“How do you know?” Felicia asked again.
“He would come and talk to me.”
“Then he knew?”
“No, he hadn’t the remotest knowledge of my peculiar circumstance. He talked to all the statues. He was especially fond of a certain Venus. He would write long sonnets to her and leave them at her feet. They usually blew into the trees and hung there like narrow flags, flapping poetry to the breezes.”
“What did he talk to you about?”
“History, mostly. He spoke as though he had a personal acquaintance with Socrates and Aristotle. It formed a bond between us, for I had known them both.”
“What?”
“Oh, not well. More a passing acquaintance. Greece was very beautiful then.”
They’d reached the crest of the hill. The wind came and beat against them. Felicia turned away, hiding her face in her cloak while a swirling devil of dust and dry grass went by. Remembering how near they were to the sinkhole, she called out, “Clarice! Stay with us!”
Then Blaic raised his hand, just an inch or so, and the wind died away. “She’s run ahead but you needn’t worry. No harm will come to her.” He reached out as though he would brush her cheek with his fingers. Though they did not touch, Felicia was left feeling as though they had.
Her emotions resembled the dust devil, a swirling mass spinning too fast to catalog its diversity. Through it, she heard him say, “She will come to no harm. Not from the moor; not from me. Meet me tonight, at the darkest hour, by the grotto.”
The wind drove in again. Instinctively, Felicia closed her eyes against the airborne grit. When she opened them, a question on her lips, Blaic had gone.
The flower-bedecked Dresden clock on her mantel sent a spray of silvery notes into the darkened bedroom. In the distance, Felicia heard the answering peal of the great clock in the main hall reverberating through the walls. Usually at this hour, she’d been asleep for some time and the clocks chimed unheard. Tonight, however, she had been too keyed up to sleep. Each nerve seemed stretched as she waited with her entire body for the quarter-hours to sound.
She had not undressed. It only took a moment to draw on her simple leather shoes and then she was across the room to open her door. All was as silent as the night before, though so far as she knew Blaic had cast no enchantment around the house. She stepped foot into the corridor, then drew it back.
“What am I doing?” she demanded in the lowest whisper. Was she going to trust someone who, if he were telling the whole truth, was not even a human being? Blaic himself claimed that his People hated humans. If that were the case, perhaps all his talk of a cure was no more than a ploy to eliminate two mortals at the same time.
Yet there was a light in Blaic’s eyes that made Felicia want to trust him. Then again, this also might be a trap; he had to know that when he smiled with his eyes in that way, she yearned to trust him. “If only Papa were here ...”
This made her utter a short chuckle of amusement. Her papa had been absolutely the last person to believe in the “little people.” Oh, he’d enjoyed folklore and knew how to tell a tale so his daughters’ eyes grew big as they breathlessly demanded to know if the tale was “honest and for true.” Felicia could almost hear his chuckle as he reassured them that dragons, giants, and fairies were equally mythical.
Felicia drew her dark green shawl a bit more closely about her shoulders. If dragons and giants started appearing, she would give in to the family curse and go quietly insane.
She thought, “If there’s even one chance...”
Stepping into the corridor, she walked swiftly but silently down the long carpet runner to her sister’s room. Clarice had promised to stay awake and by some miracle, she had.
Her eyes looked heavy as Felicia entered but she swore she hadn’t closed them.
“It’s most strange, Felicia. For as long as I can remember, Nurse has always snored so horribly! She’s kept me awake again and again, yet tonight, when I want to stay awake, she doesn’t let out a peep! It’s not fair....”
The silence was a trifle unnerving, as well as dangerous. “Shush, dearest. Let me fasten your skirt and we’ll be off.”
Felicia wrapped a scarf about her sister’s head and made certain her new blue velvet cloak was drawn close. “Put the hood over the scarf to make it doubly warm.”
Like two cloaked ghosts, the girls made their way downstairs, carefully avoiding the creaking board in front of Lady Stavely’s room. “What was that?” Clarice hissed.
“I heard nothing. Come along, do.”
