Delusion

by Laura L. Sullivan

  Fee, who a second ago had been completely under the romantic spell of the moment, broke into giggles again.

  “Let me fill you with my Essence,” Thomas said again with throaty passion. “I don’t know what’s keeping you from feeling it, but I’m sure I can thrust through. It might be difficult to break through your barrier, but once you know how splendid it feels—”

  At that point Fee had to stand up and walk away.

  Confused, Thomas looked over his shoulder at Phil. “I don’t know how you live without the Essence, but you both certainly seem to be exceptionally jolly girls. Fee’s hardly stopped laughing since I met her.”

  When she’d regained enough of her composure, Fee sat at Thomas’s side once again and they fell into easy conversation.

  (“I don’t know what I would have done if he’d tried to put his Essence into me,” Fee told her sister when they were in bed that night. “I honestly think I might have let him.”

  “What, right there in front of everybody?” Phil asked, forcing her face to be very serious.

  “Well, all those men were doing it, weren’t they?”)

  Phil sat on another of the Three Dwarves, and Arden remained standing nearby, his arms crossed, his feet braced in a wide stance. Full night fell, and at length the magicians rose without ceremony and went their separate ways.

  “Even though I couldn’t feel anything, it was still lovely, wasn’t it, Phil?” Fee said. “Like watching monks do a very quiet magic show. Proper magic, I mean—our kind. Do you think we could get colors like that in the Hall of Delusion?” She sighed. “It makes me happy to think there’s still a quiet, peaceful place in the world. The war’s not really here, is it?”

  “The nation is at war,” Phil said. “And no matter how well these men hide themselves, they are part of England.” She turned to Arden. “You say England is the heart of the world? Well, the heart is under attack.”

  “Those are commoner matters, for commoners to settle amongst themselves,” Arden said. “There’ll always be an England . . .”

  In the starlight, Fee began to hum the popular Vera Lynn tune.

  “...And we’ll always be here, guarding it, helping the Essence to flow, keeping the world alive.”

  “But what if the Germans invade? What if they win? It won’t be England anymore!”

  “Do you think it matters what kind of rabble are scurrying around out there?” he said with a contemptuous glower. “Do you think the race of people who huddle there now have lived there forever? When we raised this isle,” he said, as if he had been intimately involved in it himself, “we, the Masters of Drycraeft, were the only inhabitants. Others moved in, Celtic tribes, Vikings, Romans, Saxons, all waging their silly little wars, all killing one another, all conquering and immediately thinking they’d been here since the dawn of time. Through all of it, we have been the same—untouched. It doesn’t matter to us.”

  Phil drew breath to shout him into sense, when Thomas asked, timidly, “What is war?”

  It stopped her cold. It’s explosions and screaming, she thought, remembering the first night of the Blitz. It’s pain and loss and blood, resignation and determination. It’s being steel and jelly all at once.

  “It’s...fighting,” she said inadequately. “It’s when two nations, or many nations, fight each other. When their soldiers kill one another, and they bomb cities.”

  “Why?”

  “Well, Germany invaded Poland.”

  “Why?”

  The details were a little hazy, but she thought she understood the generalities. “For land and power. He—Hitler, that is—wants to build an empire.”

  “So those countries are at war?”

  “Poland was defeated, and England and France declared war in its defense. Then France fell, and now it’s mostly us. England against Germany, and Italy, and Japan, too, I suppose.”

  “But,” Thomas said, his perfect brow tragically crinkled, “why?”

  “Well, Hitler started it all. He killed thousands, tens of thousands in Poland. Soldiers and civilians.”

  “With his own hands?”

  “No, no, with his army, and tanks and planes. And he’s still killing. He’s been bombing England. Just the night before we left, they dropped bombs all over London. It was...it was . . .” She shook her head and looked away.

  “Others kill at this man’s bidding?” Thomas gasped, leaping to his feet. “Master Arden, does the Headmaster know about this? There should be a conclave. The masters should drain this madman’s Essence, return it to the earth.”

