Unnatural Issue

by Mercedes Lackey

  “And a good thing for me that it was you that I called,” she replied. “It could have been—well—anything.”

  “Hmm-hmm!” he agreed, and turned his attention to the fish again. “Except for your will, again. ’Twas a good playmate you wanted, and with the single-minded will of a wee child behind it, it would be nothing else you got.”

  She wondered about that. Was it true? There was no telling, with Robin. Certainly when she had felt the power coming up through her bare feet, power she had only ever tasted in little, little sips before, and she had stood there in the wood and demanded that a playfellow come at last, that had been all and everything she wanted in the world. Cook’s daughter and the infant she’d nursed alongside of Susanne had gone back to her husband’s little farm as soon as Susanne was weaned, and she hadn’t seen a child of her own age at the Manor since. The maids had limited time for play, Cook had none at all, the gardener had left in disgust when nothing would thrive and had taken the boy that helped with him, leaving only the stableman and his boy, who were just as busy as the maids. Housekeeper lamented that the Manor had fallen on such sorry times, so many rooms closed up, staff reduced to next to nothing, but with Master Richard going nowhere and seeing no one, there was no reason to have more than they did. The accounting was all done by Master Richard’s solicitor in the village; he turned up once a fortnight to disburse funds and paid out wages every quarter. No one came to the Manor anymore to pay their rents, and all the Manor farmland was tended by tenants who were too far away for Susanne to play with their children.

  She had been lonely, she had been frustrated, and she had a very strong will. Naturally, she had taken matters into her own hands. She had gotten as far as the green space beyond the blighted gardens once and had felt a strange sensation through her feet, as if everything around her were connected to her and responding to her. She had gotten called back before she could explore that sensation, but on that special day, she knew she would not be looked for all afternoon, for it was spring cleaning. So she took an apple and bread and cheese in her pockets, waited until no one was watching her, and walked quite calmly out of the gardens to the green trees she could see. There she had demanded, wordlessly, but firmly, that someone come to keep her company. Someone nice. Someone who knew things. Someone who could explain these wonderful new sensations she was having.

  She got Robin, who was quite as surprised as she was.

  Suiting his form to hers, he had appeared as a child rather than an adult. She had intrigued him no end—and the Fae were always attracted to mortal children.

  “I was tempted to steal you away, you know,” he said, finally leaving the fish alone and rolling over on his back to stare at the sky. “You with a father that didn’t want you, and all that power in you—you were exactly the sort of mortal child that most calls to us.”

  “I know that now; I didn’t know that then.” She began plaiting grass stems into a slender braid. “I’d have likely gone with you.”

  Robin sighed. “I couldn’t. Your land needed you. I could feel it calling you. But with all that power—it was too dangerous to leave you untrained, and your fool of a father wasting his life in blaming you for what was none of your doing—you’d have been left to the first mortal Mage to see you for what you were.”

  “It might have been one of the Gypsies,” she pointed out. “That would have been no bad thing.”

  “Except they’d have stolen you too, and this is the land that needs you.” He sighed again. “Alas for me, there was naught for it but to train you myself. Bother responsibility!”

  She pulled a face at him. “Oh, and such a burden I was too!”

  “Dreadful,” he agreed. She laughed.

  Then they fell silent; she, considering what he had said about troubling times coming, and he—well, who knew what one of the Fae thought? It could have been nothing more important than how to pull a little mischief off, or deep sobering thoughts about keeping England safe. Or, he might not have been thinking at all.

  There was no doubt that she could not have had a finer or stricter teacher. She had been given such a thorough education in the ways and means, the dos and don’ts of Earth mastery, that she very much doubted there was a mortal Master who could find fault with anything she did.

  She wondered if her father even realized that the only reason why he had not attracted dangerous Elementals to the neighborhood and to himself was because she had aided the land in walling off the Manor and the gardens that he had poisoned, encysting it in the same way that an oyster or clam would cover something that irritated it in nacre. Robin himself had begun the process, and she had added to it, layer on layer, whenever she had the energy to spare.