Clarice cast a look back. “I saw a door close. Didn’t you hear the lock click?”
“No one’s there. They’d be sure to ask what we are doing out so late. I don’t think anyone was there.”
“Yes they were.” Clarice let out her charming giggle, like water tumbling over rocks. “They must have thought we were Wicked Roderick.”
“There’s no such thing as ghosts,” Felicia said automatically, then wished she hadn’t. If fairies could be true, why not other things she’d always dismissed as fantasy? Hamdry Manor was more than a hundred years old and storied; who knew what might walk on such a night as this? Suddenly she found herself half-expecting to have her ankles jerked from under her by some phantom. From all she’d ever heard about Wicked Roderick, he’d appreciated young women.
She’d taken Blaic’s “the darkest hour” to mean midnight. This, of all nights, was the one Lady Stavely decided to remain in the drawing room for several hours after dinner was served. It was nearly eleven before she’d gathered up her cards from the patience table and granted Felicia a gracious nod by way of dismissal.
Outside, with no moon to light their way, the night was so dark it was as though they had become muffled in curtains of black velvet. Felicia had not expected it to be quite so inky. She paused in dismay on the step and Clarice came close. “What’s wrong?”
“I’m letting my eyes adjust,” Felicia said. “I don’t want to run into anything in the dark.”
“Oh. Where are we going to?”
“The grotto.”
“I’ll lead,” Clarice said merrily. “It’ll be like blind-man’s bluff!”
“No, wait!...”
Clarice had taken Felicia’s hand and tugged her into a walk. Felicia stumbled along, but Clarice seemed to have the placement of every stick and stone memorized. The gravel crunched under their slippered feet while the wind sang in the trees. At first, Felicia looked only at the ground.
Then, for no particular reason, she looked up and at once caught her breath. The black velvet had become spangled with the dust of a million diamond stars. There were so many thousands that no familiar constellations could be distinguished against the blazing river that poured from one bank of the sky to the other. “Darkest hour, indeed?” she said, marveling.
She’d been outside until dark often in the summer, when the sun set so late that she had no familiarity with the night. Even when she had seen the stars, they’d seemed faint and faraway. Tonight, in the biting-sharp air of an early spring night, they were as near as the heath fires of a conquering army, vast and terrifyingly close to a watcher standing on the shore of Earth.
Even as she watched, half a dozen or more came raining downward. Felicia almost expected to hear them hiss as they sizzled through space. Were they fireworks or armament?
“Shooting stars!” Clarice said, and clapped her hands for joy. “Quick! Make a wish! I wish for a—
“Don’t tell,” Felicia said, wanting to cower to the ground and surrender. “It won’t come true.”
“Did you wish?”
“No. I have only one wish.”
“It’s about me, isn’t it?” Clarice turned her eyes toward the house. The starlight was so brilliant that she cast a shadow, and Felicia could clearly see the puffs of frozen breath coming from her lips as she spoke. “Mama says you think I’m ill. I’m not ill, am I, Felicia?”
“No, dearest. You know you are never ill.�
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“That’s right,” she answered with a proud nod. “I told her that but she said she was afraid you’d make me ill and that’s why you have to go away. But you’re not going, are you?”
Felicia returned Clarice’s anxious squeeze of her hand, but reassuringly. “Not until... not until you can take care of yourself.”
“You mean, when I don’t need Nurse any more? Oh, I can do without her any time. She fusses almost as much as Mama does.”
“Shh, dearest. Not so loud.” Felicia looked back at the house too, but saw no candle moving behind the windows. “We’d better go on.”
“Right. Mmmm, where are we going?”
“To the grotto, Clarice,” Felicia said patiently.
“Oh! It’s an adventure, isn’t it? Mama doesn’t know I’m out of bed!” Pressing her finger to her lips, she crept in imitation, she fondly believed, of the American Indians’ method of crossing open country.