  Arden looked not at the young prentice but at the girls. “Do you see what you’ve done? You and your disruptive Albion blood. We don’t interfere in the outside world. Commoners’ futile scrabbling for power, their politics, their hatreds and their...loves...are nothing to us. We tend the Essence. We keep the earth alive. The College of Drycraeft doesn’t need to know about your paltry little war. You’ve muddled this young fool’s head with a few words. Do you see why you shouldn’t be here?”

  And he found, to his surprise and chagrin, that Phil looked at him with pity, much the same pity with which he’d regarded her when he realized what it must mean for her to lack any connection to the Essence. Like he was the monster, the ignorant, inadequate one.

  The war was nothing to him. England, as a nation, was nothing to him. In the end, the earth would be the same, no matter how many millions were slaughtered. The war would be over one day, and the College of Drycraeft would continue its service, untroubled, forever. It had to.

  Chapter 7

  I still don’t know if we should leave Stan there,” Phil said to Fee the following morning.

  “You mean Prentice Stanislaus?” Fee asked with a chuckle as she rinsed suds from the breakfast dishes. “He was so happy, couldn’t you see? He has to be someplace for the duration of the war. If he has real magic, shouldn’t he be allowed to learn how to use it properly?”

  “I suppose,” Phil admitted, drying with a clean rag. “But they mean to keep him there forever! Do you know, they’re not even allowed to leave the college grounds. It’s a prison. They’re indoctrinating them. And why aren’t there any women there, eh?”

  “All the better,” Fee said.

  “Fee, it isn’t natural. They’ll teach him to hate his own family because we’re commoners. Commoners! Ugh, I just wanted to slap that Arden’s smug face whenever he used the word. Like they’re nature’s nobility. I ought to claim his stupid life after all.”

  “Phil!”

  “Oh, I don’t mean it, of course. But it’s such a wasted life, isn’t it?”

  “They say they keep the world alive.”

  “I can’t believe those magicians are so vital that the world would die without them. It’s like any gentlemen’s club—they make up secret histories and obscure rules to make themselves feel important and exclude others. If they all enlisted, the world would muddle on, same as it always has.”

  “They’re not doing any harm,” Fee said, always willing to see the best.

  “But they aren’t doing any good. And the trouble is, they’re so convinced they are. A quarter of them are of an age to join up, and the rest should be doing something useful. They could be in a munitions factory, or planting potatoes—not to say what they could be doing with their magic. Only think, our family’s magic, which is all falsehood and illusion, is doing more to win the war than real powers that could kill Germans. Between them and the villagers, we’re handing Germany a victory.” Phil closed her eyes. “I feel like I’m in a dream. Am I the only one who knows what’s happening?”

  “Maybe they’re right. The war might never come here.”

  “But if it does, we have to be ready! They’re like little chicks, watching the fox and thinking they’re too fluffy and cute to be eaten.”

  She heard a chuckle behind her. “Try telling Eamon Dooley the mechanic he’s a fresh-pipped chick,” Algernon said, feeling his way to the kitchen door. “That might goad him
into volunteering, if you’re still on that fool’s errand.”

  “I am, actually, and I will. Who else can I get?”

  “I was joking. No one in Bittersweet will train or drill or save rubber and scrap. Not if a panzer unit rolled through. You’re wasting your time, kiddo.”

  She might have been satisfied with scowls and rantings, but the kiddo pushed her over the edge.

  “You would do it, wouldn’t you? If you could see, you’d form a branch of the Home Guard, wouldn’t you?”

  “If I could see, I’d be at the front now.”

  “You know what I mean. You’re not like everyone here. You’ve seen war. You know. Would you help me, if you could?”

  He was seeing something with those sightless eyes, she was sure of it. The sea walls at Dunkirk, the harbor churning and red.

  “I would,” he said at last.

  “Good,” she said smugly. “Then you will.”

  “I...no...I can’t.”

  “You were in the British Expeditionary Force. You’re a soldier. Even if you can’t see, you can tell me what to do. Damnit, all you have to do is stand there, being a hero, and you’ll shame and inspire ’em into action.”

