking at the next page, which was full of crossed-out lines and lists of rhyming words. “Her own, I mean, not his.”

  “So you were right,” Paul said, nudging her with an elbow. “About your people borrowing creativity from us, I mean.”

  “Yes, but…” Knife edged away from him, unaccountably flustered. “I’m still not sure why she’s there, or how what she’s doing is supposed to help the Oak. I mean, writing poetry is all very well, but what use is it?”

  “You could say the same thing about art,” said Paul.

  “I know,” said Knife, “but that’s not what I meant, not exactly-” Her eyes traveled down the page as she spoke, and all at once she broke off, fingers clenching around the diary. “No,” she breathed. “No, no, no…”

  “What?” asked Paul sharply, but Knife could not bring herself to answer. For all my hopes and ambitions, my eagerness to be of service to the Oak, I never thought it should come to this: Philip Waverley has asked me to become his wife. And I…

  This was madness. It was a mistake. It simply couldn’t be. And yet even before she turned the page, Knife knew what she would find there:…I have accepted him.

  Eighteen

  Knife’s cheeks flamed, and her hands shook beneath the diary’s slight weight. More than anything she wanted to slap the book shut and fling it away from her, but it was too late: Heather’s words had seared into her mind, and nothing could make her forget them.

  Was this really how the Oakenfolk of Heather’s day had repaid their human benefactors-by pledging their own bodies and souls to them in marriage? But Philip Waverley had not known himself to be marrying a faery; he thought Heather was a woman of his own kind. Had Heather been prepared to spend a human lifetime keeping up that illusion? Did she really think the gift of poetry that Philip had given her, or even the pleasure of his friendship, was worth so great a sacrifice?

  It was no use speculating. She had to know. Shutting out Paul’s curious look, the drone of the engine and the tree-dotted hillsides flashing by, Knife hunched over the diary and began turning pages as quickly as she could read them.

  Heather was true to her word: She soon married Philip, and came to live with him at Waverley Hall. With her by his side his poetic gift flourished, and near the end of their first year together, Heather wrote: I dared not speak of it until I was certain, but now there can be no doubt. I am with child: a human child, a son. How delighted Philip will be!

  Knife put a hand to her temple, feeling her pulse drumming against her fingertips. That a faery might conceive a human’s child, carry it in her own body, and give birth to it without dying-she had never even imagined such a thing could be possible. Yet Heather seemed to think it perfectly natural, and in all this time, she had never once mentioned eggs…

  Feverishly Knife leafed through the second half of the diary, skimming over the birth of Heather’s son, James, and several months of motherly anecdotes, until she came
to this: I have done a thing I believed I should never do; yet in my heart I knew it was right, indeed that it was meant to be so. Tonight I have cast myself upon Philip’s mercy, and told him everything. He knows now that his beloved wife and Muse is in truth a faery; he knows that his daughter, also faery, grows within me unseen; and he also knows that I must return to the Oak before she is born, for no infant with wings and magic can thrive apart from the protection and guidance of her own kind-things that I in my human guise cannot give her. My dear Philip bore all this in silence, though I could see that he was shaken to his very marrow. It was not that he could not believe me, for I took pains to be sure that he did; yet even my promise to return to Waverley once our daughter was safely delivered seemed to bring him little comfort. At length I ended my confession, and cast myself in tears upon his feet. I feared that he might disown me then, and banish me from his presence; yet by the Gardener’s mercy he did not hesitate to lift me up and enfold me in his arms. I knew then that despite all, my husband had not ceased to love me; and that such faithfulness must not go unrewarded…

  “I think,” said Paul to the air at large, “that I ought to get some sort of medal for patience.”

  All at once the car seemed far too small, and Knife could not bear to look at him. She leaned against the passenger door, pressing her forehead to the sun-warmed glass. “I’m sorry,” she said. “It’s too much. I can’t talk about it. I can’t.”

  Silence. She glanced back, saw the rigid set of his jaw and the way his hands had tightened on the wheel, and knew that she had hurt him.

  “It’s not you,” she added hastily. “I trust you. It’s just-”

  Just that everything she had believed about faeries and humans, even about Paul and herself, was wrong. She had thought that they could comfortably go on being friends forever. But now that she knew what might have been, what should have been if not for the Sundering, how could she ever be at ease with him again?

  Paul sighed. “Look, it’s all right. It’s only curiosity; I’m not going to die of it. And it’s really nothing to do with me, anyway.”

  He shrugged as he spoke, and the realization that he was trying to spare her feelings was more than Knife could bear.

  “I don’t know what to do,” she burst out, clutching her elbows and rocking miserably. “The Sundering changed my people so much, I can’t see how we can ever make things right. All the things we’ve been missing, that we’d forgotten-there’s no way for us to get them back, not when we’ve so little magic left. And now Campion’s got the Silence, and we’re all going to die of it, me and Linden and Wink and Thorn and all of us-”

  Paul’s hand dropped from the wheel to the lever below; the car angled away from the road and bumped to a stop by its edge. Another car flashed past as he turned to her and said fiercely, “No.”

  Knife cringed, but he took her by the shoulders and went on: “I don’t know what you read in that diary, but it doesn’t matter. Even if you can’t go back to the way you used to be, why should that mean there’s no hope? Look at yourself, Knife! Look at all the things you’ve done, even without magic. And ask yourself: How many people would be dead right now if not for you?” He lowered his voice and added, “Including me.”

  “But the Silence-”

  “-is there, yes, and I’m sorry to hear about Campion. But she’s not dead yet, and there’s still a chance that you or someone else will find a cure.” He brushed a strand of hair back from her forehead. “You’re a fighter, Knife. Don’t stop fighting now.”