Felicia followed, feeling lonely and yet exposed under that glowing sky. There was nowhere, she felt, to hide. Anyone looking out a window could see them, two shadowy figures in the strange, strong starlight. No one would ever understand why she’d brought Clarice out into the frosty night. There was no one who could know that only by saving Clarice could Felicia escape her own guilt for wanting to leave Hamdry.
The mouth of the grotto looked flat and shallow. It seemed to have no more depth than an irregularly shaped half-circle, painted a flat black to represent a cave on some theatrical stage. Then a lighter shadow moved within the depths and Blaic stepped out.
Felicia said, “I hope this isn’t another trick.”
“No trick. I have spent some time today searching the ancient records for information. The spell on your sister can be removed, if she is carried in the arms of one of the People and together we enter the Shrouded Spring.”
Felicia glanced at Clarice, whose attention was distracted by a vine which had grown out of a satyr’s nose. The young woman’s delayed maturity led her to think this riotously funny. “Shh, Clarice. Mustn’t make noise.”
Obligingly, Clarice clapped her hand over her mouth. Though her eyes still danced and wettish snorts and gurgles came from behind her fingers, she did manage to quiet down.
“How far away is this spring?” Felicia asked. “We only have a very little while before Nurse finds Clarice gone.”
“It’s no distance. It’s within.”
“There’s no spring inside the grotto.” Felicia took one slow step back, then two more. “What are you about?”
“There is a spring tonight. Felicia—trust me.”
She could feel his will commanding her, bidding her to stop being so doubtful. Felicia wanted to give in to that silent domination. For a moment, she felt her head swim as though she were being pulled out of herself—too far, too fast. She broke the power of his eyes with a shuddering shake of her head.
Blaic’s mouth tightened. “Clarice...” The girl turned, her ready smile breaking free. “Clarice, do you trust me?”
“Of course, silly. Anyone would.”
“Then you will come with me.”
With a laugh, Clarice skipped across the frost-coated grass. Blaic bent his knee and swept her up into his arms. His cloak, black and oddly full, shaded into her blue-black one so that for an instant they seemed some two-headed, two-hearted creature from an ancient tale. Under the blaze of stars, even their hair seemed identical shades of blond. It had to be a trick of the light that for a moment they even seemed to share an expression. Excitement? Triumph? Fearlessness? Whatever it was, it seemed to blend them into one mind.
Blaic swung about with his burden and carried her into the grotto. At once struck into action, Felicia ran after him, unclear even now whether she meant to stop him or urge him to hurry.
The grotto was man-made, of rocks cunningly mounded to look like a natural formation. It was shallow, no more than eight feet deep. Felicia knew there was no spring within; it would have given the poor ornamental hermit permanent rheumatism to live in a damp place.
Come to think of it, she did not know how Ol’ Calm had come to die. Were his bones still in the grotto? Felicia shook off this morbid fantasy as she would have shaken a spider from her skirt. She had thoroughly explored the grotto as a child; so had Clarice. If there’d been a corpse, they would have found it, and would have boasted of it for months.
Inside the grotto, robbed of starlight, the night seemed deeper and blacker than it had since she was a child afraid of the dark under her bed. She stumbled over unseen obstacles, bruised her shoulder against a wall, and grazed her cheek on a roughly finished stone when the tunnel suddenly curved sharply to the right without warning.
Worse than these checks and annoyances was the fact that though Blaic had entered the grotto only two steps ahead of her, she could not catch up. She found it maddening. Furthermore, neither Clarice nor Blaic answered her repeated calls. She could imagine them, pressing hard up against a rock, laughing at her increasingly apprehensive pleading.
She made so much noise in her progress that even if someone had followed her from the house, she’d never hear them until they were stepping on her heels.
Then she became aware that ahead of her a faint glow filled the air. It looked very familiar. Had she been in some kind of labyrinth, turning around and around until it unfairly dumped her once more at the entrance? She shouted again for Blaic and Clarice. The sound echoed flatly off the narrow stone to either side of her.
“This is too bad of you....” She walked forward, fully intending to give the miscreants a withering scolding, but her wonderment kept her looking everywhere but at them.