  Within the Manor boundaries, she had worked to protect every member of the household as best she could. The task was made a bit easier by the fact that her father was not actively trying to harm anything, and the blight about the house was merely the natural reflection of the blighted and embittered spirit of the Earth Master himself, not an actual curse or active poisoning.

  “It’s going to be war,” Robin said soberly, out of the blue. “Not just a little war, neither. There’s a lot of mortal nastiness afoot, beyond and above that. Wicked weapons, things that should not be allowed. It will come to touch everyone before it’s over.”

  A chill came over her. He must have been Foreseeing, sitting there. “What must I do?” she asked at last.

  “Warn the Coveners. Be vague, though, tell ’em to scry it out for themselves. They’ll be more like to believe it that way. I’ll do what I can to help them see true.” He sighed. “And this is why so many of the Fae have cut themselves off from the mortal world. ’Tisn’t just the Cold Iron, ’tis what you lot insist on doing to yourselves and the good earth.”

  “But you stay . . .”

  “I’m the Oldest Old Thing,” he replied. “So long as there is a spot of Old England where a leaf can grow, I’ll bide.” He quirked an eyebrow at her. “It will take more than a mortal war to drive me out.”

  She took comfort in that.

  “As for you, missy, you’d best be off. They’ll be needing you in the kitchen.” He made a shooing motion with one hand without getting off the ground.

  “So they will.” Though the kitchen was the last place she wanted to be on a day like this, she had better get back before the servants started to think less than kindly of her. She got up reluctantly, brushed off her skirts, and made her way through the wood and back to the Manor.

  From a distance, it still looked handsome. The building was made of a mellow stone, and signs of neglect were few. You couldn’t tell how many windows were close-curtained or shuttered, and from here, you couldn’t tell how rank and neglected the immediate grounds were, how the fountains were dry and full of leaves, the little statues covered in half-dead ivy.

  She wished she could feel sorry for her father—but how could she pity a man who hated her for no good reason, who had responded to loss with bitterness, who neglected lands that had depended on the power of the Whitestones for centuries?

  She shook her head and sighed. Well, no matter. If he wouldn’t do his duty, then she would. At least there would be one Whitestone keeping faith.

  As she approached the house, a movement at one of the second-story windows caught her eye. Something stirred the curtains in one of the windows.

  Someone was watching her.

  She felt another of those strange chills running up her spine.

  Ducking her head, she decided to abandon dignity and run, picking up her skirts in both hands. She didn’t stop until she was around the corner and out of sight of those windows.

  Who could it have been? She wasn’t sure which of those rooms her father claimed as his own; the whole of the second floor was forbidden to her. In fact, the only room she was allowed to go into above the ground floor was the attic. Even her bedroom was what had once been what Cook called a stillroom, where the lady of the house would have made her own herbal an
d floral concoctions. It was just big enough for her narrow bed, though a plenitude of shelves gave her more storage than she could ever possibly use.

  She tried to convince herself that the chill was just another of those shivers of premonition that Robin had started with his warning, but . . .

  But it had felt as if whoever had been watching her was not someone who had her best interests in mind.

  So, all things considered, it probably had been her father. Not that he would know who she was, which was probably a very good thing.

  He probably just thought she was one of the servants, the tenants, or a relative of one of the servants. And since he seemed to hate the entire world, well, small wonder if she felt a chill. He was still an Earth Master, and he still had command of Earth Magic. It would have been a greater surprise if she hadn’t felt a chill.

