Unnatural Issue

by Mercedes Lackey

  So she spent the entire second day bending her mind around all the lessons. The arithmetic, to her relief, proved to be nothing more arduous than what she had already been taught. And the literature was lovely. Agatha hadn’t had the temerity to borrow books from the Manor library, and by the time Susanne herself was old enough to consider doing so, she had never had any time. Between the magic and the kitchen and dairy chores, she was just generally too weary by the end of the day to read for pleasure.

  So now she finally was reading something besides the simple children’s books Agatha had found in the nursery, or the hymns and Bible verses and responses at church. And despite having to puzzle through some unfamiliar words, she found herself utterly enthralled by the play he had set her to read. She could see it all in her mind, and the fact that it had Robin in it was just the sugar on the cake. She hated to set it aside to go on to the arithmetic exercises.

  When Prudence appeared with her tray, she felt as if her brain had been stuffed full. And when she went to sleep that night, it was to toss and turn as bits of the lessons went round and round in her head.

  By the end of this, the third day, however, she was beginning to feel rebellious.

  She hadn’t been out of these rooms in three days. There was all that glorious sun and spring out there, and all she got of it was what came in through the window. The view from her window only showed the distant border of green outside the area of blight; it was not a vista that pleased. She ate her dinner with a faint feeling of being stifled, watching the sun set over the dead gardens. And just as the light dimmed to twilight, she made up her mind. She stood up and decided that she was going out.

  What matter that it was late? She had never had any fear of being out after sunset, and there were times when magic had to be done by moonlight. There was not an animal on these lands that would harm an Earth Master, she was more than able to protect herself against any magical creature, and as for humans . . . well, she could summon just about anything to help her—perfectly natural animals that would have no difficulty attacking a human that threatened her. A goat or a dog would probably be the best, but any attacker could find himself beset by a swarm of bees, charged by an angry bull or cow, attacked by geese or a fox—

  Oh, woe betide the man that tried to meddle with her! At the very least he’d spend the week afterwards wondering if his nether bits were going to just fall off or rot first—and wishing they would make up their mind to do one or the other.

  She took off her shoes so as to make no noise as she slipped down the hallway. There was no sign of life in her father’s rooms, not even a light under the door. He seemed to keep no hours at all, much less regular ones; according to Agatha, she had just given up on providing him “appropriate” meals, because he was as likely to be eating breakfast before going to bed as he was to be eating it after he got up.

  There was no one in the parlor, nor any of the other rooms that would have been used by the family had her father been leading a normal life. All of the furniture was swathed in sheets and remained that way except for the spring cleaning. There was no reason to take the sheets off; no one ever came here anyway.

  For the first time in her entire life, she went out through the front door of the Manor. Servants did not do that; they were expected to use their own entrance, and until now, she had done the same. She almost expected the door to howl in protest as she set her plebian hand on the latch, but nothing happened. She had expected the hinges to shriek in protest as she opened the door, but whoever was in charge of such things had kept the hinges nicely oiled. The door swung open quietly, and she closed it behind her just as quietly.

  And finally, for the first time in three days, she drew a breath of free air.

  Then she undid her stockings, tucked them in her shoes, left both on the doorstep, and ran for the wood.

  Once out of the blight, the air was alive with scent, and she realized how much she had missed that, stuck inside the house. Beneath her feet, the grass and earth hadn’t quite lost the heat of the sun. All around her she heard the hundreds of little sounds of things going to sleep, things waking up. The silence in the Manor was so thick it was oppressive; she had missed this, too.

  She wanted to dance with the heady wine of freedom bubbling inside her. But the moment she entered her special clearing, she was swarmed by Elementals.

  Fauns leaped around her, driven, as near as she could tell, by joy and anxiety in equal portions. Brownies clung to her skirts. Things she had always called “tree-girls” peered down at her from the canopy or from behind trunks. Other grotesque yet charming creatures, clothed in what looked like old leaves or dresses of feathers, with bodies round or spindly, tiny or as large as a child, scuttled around her. All of them seemed overjoyed to see her. All of them seemed fraught with anxiety. And all of them, with the exception of the tree-girls, chattered at her in a thousand voices, so that she lost any sense of what they were saying.

  There was nothing for it but to sit down among them and murmur soothing things at them, dispensing a comforting aura of energy. Gradually, as she managed to get them to calm down, they settled.

  But they settled around her. This was—well, this was very odd indeed. The first time, in fact, that she could ever remember something like this happening. They clung to her as if they expected her to vanish at any moment, as if she had been away for years rather than days.

  “What on earth is troubling you?” she asked one of the fauns, who had cuddled into her skirt like a puppy.

  As she scratched the nubs of his horns, she sensed he peered up at her. It was now dark enough under the trees that he was nothing more than a shadow against her white dress.

  “You were with your father. Don’t like your father,” the little creature said laconically. “He’s dark, and he drives our kind away.”

  “He brings dark things,” piped up something else from out of the shadows. “Things that hurt. Things that like to hurt us.”