The grotto was no more than eight feet deep. She must have passed through it in the first few seconds after she entered. The maze was not part of the grotto she knew; neither was this.
A room like the inside of an onion-dome, rising to un-guessed heights, was filled with thousands of green, growing things. The smell of the earth filled her with every breath. Small pockets in the roof and walls supported the plants, long trailing fronds dripping starlight.
Of course, it couldn’t have been starlight. There was no skylight in the roof. She double-checked, casting her gaze upward. The light came from the plants themselves, dripping off their leaves like water and falling with ceaseless precision into the pool at Felicia’s feet.
This pool had collected starlight for thousands of years. The light was not hot. It did not glare and burn her eyes, though she could, for the moment, do nothing but stare down into the clear, brilliant depths. It glowed like the heart of the night sky itself, the very center of space drawn here to this place.
As Felicia looked deeply into the “pool,” she saw that it swirled about very slowly, like a whirlpool of light. She felt in her soul that if she watched long enough, she would see down to the very beginning of time, down to the very moment when God lifted His hand over the void and proclaimed the world.
Without knowing when she’d begun, Felicia realized that she was swaying in time to the movement of the light. She was not certain what made her at last raise her eyes to search for Clarice. She had only the vaguest memories of who she was or why she had come. The star-pool seemed to have drawn all fear and trouble from her.
Blaic stood on the brink of the pool, holding Clarice high against his shoulder. Her eyes looked dark and dazed as she stared down into the wonder before her.
“Is it your will that I do this thing?” Blaic asked.
Felicia answered for her sister. Her voice strangling, she said, “Yes.”
With a spring of his powerful legs, Blaic leapt into the pool. Felicia heard a shout of fear, not from Blaic or Clarice, but from behind her.
She spun about. Whether from dizziness or some other cause, she slipped and fell. The light around her winked out and she felt the rushing of the cold night air over her body. In the time it took to blink her eyes, everything changed. When she looked up, only the cold light of a few, distant stars met her gaze.
The blazing beauty of the night had dimmed away to this.
She heard voices and was vaguely aware of people rushing to and fro through the garden, some shouting for blankets, others for hot wine. She heard Lady Stavely’s voice, harsh and demanding. It came to Felicia that Lady Stavely was desperately frightened, and she thought, “How odd.”
Then she remembered everything.
“Clarice!” She sprang to her feet. Nearby, in the obscure light of a smoking torch, a small crowd of people huddled around something lying on the grass. Someone moved aside and Felicia caught a glimpse of a pair of feet lying flared out unnaturally. “Clarice...”
She ran to her sister’s side, only to find herself blocked by Mr. Varley’s broad chest. The butler looked absurd with his late master’s dressing gown gaping open over his nightshirt. Even more ridiculous was that he’d clapped his wig on his head, yet his hairy legs were innocent of breeches.
“Stay back, you!” he growled, catching her by the upper arm.
“What do you mean by this?” Felicia demanded, struggling.
Then Lady Stavely was in front of her, her eyes huge with rage. Without a word, she slashed at Felicia with raking fingernails. Unable to jerk back due to the butler’s grip, Felicia felt the sting along her throat. She gasped and tried instinctively to hit back. That too was impossible.
William Beech interposed himself between Lady Stavely and Felicia. “There be no cause for that,” he said roughly. “Leave t’constable to deal with ‘er. Or the parson. Don’t rightly know if t’is church or law’ll have their way with ‘er.”‘
“Some bawdy house in foreign parts more like,” Mr. Varley said, giving Felicia a shake. “If they don’t hang her.”“
Felicia saw now that Clarice lay limply on the ground while the maids, ignoring the commotion around them, put hot bricks on her back and chest. Liza looked up, her wizened face a witch’s mask in the smoky light. “Best if we’m take her to a warm bed, then, mistress. Half-drownded, she is. She’m won’t last the night, as I reckon.”
Lady Stavely rounded on Felicia. “If she dies ...,” she hissed. “If she dies ...”
Kissed by Starlight Page 9
