Guardian of the Green Hill

by Laura L. Sullivan

  “Wait, will you do it? Are you gonna find him?” But she was gone, and he had no idea if she would deliver the message. Judging from her tiny fury and the swelling bites on his palm, he didn’t think she would.

  He crossed into the woods and looked for some other source of help, but the only other unnatural creature he saw was the lumbering Gooseberry Wife heading into the deep forest to spin her cocoon. He hailed her, but she just gnashed her teeth at him and heaved herself onward.

  There was a slithering sound like a snake on dry leaves, and Gul Ghillie came into view rolling his hoop with that sharpened hazel stick whose point was the last thing Finn’s right eye ever saw.

  Finn backed away and held his hands up to his one remaining eye. “Please, I know what you have to do, but don’t do it yet. Let me tell you something.”

  Gul Ghillie stopped, swinging the hoop hypnotically on his stick. “Well?” he said when Finn was silent.

  “It’s just … I wouldn’t have done it if not for … I didn’t mean any harm this time, honestly.”

  “Folk who say ‘honestly’ are generally being dishonest,” Gul said, and twirled the hoop faster. “Out with it. I haven’t got all day. What’s important enough to lose your other eye over? Dying for another glimpse of the queen? Got a bet on with your mates?”

  “No, nothing like that,” Finn said, peeping out from behind his hands. “It’s Meg. She’s in trouble.”

  Gul cocked his head to the side like an intelligent robin. “Thought you hated all them Morgans. Heard you cursing the lot of ’em a time or two.”

  “Not Meg. Not the others either, really, I guess, but Meg … she’s okay.”

  “‘Okay’ won’t save yer eye, boy.”

  “She’s nice. She’s nice to me.”

  “She’s nice to everyone,” Gul said.

  What Finn wanted to say, if he looked into the dark chambers of his heart, was that Meg made him a better person. When he was with Meg, he didn’t hate the world half so much, didn’t think it was against him … and if it was, he knew Meg would stand between him and the world. He wanted to tell Gul that Meg was brave, that he needed her because he wasn’t brave, except just a little bit, when she was there. He wanted to tell Gul about Angharad’s prophesy, but he didn’t dare. He even, had he but known it, wanted to tell Gul how Meg looked in the sweet-pea dress at the festival in the two minutes before it was ruined.

  But all he said, sulkily and defiantly, was, “Just help her, would you? Take my eye. I knew what would happen. I just needed you to know that someone’s trying to kill Meg so you can save her.”

  “And what makes you think we would save her?”

  “She’s the next Guardian. She’s going to devote her life to keeping you safe.”

  The air around Gul Ghillie shimmered, and he was no longer a boy but a manticore, a portmanteau beast with the body of a red lion, a scorpion’s tail, and the head of a man with a curled Assyrian beard and three rows of teeth. “What makes you think the fairies need a little girl to keep them safe?” he roared, then became Gul Ghillie again.

  “Child,” he said, and it galled him, coming from a boy his own age. “Your Meg, if I may call her that, can take care of herself. We knew of her danger. We have known it since Gwidion Thomas first set foot on this isle. We have known it since the first vine sprouted and climbed toward the sun.”

  “And you’re not going to do anything?”

  “What we will do has already been done,” he replied, which made no sense to Finn and dashed the last of his hopes. It had all been in vain, then. He would be blind for the rest of his life, disfigured and alone, and Meg would die at the hands of a madman. There was one small consolation, though, Finn thought grimly: when Gwidion had finished with Meg, he’d return and put Finn out of his misery. That was something.

  “Okay, then,” Finn said with false bravado. “Get it over with.”

  Gul tossed the hoop high into the air. Finn squeezed his eye tightly shut. He couldn’t help it, though he knew it wouldn’t do any good.

  The terrible piercing pain never came. Just to be sure, he kept his eye closed for about five minutes. That horrid Gul Ghillie was probably just waiting for him to open his eye. This is getting ridiculous, he thought at last, and opened it just a hair, then all the way.

  Gul Ghillie was gone, and the sky was brilliant with the full pink of sunset.