  She passed through the hedge around what would have been the kitchen garden if anything could have been induced to grow there, and entered the kitchen door. The kitchen was a very old room; from reading the papers and the occasional magazine that came into the house, Susanne was vaguely aware that there were all manner of innovations that most houses of this size and wealth had instituted long ago. Patent ranges, for instance, and plumbed water, or at least water from a roof-cistern. This kitchen was substantially unchanged from when the Manor had first been built. Water was brought in buckets from the pump in the yard. It was heated in kettles over the fireplace. Meat was roasted on a spit in the same fireplace or baked in one of the ovens on either side of the fireplace. In fact, nearly all the cooking was done at the fireplace or in the ovens. Cook often said grimly that it was a good thing that Master was this far out in the country, because here there were still people who knew that sort of cookery. “Mark my words,” she would then add, “when I’m gone, he’ll find nobody willing or able to! Then what will he do? I ask you!”

  And everyone would look at her. Because they knew what would happen. It would have to be Susanne who took over Cook’s duties if no one else could be found.

  If things had been “right” at Whitestone Manor, the kitchen would have been bustling with activity right now. There would have been the master and mistress, several children, the upper servants like governesses and tutors, and perhaps some guests to be tended to. All of them would be wanting breakfast, of course, and a proper country breakfast at that, none of your tea and toast nonsense. And there would have been a full staff of house servants to be fed as well, either before or after the gentry were cared for.

  The kitchen was at least big enough to handle that sort of burden, hopelessly antiquated as it was. So the handful of people in it now scarcely took up more than a corner of it.

  Old Mary, the cook, looked up first, and beckoned her over with a smile. There was a plate waiting for her with that proper country breakfast on it. The rest were halfway through their own meal, which meant her father’s food had already been taken up to him.

  Last night Cook had baked a fine couple of egg pies, which they were all tucking into, with plenty of ham on the side. The Manor might be blighted, but the Manor farm was as right as Susanne could make it, and there was no lack of food on the Manor table. Cook had flung open all the windows and had that look about her that told Susanne she was contemplating spring cleaning. Not today, of course. There were May Day festivities down in the village, and everyone would be wanting to go.

  “I’ll deal with the milk,” she offered, before anyone could look wistful and ask. “I’ve had my little holiday already.”

  Patience and Prudence—who did literally every chore in the house—both lit up at that. Old Mary smiled. “Well, I’ve ham and cold pickle and cheese, and that’ll do for Master’s nuncheon, and I’ll just put a few trifles in the oven, and those will do for supper. I’ll take Master’s nuncheon up afore I go, and Agatha can take up his supper when she comes back.”

  Agatha, the housekeeper, nodded and added, “If you girls can tidy up the kitchen afore you go down to village, I reckon the house won’t be the worse for not being dusted and swept for one day.”

  Agatha and Mary were as alike as sisters, of the same sort as most of the farmwives hereabouts. Mathew could have been their brother, and the two maids could have been the children of any of them. The people in this part of the world tended to be brown, round-faced, and cheerful, like a collection of sparrows. Susanne could not have stood out more among them had she been one of the Good Folk. She looked like one of those raven-haired china-dolls that little girls got for Christmas if they were very, very good: hair as black as midnight shadows, vivid blue eyes, healthy pink-and-white complexion—and she towered over all of them but Mathew by at least three inches. Maybe it was that difference that made them just accept whatever she said as being true, (like not needing a holiday) even if it probably wasn’t. “Eh, that’s just our Susanne,” she’d heard them say more than once. So once again, when she volunteered to stay at home and work, when everyone else was having a day of fun at the village, it didn’t seem to occur to any of them that she was making a sacrifice. Or she wasn’t even one of the servants!

  For one moment, she had to bite her lip to hide her resentment. But she managed to swallow it down successfully after a bit of a struggle, while the two girls, sixteen and seventeen respectively, whispered and giggled and planned what they would do, what young men they would flirt with, what amusements they would have, and whether either of them had a chance at being made May Queen.

  Mathew finished his breakfast and went off to hitch the pony to the cart. The two girls, to their credit, made quick work of the breakfast things and then, in a burst of generosity, made sure that everything for the rest of the meals that could be done in advance, was. Within the hour, the Manor was all but empty, except for Nigel bringing the milk to the dairy, and once he had made his delivery, he, too was gone.

