“I don’t trust it,” Morgain said glumly. “We can be seen.”
“Undoubtedly, but there’s nothing we can do about that. Come, Morgain, we’ll share this peach. Don’t worry. The butterflies don’t seem to have harmed it.” She took the precaution of wiping it off on the satin reverse of her riding-habit’s lapel before biting.
“I don’t like peaches,” Morgain said. Yet he took a bite nonetheless. It crunched. The boy’s expression brightened. “I don’t mind apples, though.”
Clarice brought the fruit close to her eyes to be able to focus on it properly. She could have made a mistake in the dining room and taken the wrong fruit, but even her nose, brushed by fuzz, knew the difference in scent between apples and peaches. This was, indubitably, a peach.
Except when Morgain took a bite. Clarice made no comment. She had a feeling that if she started exclaiming over every peculiar circumstance, her voice would be down to a mere croak before morning ever dawned.
“Which way now, Morgain?”
He wiped his mouth on his sleeve. “Not the road, I think. It’s too obvious. And we most certainly want to stay out of those mountains, if you want to avoid your mother.”
“I think that is wise.” Clarice closed the bandbox, wondering what would appear when next she opened it. There were still butterflies about, though most had gone off to sup on the flowers in the fields on either side of the track.
As Clarice and Morgain set off through the field below them, crushing wildflowers underfoot by the scent, Clarice dared not give her thoughts full rein. Like a horse galloping back to a familiar stable, they returned time and again to Dominic. Would he suffer for having lost her? She naturally discounted his protestations of undying love. His fancy for her would no doubt soon burn out, for so violent a flame could not long survive the loss of its fuel.
Clarice nodded to herself, thinking herself most wise, though her experience was somewhat lacking. She resolutely ignored the pain in her own heart, attributing it to the peach. It hadn’t been ripe enough, she thought, though forced to admit that it would be the first fruit of any kind she’d eaten lately that had proved to be less than perfection.
No, she was concerned solely with King Forgall’s reaction to the loss of his “hostage.” She hoped he would not punish Dominic too severely. She did not pretend to understand males of any species—except perhaps horses—but thought that the king and the knight seemed to have a rapport based on respect. She expected that Forgall would understand that Dominic could not have watched her every instant and therefore be lenient. It would be a great shame if so brave and vigorous a knight were injured by her escape. Of course, she’d never see him again. Strange how her eyes could prick with tears at the thought of never knowing what became of him.
“Watch out,” Morgain said, catching her by the elbow.
“What is it?” Clarice asked, coming out of her reverie.
Morgain pointed. The field, smooth and easy to walk in, came to an abrupt end. A brook, swollen as if with rain, poured down a narrow defile. Even as Clarice watched, the water seemed to dig itself a deeper channel. Mud and stones were falling from the sides of the gully as more and more water rushed in to augment the brook, now more of a small river, which in turn created a deeper and deeper ravine. The water looked black in the moonlight, save where it boiled white in the presence of some obstruction.
The two had to jump back as the very bank on which they stood crumbled into the water. Clarice saw that across the way, the field continued. The water that blocked their path was a very new thing. She was willing to wager that it had not been there five minutes. Surely otherwise she would have heard the rumble of the rushing water no matter how involved her thoughts.
“As we are judging our route by difficulty, this must be the right way,” Clarice said to Morgain. She had to raise her voice to be heard.
“There must be a way across. The Fay fight fair.”
Clarice saw nothing that could be used to cross. “Go upstream; I’ll go down. Look for a fallen tree, some boulders in the water, anything we can use. ...”
“I can try to conjure a—” he started to say, but Clarice covered his mouth with her fingertips.
“Don’t. If every time you ‘wish’ for something, you lose a little bit of yourself, then don’t. We shall manage very well as two mere mortals, never fear.”
Morgain nodded and promptly walked away, his eyes turned toward the stream. Clarice followed suit, glad of her boots and glad too that the strange noise she’d heard had been left behind on the road.