  Thrice in Three Days

  YOU WOULD THINK THAT IN ANY RACE a healthy girl fleeing for her life with a sizeable head start would have no trouble eluding an almost middle-aged gaunt fellow whose only exercise is lifting his brush. But young legs are made for sprints, not marathons, and though Meg was fast enough, she was used to the mad dashes and frequent stops of tag and hide-and-seek and soccer. Then too, she hadn’t slept the night before, and though her mind believed she had been under the Green Hill for only an hour or two, her sensible body knew she’d missed a whole night of sleep. Between that and her terror, she was nearly done in. She easily outpaced him at first, but she couldn’t shake him. He kept after her with the same tireless, ground-eating half trot wolves use to cover vast miles of tundra.

  It wasn’t just a matter of beating him to the Green Hill. Now that Meg had a moment to think clearly, she realized that she had to keep Gwidion occupied until dawn. She couldn’t lose him—if she did, he might make his way back to the Rookery and harm her family. But she had to stay out of his reach until daybreak. Only when she had officially declared herself the next Guardian would Phyllida truly be safe. Then Meg would be Gwidion’s sole target.

  It was just nightfall. That meant she had to keep Gwidion in the woods until about five o’clock in the morning. Already she was panting, and a painful stitch throbbed under her right ribs. She risked a glance behind her. He was just within sight. At least his goat wasn’t with him. Meg stumbled to a stop for a blessed few seconds’ rest against an oak tree.

  She began to trot again, then suddenly there wasn’t ground beneath her feet, and muddy water was creeping up her nose. Until she actually stepped in it, she’d had no idea that it was a pond. Flat coins of green weed floated at the surface, creating a solid-looking carpet that yielded and sucked her under as soon as her foot hit it. Slimy tendrils wrapped caressingly around her legs, and she sputtered to the surface, snorting out the foul water.

  As she kicked toward the far bank, slick fingers grabbed her ankle. She thrashed hard with her other foot and struck something fleshy and yielding. She turned, floating on her back and still kicking, and saw an almost-human face with a toothy mouth a foot across, framed by black algae-filled hair.

  Jenny Greenteeth would eat anything that came near her stagnant pool, but her favorite food was flesh of the very young. Even Meg was a bit too old and tough for her gourmet tastes, but good meals were few and far between. She pulled the tempting morsel closer, hand over hand, the girl’s panic adding relish to Jenny Greenteeth’s hunger. She faced her perpetual dilemma—little bites first, to make them scream, or one devouring coup de grâce to make the waters churn red?

  Which is why there are far more alligators than there are Jenny Greenteeths. Alligators eat first and ask philosophical and epicurean questions later, so their prey rarely escapes. Gwidion, charging up to the pond, didn’t see that his job was about to be done for him, only that his prey was in his reach. His long, sinewy arm reached down and plucked Meg out of danger. Jenny Greenteeth lunged and raked at the interloper with a clawed hand, catching him on the forearm, but was left with no more than a faint taste of blood. Swearing foul fairy oaths, she sank beneath the waterweeds, and in a moment, you couldn’t tell either she or the pond was there.

  Gwidion dragged Meg away from the bank and threw her down.

  “I’ve worked my whole life for this, girl, and I won’t let you thwart me.” He stabbed downward but slipped on the dripping algae and sprawled on top of her. For a moment no one knew where the knife was or whose arm was whose, then Meg was on her feet again, squelching away in her w
aterlogged sneakers, with Gwidion close on her heels.

  She’d half expected fairies to spring to her defense. Wasn’t she going to be their Guardian, their protector, their advocate? The least they could do was turn her pursuer around on a stray sod or befuddle him with some glamour or trap him in a—

  “That’s it!” she said aloud with the last spare breath she’d have for some time. Now if only she could find it. She set off running again with new purpose, if not with renewed speed.

  She shed her metal as she ran. First a little silver chain with a mother-of-pearl butterfly pendant, then her watch. It was very like Meg that even with a murderous man behind her she tried to toss them in conspicuous shrubs so, should she survive, she could recover them later. She did a mental inventory as she ran in what she fervently hoped was the right direction. She felt her pockets for any unknown coins and was relieved to recall her pants were a loose pale linen with drawstrings instead of buttons and zippers. It would have been awkward to shed her pants, but she would have done it. Otherwise, the oak coppice would tear her to pieces.

