Shaking so much her vague outlines blurred, the ghost-girl drifted the equivalent of a step toward Robin.
He laughed. Nan had never heard a sound quite like it before. Most people she’d ever heard, when they laughed, had something else in their laughter. Pity, scorn, irony, self-deprecation, ruefulness—most adults anyway, always had something besides amusement in their voices when they laughed.
This was just a laugh with nothing in it but pure joy. Even the ghost-girl brightened at the sound of it, and drifted forward again—and Robin made a little circle gesture with his free hand.
Something glowing opened up between him and the ghost-girl. Nan couldn’t see what it was, other than a kind of glowing doorway, but the ghost-girl’s face was transformed, all in an instant. She lost that pinched, despairing look. Her eyes shone with joyful surprise, and her mouth turned up in a silent smile of bliss.
“There you be, my little lady,” Robin said softly. “What you’ve dreamed all your life and death about, what you saw only dimly before. Summerland, my wee little dear. Summerland, waiting for you. Go on through, honey-sweetling, go on through.”
The ghost-girl darted forward like a kingfisher diving for a minnow, a flash, and she was into the glow—and gone. And the glow went with her.
But that was by no means the end of it, for the horrid, hungry ghost was still there.
Puck, however, had an answer for her, too.
He turned to Nan and Sarah. “Close your eyes, young mortals,” he said, with such an inflection that Nan could not have disobeyed him if she’d wanted to. “These things are not for the gaze of so young as you.”
She kept her eyes open just long enough to see him take a cow-horn bound in silver with a silver mouthpiece from his belt, the sort of thing she saw in books about Robin Hood, and put it to his lips. Her eyes closed and glued themselves shut as three mellow notes sounded in the sultry air.
Suddenly, that sultry air grew cold and dank; she shivered, and Neville pressed himself into her neck, reassuringly, his warm body radiating the confidence that the air was sapping away from her. All the birds stopped singing, and even the sound of the river nearby faded away, as if she had been taken a mile away from it.
She heard hoofbeats in the distance and hounds baying.
She’d never heard nor seen a foxhunt, though she’d read about them since coming to the school, and it was one of those things even a street-urchin knew about vaguely.
This did not sound like a foxhunt. The hounds had deep, deep voices that made her shiver, and made her feel even less inclined to open her eyes, if that was possible. There were a lot of hounds—and a lot of horses too—and they were coming nearer by the moment.
She reached out blindly and caught Sarah’s hand, and they clung to each other as the hounds and horses thundered down practically on top of them—as the riders neared, she heard them laughing, and if Puck’s laugh was all joy, this laughter was more sorrowful than weeping. It made her want to huddle on the ground and hope that no one noticed her.
The shadow-woman shrieked.
Then dogs and riders were all around them—except that, other than the sounds, there was nothing physically there.
Feelings, though—Nan was so struck through with fear that she couldn’t have moved if her life depended on it. Only Sarah’s hand in hers and Neville’s warm presence on her shoulder kept her from screaming in terror. And it was cold, it was colder than the coldest night on the streets of London, so cold that Nan couldn’t even shiver.
Hoofbeats milling around them, the dogs howling mournfully, the riders laughing—then the shadow-woman stopped shrieking and somehow her silence was worst of all.
One of the riders shouted something in a language that Nan didn’t recognize. Robin answered him, and the rider laughed, this time not a laugh full of pain, but full of eager gloating. She felt Neville spread his wings over her, and there was a terrible cry of despair—
And then, it all was gone. The birds sang again, warmth returned to the day, the scent of new-mown grass and flowers and the river filled her nostrils, and Neville shook himself and quorked.
“You can open your eyes now, children,” said Robin.
Nan did; Neville hopped down off her shoulder and stood on the ground, looking up at Robin. There was nothing out of the ordinary now in the scene before them, no matter how hard Nan looked. No shadow-woman, no ghost-girl, no dark emotions haunting the bridge. Just a normal stone bridge over a pretty little English river in the countryside. Even Robin was ordinary again; his fantastical garb was gone, and he could have been any other country boy except for the single strand of tiny vine leaves wound through his curly red hair.