  Leaving Susanne in the kitchen . . . with that dark and brooding Presence looming invisibly over her from somewhere upstairs.

  With another shiver, she hurried to the dairy. Maybe the hard work of churning would drive that shadow out of her mind.

  2

  RICHARD Whitestone had eaten the breakfast brought to him by his housekeeper without tasting it—really, she could have fed him sawdust for all these years and he never would have noticed. In the first year after Rebecca’s death he had scarcely eaten at all, and the only time he had left these rooms had been to attend her funeral. Since that time, he had taken no pleasure in anything, least of all food. He ate it if he noticed it there, and otherwise left it for the housekeeper to take away.

  His life had withered, and his spirit contracted into a hard, cold thing, as infertile as a lump of stone. As he had grown bitter, twisted, and blighted, so everything he could see from his windows had grown. That gave him a grim sort of satisfaction, seeing the land itself as stark and withered as his heart.

  In his soul he had hoped that this neglect of his own body would make it fail him, but his body had been too stubborn and refused to die. Two years, three? He lost count of the days as he lay for hours with his face to the wall, roused only by the housekeeper’s insistence that he eat. He lost track of the seasons, noting only dully the presence or absence of a fire in his fireplace. At some point, however, it became apparent that his body was not going to oblige him. That was when he took on a semblance of living again. He ate—if not regularly, then at least once a day. He changed his clothing when the housekeeper laid out new. He even bathed now and again, hacked off his hair and beard with shears when it annoyed him, cut his nails the same way. Finally he had taken refuge in the only thing that gave him even a particle of release—not pleasure, for he still took no pleasure in anything—but the release of study and concentration.

  Books were somewhat of an escape. Not fiction, though. There were enough lies in the world without adding fiction to them. He found his studies in the magical library that had been amassed by generations of Whitestones. He had scarcely looked at these books during his train
ing; Earth Masters tended to be less than scholarly, more inclined to hands-on practicality. There had always been an Earth Master here, but the Whitestones, at least according to family tradition, had spawned all manner of other magicians, and some, like Air and Water, tended to be bookish. And, of course, once the books were in the house, the Earth tendency to “keep and hold” took over, and they were never even lent out to friends, who were perfectly welcome to come as guests to study but were not permitted to take so much as a child’s book away.

  It was a massive library, rivaled only by the one at Exeter House. There were books that dated all the way back to the time of Henry VII and some for which he could find no date—things written in the careful script of someone trained to copy ancient manuscripts or in the crabbed and peculiar handwriting of some unknown mage’s personal grammarie.

  Ah, the grammaries . . . the word was actually a corruption of “grimoire,” a book of spells and incantations personally collected by an individual magician. The witches called such things both a “grammary,” and a “Book of Shadows,” but a true grimoire could be a perilous thing indeed, full of notes, speculation, and experimentation. Peril appealed to him now. Puzzling out the strange handwriting and odd abbreviations involved him and made him forget his pain for a little while; these books required endless hours of study, learning the peculiar quirks of the author’s hand, puzzling them out word by word and transcribing them into bound notebooks to be left with the original. There were entire shelves full of such blank books, created by some past squire of Whitestone and left there for the use of successive generations. Well, he might as well use them; there would be no more Whitestones at the Manor. He was the last. And for a time, he had thought that this library would be his only legacy; Alderscroft would never permit the home of a Master who died without a proper heir to be left for strangers to paw over. He’d helped Alderscroft himself, twice, in such circumstances. A special delegation would go to the home and make sure there was nothing in it to cause trouble later. Libraries would be stripped of dangerous volumes and harmless ones left in their place, Working Rooms either sealed off completely or made to look like ordinary storerooms. Then any unique books would go to the library at Exeter House, while duplicates became the property of whoever in the party wished to take them. Some of the books here had come by that route.