  Knife gave a reluctant nod. Paul tugged her toward him, and she closed her eyes and laid her head against his chest, listening to the strange, slow beat of his heart. She knew it was unwise to get so close to him, and all her instincts told her to pull away-and yet she wanted to savor this moment, because once she went back to her own size no one would ever hold her like this again.

  “All right,” she murmured.

  “Look,” said Paul. “We’re almost home.”

  There in the distance lay the familiar S-bend of the road, with the wood on one side and the arch of the stone bridge beyond. Knife could just make out the topmost branches of the Oak rising above the fringe of lesser trees, and a pang went through her as she realized that her time with Paul, and the magic that had made it possible, was about to end.

  “Stop the car,” she said. “Please. I need to tell you something.”

  Paul glanced over his shoulder, then pulled the car over onto the verge. Loose stones rattled against the wheels before fading into a soft hiss of grass, and the sunlight around them dimmed to shadow as he brought them to a stop. “All right,” he said, slinging one elbow over the top of the steering wheel and turning toward her. “What is it?”

  Knife looked down at the diary in her lap. Now that the first shock of discovering that faeries used to marry humans and even have children with them had subsided, she felt strangely calm: She knew what she had to do, for both their sakes. “I know we talked about spending the next two days together, but I can’t. I have to go back to the Oak and tell them what I’ve found.”

  “Is that all?” He sounded relieved. “Well, that’s no problem. Just let me know when-”

  “No.” Her voice was quiet, but resolute. “You’ve given me so much, Paul, and I’ll never forget what you’ve done for me today. But I can’t keep meeting with you like this. The Queen’s already caught me once-the next time she won’t be so forgiving. Besides, I belong with my own people. And so do you.”

  Paul looked at her in disbelief. “You mean…that’s it? We’re never going to see each other again?”

  Knife closed her eyes. If only she didn’t have to look at him, hear the pain in his voice; this would be so much easier, if only she could pretend he wasn’t there. “Yes,” she said. “That’s what I mean.”

  “I thought we were friends.” The words were edged with anger. “After everything that’s happened, everything we’ve done for each other-none of that matters?”

  “Of course it matters!” She gripped the diary hard with both hands, wishing once more that she had never seen it, never learned the secrets it contained. “And yes, you are my friend.” Her voice lowered. “My best friend.”

  “Really?” The bitterness left his tone. “But then…”

  “Don’t you see? That’s just why! This isn’t right, Paul, it doesn’t make any sense. You’re human, and I’m a faery-” And once this magic wears off, I’ll be seven inches tall.

  “I know,” he said. “But there’s something else I know, too.” He shifted closer to her, intent. “There’s a reason I told you that story about Alfred Wrenfield. What Jane gave to him-that inspiration, that genius even-that’s what you’ve given me. When you’re around, I can draw, I can paint, I can capture the images in my head and put them on paper in a way I haven’t done for years. And if you leave-”

  “Don’t!” She jerked away from him. “Don’t make this any harder for me, Paul. I have a child to look after back at the Oak, and friends who need my help. The Queen’s depending on me to help her find more faeries, because she believes that’s our only hope for our people to survive-and now I know she’s right.” Knife pushed her hands up into her hair, clenched them. “I love your art, and I…I wish I could help you. But they need me more.”

  “All right,” said Paul, with surprising calm.

  Caught off guard, she dropped her hands, and found his face close to hers. “I’ll let you go,” he continued, “and I won’t ask for anything more. Except…”

  “Yes?” said Knife faintly. Her heart felt as if it were trying to beat sideways, and her lungs seemed to have shrunk to faery size.

  “This.” And with that his hand slipped around the back of her neck, and his mouth pressed down on hers.

  She had read about kissing in the books that Amaryllis had burned; a strange human custom, she had thought. But as Paul’s lips moved against her own, it suddenly seemed the most natural thing in the world. His arms locked around her,
strong as oak and warm as fire; she melted into the embrace, her fingers curling against his cheek. This, she realized with her last flicker of conscious thought, was what had drawn Heather to Philip Waverley; not obligation or even friendship, but No!

  Knife stiffened, then writhed free of Paul’s grasp. One hand flew to her burning face; the other flailed wildly at the door handle. “Knife? What’s the-”

  “I can’t!” she shouted, throwing her weight against the door. It popped open, and she half leaped, half fell out onto the grass. Her foot turned over, and pain shot up her ankle, but she paid it no heed; she dragged herself away from the car and began struggling toward the Oakenwyld.

  “Knife!”

  The door slammed behind her; the engine woke with a groan. Knife limped deeper into the grass as Paul backed the car onto the road. “I was going to say I was sorry,” he called out the window. “But that would be lying, so I’d better just say-good-bye.”

  Knife stood still while he drove past, watching the vehicle pick up speed as it vanished into the distance. Distracted, she walked forward-and put her foot straight into a hole. Fresh agony tore through her muscles as she stumbled, and flung out both hands to catch herself.

  It was then that she realized something was missing. Aghast, she looked down at her empty, mud-smeared palms.

  “Oh, for Garden’s sake!” she screamed at the sky. “I’ve left the diary in his blighted crow-eaten car!”

  No sooner were the words out of her mouth than her body tingled, and the world overwhelmed her with its enormity. For a moment she stood swaying, dizzy with the cruel abruptness of the change; then she sank to her knees, dropped her face against her hands, and wept.

  Nineteen

  Swiping the tears from her eyes, Knife forced herself back to her feet. Her ankle throbbed, but she gritted her teeth and started back up the slope toward the road. Only after several painful steps did she remember that she was a faery again, and there was no need for her to walk unless she wanted to.