  “You’re a fool if you think I’m a hero.”

  “You enlisted. You did your duty. You’re a hero. Please help me. Bittersweet has to be ready for invasion, and it has to do its part for the war effort.”

  “It’s a Sisyphean battle, and there are cows to be milked.”

  “I’ll milk the damned cows! Just please, tell me how to organize an army!”

  He shuffled awkwardly away, and Phil’s hopes deflated. Then without turning back, he said, “What the hell. I’m no use on the farm. Yesterday I tried to milk the bull.”

  “You’ll help?” Phil squealed.

  “For all the good it will do. I might as well be useless at one thing as another.”

  Phil had her speech prepared, just the right balance of inspirational patriotism, bullying, and the promise of tea and biscuits (Fee’s contribution to the scheme). She rapped at the mechanic’s door and was greeted by a red-bearded giant.

  “Good morning,” she said pleasantly. “If I could have a moment of your time, I’d like to talk with you about—”

  “This girl here says you’re a great fuzzy chick who’s too far tucked up his ma’s feathers to learn how to fire a rifle or dig a trench like a man,” Algernon interrupted. “That true?”

  Phil blushed pink; the mechanic flushed bright scarlet and looked on the verge of apoplexy. “Who’s been spreading such bald-faced lies!” he demanded.

  Algernon cocked his head at Phil. “She heard you wouldn’t join her Home Guard because you were afraid you couldn’t thrust a bayonet as well as a girl. She said if you care to, you can sew blackout curtains and roll bandages instead.”

  “I didn’t—” Phil began, but Algernon nudged her.

  “Why, I...Now, missie, don’t you go listening to rumors. It ain’t true. Look at me—you think I can’t dig a trench? Strong as an ox, I am.” He twitched his pectorals and then curled his arm to reveal a bicep as big as a shire horse’s hoof. “Feel it, missie, just feel it, and tell me you’ll not have me in the Guard.”

  She felt it. It was like the turnip that won first prize at the agricultural fair.

  “Oxen are strong, but we won’t take them in the Guard,” Algernon said. “What else can you do?”

  “I can fix any car on the road.”

  “The last thing we need in an invasion is Germans commandeering our cars and tractors. The important question is, can you disable a car?”

  “Why, missie, you stand right there and watch.”

  He stepped brusquely past them to where a muddy Morris coupe rumbled down the cobbled street. With his bulk placed squarely in front of the grille, the driver had no choice but to stop.

  “What’s this all about, Eamon?” asked Mr. Henshawe, the little grocer.

  “For the war effort,” the burly mechanic said as he opened the bonnet, fiddled a moment, then tossed a small bit of metal into the languishing yellow rosebushes across the street. “There,” he said, rubbing engine grease on his already-stained overalls. “Let’s see a Nazi drive that to Buckingham Palace!”

  And so Phil added the first name to her roster of informal Home Guards.

  As she helped the grocer search for his missing bit of motor, she tried to solicit him, too.

  “Pah, Germans!” he said, scrabbling through the loam. “Might as well say the fairies will be coming through Bittersweet. Now help me find that engine gizmo. I’ve a missing shipment of tea to account for. Not a drop of leaf on the shelves, and the delivery was supposed to be yesterday.”

  “You don’t have to march and fight, you know,” Phil said. She found the missing part but kept it hidden in her palm. “In a place like this, you should be able to get most of your food locally and save your coupons. I’m sure as a grocer it isn’t good for business, but as an Englishman you ought to encourage your customers not to buy anything that’s rationed. Leave those things to the people in London and Birmingham and Leeds, where they can’t grow their own food. If all your customers left their ration books at home—”

  “Their what?” Henshawe asked.

  Thus it came out, after a great deal of incredulity on Phil’s part and indignation on the grocer’s (“What! Tell a body how much he can eat and how much he can buy with his own honest money!”) that the townspeople of Bittersweet had never been issued ration books.