  The old oak of Gladysmere Forest had been wise and happy … until one day two drunken men had a bet to see who could chop through the mighty tree first. It took them three days, and in the end the oak got its revenge. One man fell to his friend’s ax, then the tree crashed down on them both.

  But old oaks are hard to kill. In spite and gall, new shoots sprouted from the roots, and the oak was reborn a monster thicket of saplings with a hatred for man and the metal that had been its doom. Meg and Dickie had been stuck in it once, and it was only when they shed all metal that the vengeful coppice let them go. If Meg could get Gwidion to follow her into the coppice, he wouldn’t be able to escape.

  Meg had been through the forest on a number of occasions, both day and night, but navigating through darkness at a run is difficult, particularly when the price of slowing down or getting lost could be death. She jogged by a jagged alder stump that looked familiar and veered to the right past a cluster of faintly glowing mushrooms.

  Ahead, she heard a sound like the wind through a stand of bamboo, a grinding and cracking of wood on wood. There was no wind. The coppice, sensing their presence, was rubbing its arboreal hands together in anticipation.

  “Oh-ho,” Gwidion said from much too close for comfort. “So the vixen thinks she can go to ground. Well, my pretty, I’ll find you, and when I do…”

  She didn’t hear his threat, because a voice rasped in her ear, Hard metal on my bones, cruel metal in my heart. Cold metal severed me, and I will sever you. Woody hands grasped her roughly by the arms and started to tear her in opposite directions. For the first second or two, it was actually pleasant (as is the rack, they say), loosening her ligaments and stretching her muscles like a good warm-up. I cut you. I fell you, the coppice snarled, and pulled harder. She strained against it for all she was worth, but what is the strength of a girl to that of an oak?

  Why was it attacking her? Before, once she was free of metal, it had let her go at once. Metal, metal, biting my flesh, the oak whispered, and began to slowly separate her arms from her body. She heard a crunch nearby—at least Gwidion had followed her. At least he’d be torn apart too. She had saved her family.

  “Come out, come out, wherever you are,” Gwidion taunted in schoolyard cadence. “Ready or not, here I come.”

  Her shoes! There was metal on the tips of her shoelaces. Just before serious damage was done, she kicked her shoes off and the tree released its deadly hold.

  “Thank you,” she said, patting one of the slender new saplings rising from the roots before squeezing through the tight canebrake to freedom. “Olley olley oxen free,” she said to herself.

  Gwidion was a pathetic sight, but she tried very hard not to feel sorry for him. He had several pieces of metal that she could see and obviously had no idea why the tree was attacking him. He stabbed at the grappling saplings with his dagger, enraging the tree further. It had hold of his arms and legs and was doing its best to quarter him, all the while lashing at his face with its most supple switches.

  “That,” said a voice beside her, “is why he should never be the Guardian.” Pazhan eyed his master with a detached insouciance.

  Meg jumped and ran behind a tree—a quite friendly little hickory. Pazhan’s horns were still dark with Lysander’s blood. But the goat didn’t seem at all threatening now.

  “You’re … you’re not going to help him?”

  “If he tells me to help him, I must.” Pazhan watched his master fight being torn into pieces until Gwidion happened to see him.

  “Help me, you blasted goat!” he screamed as he pulled against the gripping branches. With something like a shrug, the goat waded into the fray and began biting through wood. He tossed aside branches with his powerful horns until Gwidion could struggle through the coppice. The tree whacked him one last parting shot to the rump and rasped, No metal, never metal. He wants to fell the sapling, but the sapling is strong. Unroot yourself, sprout!

  Taking this (rightly) as a message to herself, Meg ran again, slowly, jarring with each stride.

  “I can’t keep up. Stay with her!” Gwidion ordered his goat, and Meg heard the thud of hooves in the dirt grow closer.

  “He doesn’t think about what he says,” Pazhan pointed out when they were beyond Gwidion’s sight. He trotted easily beside her, and after a while without violence, Meg gave up trying to elude him. “Another reason he oughtn’t be Guardian. If he tells me to kill you, I must. Be ready for that.”