“What—” Sarah began, looking at Puck with a peculiarly stern expression.
“That was the Wild Hunt, and you’d do well to stay clear of it and what it Hunts, little Seeker,” Robin said, without a smile. “It answers to me because I am Oldest, but there isn’t much it will answer to, not much it will stop for, not too many ways to escape it when it has your scent, and there’s no pity in the Huntsman. He decides what they’ll Hunt, and no other.”
“What does it hunt?” Nan asked, at the same time that Sarah asked, “What is it?”
Robin shrugged. “Run and find out for yourself what it is, young Sarah. And go and look to see what it hunts on your own, young Nan. There’s mortal libraries full of books that can tell you—in part. The rest you can only feel, and if your head don’t know, your heart already can tell you.”
“Well,” Nan replied, stubbornly determined to get some sort of answer out of him, “What was that thing at the bridge, then?”
“And I need to tell you what you already know?” Robin shook his head. “You work it out between you. She’s not been here long, I will tell you, and I should have dealt with her when she first appeared, but—” he scratched his head, and grinned one of those day-brightening grins “—but there was birds to gossip with, and calves to tease, and goats to ride, and I just forgot.”
Now, of course, she knew better. Puck didn’t “just forget” anything. The truth of the matter was that to a creature like him, mortal time was something of a blur. It wasn’t that he forgot—it was that when he got around to something was a matter of indifference to him, unless he found that the thing he had not done suddenly loomed important in the lives of the mortals he chose to keep an eye on.
He had certainly chosen to keep an eye on them. He had turned up again to warn them about Lord Alderscroft, who at that juncture had been under the deathly sway of a very nasty creature indeed. It had been Sarah, at that point, who had sworn there was good in the man, while Puck had made veiled warnings that if things got out of hand… he would take matters into his.
They hadn’t known at the time that Puck had actually delivered a warning of his own to Lord Alderscroft as well.
The very last time they had seen Puck, it had been as the Guardian at the Gate, the Prince of Logres, prepared to do battle to save his Isle, even though that battle would mean his own banishment.
But thanks to Nan and Sarah, that hadn’t happened. Lord Alderscroft had been saved, saved by the offer of simple, unasked-for, friendship.
“You know, we all owe each other,” Sarah said, matter-of-factly. “Even Robin owes us. So I expect if we really, truly need him, he’ll come.”
Neville nodded vigorously at that.
“Still,” Nan felt urged to point out, “It’s better if we show that we are doing the best we can. I don’t think he likes the shirking sort of lazy, much.”
“Probably not.” Sarah stared down at her list, and sighed. “Do you suppose it will be possible to get the sort of dresses that good little vicars’ daughters wear that don’t require we be corseted within an inch of our lives?”
“Great Harry’s ghost, how would I know?” Nan asked, with surprise.
And Neville and Grey both broke into laughter.
7
IT seemed that Mari was something called an Elemen
tal Master. Or at least, she would be when she had properly learned how to handle the magic that was her birthright.
But first there were history lessons. Not dry things, but the history of her own family and the history of the Selch clan that had attached themselves to the Protheros.
These lessons were far more agreeable than the ones she had taken in that stuffy little parlor. The Selch didn’t care for being indoors when the weather was fine, and all of the fellows assigned to court her lent their hands to the outside chores with a will, so by midmorning there was nothing much left for her to do. In fact, they rather overdid in some areas, not that she was going to complain. The stacks of driftwood and sea-coal against the side of the cottage had never been so high, and she wouldn’t need to go kelping for weeks, if not months. There was plenty of laver boiled and put by now, and all she had to do was mention that she needed more, and more appeared. One of them had mended the rain-barrels that Daffyd never had gotten around to fixing, so there would be a steady source of fresh water that didn’t require trudging to the spring in the sheep-meadow. She didn’t even need to go shellfishing, not with them about.