She’d not gone far when Morgain came hurrying back, slightly out of breath and with the hem of his coat sopping wet. “What is it?”
“A tree has fallen across the ravine. It’s not very big but it held me.”
“You’ve been across already?”
“Yes. How else would I know if it would hold?”
Clarice didn’t know whether to shake him or hug him. She did both, briefly. “You foolish child! If you’d fallen in, I never should have known what had happened to you!”
He freed himself, giving an impatient twitch to his coat. “Of course you would have. If you’d gone upstream it would be another pair of shoes, but as you headed downstream you would have been unfailingly certain to have seen me float by.”
As usual, Morgain left her without a word to say. If she continued to scold him, he’d only think her unreasonable and she could not, for her own sake, agree with him. After a choked moment, she said, “Show me this tree.”
He lead her back upstream and pointed with pride to the fallen tree. “That?” she said. “It’s not a tree; it’s a sapling! You crossed on that?”
“It’s easy. I just knelt down and crawled across. There are a lot of branches to hold on to. I’ll show you, shall I?”
He scooted across as nimble as a monkey, though the hem of his coat once again fell into the water, now rushing along in a frenzy of white foam only a few inches below the tree. It was not, however, until Clarice herself had ventured out that she realized the water was sweeping through the branches underneath her, making the already-flimsy “bridge” tremble as though afflicted with an earthquake.
She found herself frozen halfway across, clutching to the stem of a branch with tight-clasped fingers. Scolding herself in the harshest of terms did nothing to persuade her hand to loosen. Clarice felt the tree shift beneath her, yet still could not move.
“Aunt! The farther bank is crumbling! Please hurry!”
The sound of Morgain’s terror prompted her to move. Very, very slowly, she proceeded. He reached out to help her over the last few feet, but she was so afraid that he would fall in, or that she would pull him in when she fell herself, that she ordered him brusquely back.
She crawled onto the solid ground, hampered by her heavy skirt’s waterlogged hem. To Morgain’s bright suggestion that she should stand up, she gave no reply but the shake of her head. Upon reaching the flowers, she collapsed, facedown. Fortunately, she’d taken the precaution of slinging the hatbox on its ribbon over her shoulder so that it rode on her back.
For a little while, she indulged in a fit of the vapors. At least, she thought that’s what this trembling, palpitating, shuddering loss of control was. Even when the Rider had tried to drag her off, she’d not felt so feeble. That had been something to fight; this crossing had only to be accomplished.
She sat up, brushing ineffectually at the stains she’d collected across her bodice and face. Her hand dragged across her cheek with a sticky feeling. She sniffed at her fingers. A scent, sharp, spirited, and clean, caught her notice though she could not place it.
“I expect I am a sight to frighten horses,” she said.
“No, except your hair is coming down a trifle,” Morgain said, looking her over critically.
She tried to fix it as they continued. “What kind of tree was that?”
“A conifer.”
“I beg your pardon?”
“An evergreen. I don’
t know what kind. Not English, I think. I noticed that the doors stood in a perfect grove of them.”
“Then we are coming closer?”
Morgain debated with himself and then, reluctantly, shook his head. “I doubt it. We might be on the way for days.”
“I trust not. We haven’t that much food.”
“Oh, I’m not worried about that. Shall we press onward?”
All Clarice wanted to do was lie on the nice soft ground until her mind stopped replaying those horrid moments above the water. But she considered that she’d shown Morgain enough of a bad example for one march. Assuming a cheerful expression, she sprang up and pronounced herself quite fit.
For a little while, the Wilder World threw no more obstacles in their way. Yet Clarice felt a growing awareness that they were not unwatched. There was nothing to see, and the sounds she’d heard were not repeated, but all the same, she felt eyes upon her and bad to resist turning about every moment to see who was there. It was an unnerving sensation.