  She slowed to a walk. “Whose side are you on?”

  “Side? Are there sides in this? I am a fairy, but I have served Thomas men for seventeen generations.”

  “You’re a fairy?”

  “Do goats you know talk?”

  “Well … I thought…”

  “A brownie, like your own family brownie, and bound to serve Thomas men until the day one sets me free.”

  “Which he won’t do, I suppose.”

  “Don’t be so sure about that,” said the goat with a canny wink. “Now, follow me.”

  “Why should I?”

  “I serve now because I must, but when my servitude ends, I will be a free fairy once more … and mayhap I am tired of being ruled by Thomas men. I wouldn’t wish it on others of my kind. Look here. Step in that.”

  Meg skidded to a halt before a ring of pale mushrooms. “Are you kidding? You are on his side! I know what will happen if I step inside a fairy circle.”

  “Aye, good, then you also know what will happen when he steps in to follow you. He’ll be trapped—”

  “Along with me, and he’ll kill me.”

  “He’ll certainly try, but I’ve led the wild dances in a fairy circle, I’ve captured mortal girls to be my partner, and I tell you that anyone’d be hard-pressed to catch their breath or collect their thoughts once inside. One fairy will grab your hands, another will take hold of his, and you’ll be whirled into madness until they release you.”

  “Which might not be for a hundred years,” she said. “No thanks.”

  “I give you my oath, when the sun is about to rise, I will free you both, and you can run to the Green Hill to make your declaration. It will feel like just a few moments to you, lost in your dance.”

  I can’t run anymore, Meg thought. I have to trust him. If I can see my way to dawn, anything might happen.

  She crouched just outside the mushroom ring, rubbing her ankle as though she’d twisted it. This, she thought, is the stupidest thing I’ve ever done.

  Gwidion crashed through the trees, emerging like the wild man of Borneo, with his hair disheveled and bloody welts across his face and arms.

  “Got you!” he said, and lunged at her. Meg let herself fall backward, expecting at any moment to feel the knife.

  But cool hands gathered her up and draped her with garlands, laughing and exclaiming at her free hair and bare feet, the water-weeds on her skin and the wild look in her eyes. “You’re one of us already,�
� said a girl her own age with flowing brown locks and bare feet beneath short skirts that appeared to be made of lacy leaf skeletons.

  “Dance with us and be free,” said another, whose own skin seemed to be dappled with duckweed.

  “But there’s someone after me,” she said, or tried to say, as the surprisingly strong hands pulled her into what looked like a grassy meadow, as close-cropped as a croquet lawn and lit with will-o’-the-wisps. She couldn’t see any distinct edges. Was all of this inside the mushroom circle, then? Fairy space must work as strangely as fairy time.

  And look there—Gwidion, caught by three other little girls, who pulled at his hands and clothes until he was trotting in an awkward hopping dance. One of them plucked his knife and tossed it away. It promptly disappeared outside the ring … though Meg couldn’t see the mushrooms anymore.

  Tiny butterfly fairies, just a bit bigger than the moth pixie Finn had seen, cavorted on the turf under Gwidion’s feet. “Unhand me!” he said, and tried to stomp on the little fairies. They shrilled screaming giggles of delight and danced just out of reach.

  With the last of his strength and free will, Gwidion lurched across the meadow toward Meg, dragging the laughing fairy girls behind him. “This is your doing, vixen. When I catch you…” But their partners pulled them apart, and some unseen piper struck up a lively air.

  This was entirely different from the court ball under the Green Hill. These girls were wild maenads, stomping their bare feet and flinging their locks about with abandon. Meg fought them at first on general principle, but it wasn’t long before she forgot Gwidion, forgot the terrible danger before her, the terrible tragedy behind her, and gave herself up to the dance. It was delicious to be moving her limbs and tossing her head. Even when Gwidion passed close by, burdened by his lively fairy partners, she wasn’t afraid. She knew dimly, like a childhood memory, that her legs were aching and sore, that she was so sleepy she was about to drop, but she danced on.