So, by luncheon, there was nothing to do but lessons. And mending, but that was easily done with the lessons.
“So, if the magic is in the Prothero blood,” she said, her hands industriously at work mending a stocking, “Why is it that none of them were these—Master-things before this?”
She no longer expected Idwal to be offended at questions; he took them at face value, being something she wanted to know the answer to, not something she was trying to plague him with. He continued his carving on the little whalebone knife he was making while he answered her.
“The shortest answer is that none of them had that much power,” he replied. “The longer answer is, according to all I know of the history, a good bit more complicated than that. The bargain we made with the first of the Prothero fisherman wasn’t just about fish and husbands. It included the magic and our use of it.”
She looked up from her stocking. “Your use of it?” she said in surprise. “Is magic a thing you can be lending, then?”
He nodded. “Something like. ’Tis in part like your rain-barrel, if you had no need of the water. We say ‘lad, you store up that water, and we’ll come and take it away at intervals before it overflows.’ With every new Prothero brought into the bargain, we would say ‘Do you want the magic now?’ and they would say ‘No, have it.’”
Rhodri, who had been lying at ease nearest her, making her a very pretty little necklace of shells and shell fragments hardly bigger than a baby’s fingernail, laughed at that. “You forget the part about telling them first that it wouldn’t bring them wealth or ease.”
Idwal nodded. “And that is true. When you take up the cloak of the Elemental Magician, it binds you to serving the Element, even as the Element serves you. Take water—you’re a keeper of waters, and it’s your task to see they stay clean, your task to help or heal the Elemental creatures that do your will, and your task to help against dark magics, greater or lesser. So the Prothero men, when it was put that way to them, said, ‘I’d rather fish; you have the magic.’”
“So I could say that now?” she asked. It was a logical question.
Idwal furrowed his brows at her. “Nay. The power in you is too great. You’re like a great, strong man. Everyone about you sees you’re strong, and you’ll have no choice but to use that strength, or there will be those who’ll take you as a threat to be dealt with.”
Idwal looked as if he expected her to object to that, to say “But that’s not fair!” or something of the sort. But his analogy had been a keen one, and she could see the logic, and logic didn’t care about fairness. Sometimes things just were, and no point in whinging and wailing about it. You might as well wail that the storm was unfair, for that made about as much sense. Fair, unfair, the storm just was, and you might as well accept it and deal with it.
“All right,” she nodded, and Idwal’s face cleared and his frown turned to a look of approval.
Mabon was whittling at a bone too, but he was making a little whistle or flute of some sort. “Tis said,” he began, in a voice so quiet you really had to listen to hear it, “That the North Star Clan knew the magic was strongest on the female side of your kin, and they did some magicking of their own, all this time, to make sure the Protheros sired only boys.”
“As Gethin promised to do?” That was Trefor, who was weaving a net to replace one of the ones his kin had cut up.
“Many things are said that may not be true,” Idwal warned. “And even if ’tis true, that would be the doings of the women. No matter what Gethin threatened, he can’t do it without women’s magic, and there’s an end to it.”
“Women’s magic is that different?” she said in surprise.
“Among us… aye. Older. Deeper. Tied with the roots of the sea.” Idwal nodded. “We are the Selch, and we are half-and-half. The creatures you’ve been spying till now have been all Elemental, and mostly dwell in their own realm that lies alongside your world like two pages in a book. But we are the Selch, and we are half-mortal and can live in either world. Our women have their own magics that are older than anyone remembers.”
For some reason, his words put a little shiver up her back. She was hesitating about asking another question, when Trefor chuckled.
“You say ‘mortal’ to the lass as if we lived forever, elder,” he chided.
Idwal frowned a little, but then nodded as if he had conceded. “You speak truth, boy,” he said, a little grudgingly, and turned back to Mari. “We’re no longer-lived than you. We are the creatures of land that returned to the sea, but we share the years of those who live on land still.”