The moon set, freeing the stars from the burden of her light. Clarice felt better too. Perhaps whatever watched them could not see so well without moonlight.
The beauty of the stars was magnificent, yet strange. Here the stars seemed more numerous than at home. She sought in vain for the constellations she knew—the Great Plow, the Crab, and the Virgin. It seemed as though the press created by thousands of other stars had crowded the constellations out of true so that they could no longer be distinguished as themselves.
Clarice saw, out of the corner of her eye, a few shooting stars come flying down. She turned to look with a gasp of pleasure. “Morgain, did you see that?”
“I saw nothing.”
“Shooting stars, a whole group of... look! More.” She raised her hands as though to catch them. “Aren’t they beautiful! I’ve never seen so many fall all at once.”
She stopped to stare. Morgain trudged on, never raising his face to the sky. She had almost to trot to catch up. “I always think they should not be silent,” she said. “So much strength and beauty ... I am reminded always of Herr Handel’s Music for the Royal Fireworks. It would only be right. . .. Look! Even more of them.”
These two whizzed round like Roman candles before flying off into the unknown. “Odd,” Clarice said, then amended her comment. “Odd for anywhere but here.”
“We should go on.”
“In a moment,” she said absently.
“At least let us reach some cover.”
“Cover? It’s not going to rain, Morgain.”
The star-shower had increased to no less than once a second. Clarice stood with her hands clasped against her heart, a joyful smile on her lips. The light shed by the stars as they zipped past flickered the way a lamp set in a window does when viewed by a rider on a fast horse among trees.
“Let us go on,” Morgain said.
Clarice was touched by the nervousness of his tone. “Of course, Morgain,” she said, instantly feeling guilty for having wasted even a few moments at a standstill, no matter how awe-inspiring the reason.
No sooner had she taken one step forward than the first fireball zoomed in to land with a stunning crash not a hundred yards away. Clarice staggered backward as a powerful wind kicked up, blowing dirt into her dazzled eyes and roaring in her ringing ears. Flames began to devour the flowers.
“Run!” Clarice shouted.
Chapter Fifteen
“Hurry, before the flames grow too violent!”
She took the lead, snatching Morgain’s hand up in hers and fleeing for al! she was worth in the direction of the flames. “You can’t mean to go right through,” Morgain shouted, suddenly reverting to nine-year-old boy. “We’ll be burnt up!”
Another meteor plowed into the earth behind them, setting the land there alight. Clarice caught a glimpse of a glowing red ball, covered over with what looked like burned black lace. “So we will, even if we stay here! Come on!”
Morgain made no more protests. He clung tight to his aunt’s hand and ran when she did. He knew how to scramble through a turn too, for one of her lightning changes of direction. The stars were falling thick and fast now. Clarice had little time or taste to admire them. She guessed that they had no natural origin, any more than had the brook. Could the Fay-King manipulate even the heavens?
The fires caused by the fallen stars gave off surprisingly little smoke, yet there was an acrid smell and taste in the air that reminded Clarice of the odor of an oil lamp when the metal grows hot. Ahead of her was an ever-increasing wall of fire that seemed to laugh as it licked out with its many long, red tongues. Clarice looked at it and felt only defiance in her heart. “They couldn’t stop me with water; they’ll not stop me with fire, though it contain every devil in hell.”
She took her nephew’s face in her hands. He looked white, his eyes rolling toward the flames like a frightened horse’s. She bellowed in a low, intense tone calculated to penetrate the ceaseless roaring of the fire. “It’s just another obstacle, Morgain. Don’t worry. The greatest treasure has the largest lock,’ eh?”
His gaze locked onto hers. He seemed to realize that he was giving way to his emotions and tried to pull himself up. His high boy’s voice came clearly to her ears. “That theory sounded very comfortable back at the Manor. It brings me no ease now.”
“Have you a handkerchief in your pocket, Morgain?”