  “How is that possible?” Phil asked as she tossed the engine part back under the bush and took Algernon’s arm to lead him to the next likely prospect for civil defense. “Everyone is issued food coupons and a gas mask and—”

  “No gas masks either,” Algernon said. “Except Uncle Walter, of course.”

  Phil stopped dead in the road. “I don’t believe it. Does the government even know about Bittersweet? Is it invisible? Oh!”

  She remembered the moment when her parents had first told her she’d be going to the country. Dad had tried to find the village on the map—it hadn’t been there, though it was a very detailed map that listed the tiniest hamlets.

  If the magicians could hide all of Stour, could they do something similar with an entire town? For a group so concerned with staying hidden, it was a natural step, and they were probably capable of it. Could they make every bureaucratic eye in London skim over the village’s name when doling out supplies and conscripting recruits?

  Those wretches! thought Phil. Bad enough that all those able-bodied men huddle in their manor and don’t do their bit fighting Nazis. But to steal away an entire village from its duty of national defense—it’s unpardonable!

  She fumbled in the side pocket of her gas mask pouch and counted out her shillings. “Come on, we’re going to the post office.”

  She bought a pack of nearly transparent paper and drafted three quick letters. She had no addresses, but she chose recipients who were so well known that her letter would either be automatically delivered or else tossed away by a postman assuming it was a joke, rather like letters addressed to Father Christmas. One went to Lord Woolton at the Ministry of Food, informing him that no one in Bitersweet had ration cards. Another went to Winston Churchill, stating how eager the village was to help the war effort, if only someone would tell them how. The last she simply addressed to the Ministry of Defense, asking that a recruiter pay the town a visit.

  Not wanting to be sent to Bedlam, she didn’t offer any theories about magicians. She signed herself “A Concerned Englishwoman,” affixed the stamps, and sent them into the void.

  As soon as they were in the box, she had misgivings. What could one small town really do, with its old men and pugilist vicars? Would it be best to leave things as they were? Perhaps, with her interference, she was condemning men to death, men who otherwise would have lived long, happy lives, solved scientific problems, contributed to the birth of geniuses and saviors.

  No, she told herself
firmly. All over England and in distant battlefields, men who had at least as much right to such possibilities were fighting and dying. Everyone had to do his part.

  She and Algernon spent the rest of their day recruiting, with dismal results.

  “Isn’t that thing over by now?” one housewife asked when Phil encouraged her to take in evacuee children.

  “Give up my saucepans!” gulped another, barring the door with her considerable bulk as if Phil meant to launch an immediate assault on her cupboards. “Not on your nelly!”

  One fellow in his forties seemed on the verge of volunteering for Phil’s Home Guard, albeit not quite for the right reasons. “Redheads,” he said, looking her up and down, lingering longest in the middle. “Plenty of spunk, you redheads.” Phil, dragging and disappointed with her day’s work, was ready even to accept recruits with dubious motives, when a ginger-haired slip of a woman gripped him by the ear and hauled him inside. She glowered at Phil.

  “My Enery’s got room for one red-headed woman in his life, and I ain’t about to step aside for a London piece like you. Off with you now!”

  One old man did agree to dig up his zinnias and plant cabbage and silverbeet, but only because his flowers had gotten the blight.

  When she tried to tell the deaf, grandmotherly Mrs. Abernathy about rationing and food shortages, she accidentally gave the ancient woman the impression that she herself was hungry, and Phil and Algernon weren’t allowed to escape until they’d choked down two cups of tea and some excruciatingly dry seed cake.

  “It’s no use,” Phil said as they backtracked down High Street.

  Algernon, starting to answer, stumbled, and Phil caught him with an arm around his waist.

  “What do you think you’re doing?” came an indignant feminine voice from behind. Phil turned and found Diana bearing down on them. Hastily, Phil disengaged herself from Algernon and explained.

  Diana’s eyes lit up. It had been so long since Algernon had taken any real interest in anything. If this project, however foolish, could give him a new passion for life, she was all for it. But she’d be damned if she’d let that curvy, wiggling slut of a London girl do it at his side.