She blinked a little at that; she had simply taken it for granted that, regardless of Gethin’s gray hairs, all the Selch must be like the other Tylwyth Teg, and live forever unless something destroyed them. “Oh… and that’s why…”
Idwal nodded. “Aye. The other reason for the bargain. To keep up our numbers. But that is neither here nor there. This is the last of the history you should know. Now it is time for learning the ways of the Water Master. Now tell me, what is water to you?”
She chose her words slowly, and with great care. “Water is life. Water is nothing you can confine, for it will always find a way out. Water takes the shape of whatever you put it in, for it has no shape of its own. Water can wear away the hardest stones. Water is patient. Water cleanses.”
Idwal nodded with all of these. “The opposite—the enemy—of water is fire, for fire can turn water to vapor and water can extinguish fire. The allies are earth and air. The closer ally is air, for there is little water and air can do to harm one another, and much they can do together. This holds for all of the Elemental Creatures of those Elements. Water’s true power is in its persistence, as Earth’s is in its patience, Air’s is in its ability to be everywhere, and Fire’s is in its volatility. We will not be studying the others much, but it does pay to know about them, for there will come a time when you will work with a Master of another Element to confront something dark and powerful.”
Again, a shiver ran up her spine; he must have seen that in her expression, for he laughed.
“I am not soothsaying, but remember what I said. There are those who will see what you are, and if their power is dark, they will, because they must, seek to remove you. It is in their nature, as it is in the nature of the shark to hunt.” He shrugged. “So I am merely speaking of the inevitable. It may not be for years, but it will come.”
“Oh, perhaps not,” Trefor said lazily. “We are at the end of nowhere here. How likely is it that there would be a Black Magician here? What would he want, anyway? Sheep and fish?”
Idwal didn’t admonish him, though it looked to Mari as if he thought Trefor was being a fool. Or, at least, overly optimistic. “Well,” said Idwal. “Let us now speak of magic. In particulars, not generalities.”
Her interest now sharpened abruptly;
this was what she had asked for, bargained for. Needed, if it came to that.
“Magic,” said Idwal, “Is neither good nor bad, dark nor light. It is like the sea, like a fire, like a knife. A tool. It is the hand that wields it for good or evil, it is not good nor evil in itself.”
It was her turn to furrow her brow, because it had seemed to her that this was not entirely true. At least, not if some things she had vaguely sensed were accurate. “But—”
“It can be corrupted, tainted,” Idwal replied, before she could finish her objection. “And so it will seem evil. But what has been corrupted can be purified. The hand behind it, however, cannot. It is also everywhere, though it runs stronger in some places than others, and each Elemental magician will sense his own magic more strongly than the others, though he can sense all of them.”
She considered that. “How?” she finally asked.
One corner of his mouth quirked a little. “Why don’t you tell me?” he replied.
She was about to say something injudicious, when suddenly she remembered something—how, when she had been a child, all the world had been wreathed in transparent colors… and how, over time, when she discovered other people didn’t see these colors, these auras and bursts and flows of tinted light, she forgot to look for them.
But if she thought about it, and turned her thoughts just the right way… then maybe…
And there it was.
All of the Selch were haloed in greens and turquoise, and more green swirled around Idwal as if he had a little whirlwind around him laden with motes of light. There were other colors too, but they were subtle, dim, compared to the brilliance of the Selch colors. “Oh!” she said in surprise, her eyes widening as she gazed at them all. “It’s—green!”
“So it is,” Idwal replied genially. He sounded pleased. “It is Water; the idea, the essence, the soul of Water. And now that you can see it again, I wish for you to study it before we use it in any way. It has currents and deeps and shallows. It is not just of one kind. Learn how it looks and tastes and smells and feels. Learn where it is and is not. For this day, I wish you merely to wander as you will, and learn about the power hereabouts, until you grow weary and your Sight fades. Then come and tell me of what you have learned.”
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