He groped in them, saying “What have you in mind, Aunt? I don’t really want to blow my nose just now.” He found a grubby cloth in his coat and handed it to her.
“Not that.” She folded the handkerchief into a triangle and tied it around his eyes. “Do you remember two years ago when the Randolphs’ stable caught fire?”
“They blindfolded the horses... Aunt, I’m not a horse.”
Clarice led him by the hand, closer and closer to the wall of fire that raged before them. Though Morgain made no sound, she could tell by the way he dragged on her hand how much he hated this.
When they stood within leaping distance of the fire-curtain before them, Clarice stopped so suddenly that Morgain stepped on her heel. “What a fool I am!” she said in wonder. As though in answer, the noise died.
“What is it, Aunt Clarice?”
“Don’t you feel it, Morgain? There’s no heat! As near as we are standing, our hair should be catching but there’s no heat!”
He yanked the dirty cambric down from his forehead.
Staring with half-closed eyes at the terrifying flames, he held out one thin, wavering hand. The dancing light played over it but it was not only unscorched but not even warmed.
“They don’t want us dead,” Clarice said. “They only want to slow us down”
“We shan’t let them,” Morgain said with great determination. “Come along, Aunt.”
Despite his grim resolve, he could hardly bring himself to pass through the fire. There was too great a disparity between what his eyes perceived and what his mind told him. His eyes gave him the information that he would surely be turned instantly to ash if he entered the fire, though his mind told him that without heat the fire could not consume him.
“I’ll go first,” Clarice said.
“No!” He had his arms wrapped tightly about his shoulders as though he were cold.
“Then together?”
“Yes. Together.”
Morgain was no lightweight. Naturally stocky, he enjoyed his meals and did not exercise as much as a less-studious boy might have done. Yet with love in her heart to give her strength, Clarice lifted her nephew up, rather awkwardly, his legs dangling, and carried him past. His face was buried against the folds of her shawl so that he did not see the fire swirl about them.
Clarice saw everything as they pressed into the heart of the fire. Red flames were followed by butter yellow, succeeded by a blue like the flash of a diamond, and finally a white so brilliant that it made the hottest summer sun seem dim. All the flames seemed to bow and sway to some internal rhythm of remarkable speed. For an inst
ant, she seemed to be privileged to hear it, taken at a faster tempo than any she’d ever imagined possible, a primitive music of drums and more drums. It would be so easy to fall into step and forget that her goal was to be free.
There seemed to be words in the song, words that embraced the destructive powers of fire, how even the world’s greatest cities were slaves to its powers, both of creation and of destruction. Man cannot build without me, it seemed to say, but what he builds I shall destroy and take pleasure in destruction.
Clarice struggled through, her arms and back aching from carrying Morgain. When she stepped through the last of the fire, she stumbled. Catching herself, she said, “You can get down now.”
“I’m sorry,” he said bitterly as he stood on his own two feet. He jerked the handkerchief from around his neck and stuffed it into his pocket. “I should be a help to you, not more of a hindrance.”
“You are, my love. I never should do these things if not for you. We’d better hurry on.”
She realized quickly that, though she could walk, hurrying was not in her power. The muscles of her legs twitched and pulsed every time she tried to go beyond a steady pace. She remembered reading an account of the recent war in France which described how soldiers on the march could lose all sense of feeling in their legs and yet continue on in a kind of trance far beyond what one must suppose they could endure. She did not complain, knowing that her pride would not permit her to plead weakness when her nephew kept on.
After a long time, they reached the shelter of a line of trees. It had been on the horizon for ages, though they never seemed to come any nearer to it. Morgain sank with a sigh onto the mossy ground beneath the first tree. ‘Thank God,” he said. “I’ve a blister on my heel the size of a shilling!”
“Why didn’t you say something?”
“What could you do if I had, Aunt? I’m not going back to that house.”
“No, of course not. Are you hungry?”
Magic by Daylight Page 21