  “What sort of things?” she asked, but couldn’t get any kind of answer from them. They just repeated, “Dark things,” and they couldn’t or wouldn’t say more than that. It was a little frustrating, but if she was going to calm them down and keep them calm, she had to keep herself from feeling that frustration. She kept her mind centered on the tranquility of this place, the soft, warm shadows, the scent of water and crushed grass, the sleepy murmur of birds above her.

  “Well, why were you so worried about me?” she asked. Subtle stirrings around her told her that the Elemental creatures, now reassured, were moving away from her, and off on business of their own. Which was a good thing because, after all, she couldn’t sit here forever. The faun was staying, however, nearly glued to her side.

  “Your father . . . I remember when he was Master of the land,” the little fellow said, slowly. “He was a good Master but . . . hard. An Earth Master should not be hard. And now . . . now he is dark, and he brings dark things, and he does not care that they can hurt us.”

  “But dark things happened to him,” she reminded the faun gently. “His wife, my mother, died.” The fauns didn’t really understand death; they lived entirely in the moment so far as she could tell. That was the case with a great many Elementals, actually. They could be killed, although so far as she could tell, they didn’t age or die of old age, but they didn’t seem to think about death until it happened, and then it came as an incomprehensible shock. “No wonder his thoughts are dark, and sad things haunt him.”

  “Not like this,” the faun insisted. But he couldn’t be any clearer than that, and talking about it seemed to frighten him, so eventually she stopped pressing him. Slowly he relaxed.

  “You will not go away from us?” he asked finally. His warm little shaggy body pressed up against her leg. “When you were in that house, it felt as if you had gone away from us. Will you stay with us always?”

  “You know I cannot promise that,” she told him. “I’m just one mortal Daughter of Eve. I can’t make promises like t
hat.”

  He sighed. “Dark times are coming. Robin said. We want you here, with us, when they come.”

  “But I cannot make that promise,” she repeated. “I can only promise to try.”

  It seemed that was enough. He pried himself away from her and stood up.

  “Be wary,” he said. “Take care.”

  And then he was gone.

  Alone at last, she allowed herself to sit and do nothing, think nothing at all, until she felt the smothering weight had lifted from her. Only then did she rise and make her way back to the Manor and her bed.

  Knowing now that the Elementals could not sense her inside the Manor, Susanne decided that she was not going to stay inside. After all, why should she? The next morning when Prudence came up with her breakfast, she asked for two baskets, one empty and one with a lunch in it. Prudence went away looking baffled, and it was Agatha that returned.

  “And just what will you be wanting with baskets? Miss . . .” Agatha began, then belatedly remembered that Susanne was gentry now. Evidently she had forgotten that when Prudence appeared with the request! It made Susanne laugh, which flustered Agatha further.

  “I’m going to do my lessons outside,” she explained. Then added shrewdly, “The light is bad in here. I’m going to get a squint.”

  That idea must have alarmed Agatha even further; perhaps she thought she would get the blame for it. In any event, the poor woman mumbled “Yes, Miss,” and took herself back downstairs. Moments later, Prudence returned with the requested baskets. Susanne peeked in the smaller and saw a couple nice thick sandwiches—much more satisfactory than the ridiculous tea-and-toast and cress-and-butter sandwiches she had been getting—and a corked stoneware bottle. It was probably cider. It looked just like the lunches that they’d all made up for field workers during the harvest—the overseers got the good ones, in baskets. She hoped that if it was cider, it wasn’t as strong as the stuff the field workers got, because they had heads as thick as planks, but half a bottle would probably make her terribly tipsy.

  In any event, this was much more to her liking! She had found a small tea tray and a small old rug bundled into a corner of the closet; the tray would do as a desk and the rug to sit on. These pretty white dresses had the distinct disadvantage that they got grass stained and dirty rather too easily.

  With her ink bottle wedged into the empty basket by the books, the rolled-up rug on top and the tea-tray under her arm, she set off for her clearing. She half expected to be swarmed again, but the Elemental creatures were nowhere to be seen. After last night, she was more relieved than otherwise.

  She quickly discovered that it was much easier to study in these familiar—and unstifling—surroundings. She was able to relax, which she was not able to do in those stuffy rooms. She could kick off her shoes and stockings. She got so absorbed in her work that only the growling of her stomach told her it was midday.

  “And I don’t suppose you’d be sharing any of that?” she heard Robin say from behind her as she unpacked the basket.

  “I don’t know why not,” she replied. “I cannot fathom Agatha. When I am brought luncheon in the house, she gives me three tiny butter-and-cress sandwiches with the crusts cut off and a pot of tea. But when I come out here she gives me enough to feed a plough-man and his boy.” She straightened, with a sandwich made up as a packet in brown paper in her hand, and turned slightly to hand it to him as he came to sit in the grass beside her.

  “Hmm.” Robin bit into the sandwich approvingly. “I am constantly reminded of why our kind tries to steal food from yours.”

  She peeked under the top slice of country loaf to find pickle-and-tongue. She took a bite of hers, happily. “At least I get a decent tea,” she continued. “Robin, when I came out here last night, all the magic things were practically in a panic. It was as if they thought I had deserted them.”

  “You can’t be sensed inside that house,” Robin told her, frowning over his food. “Even I can’t—or rather, I could, but your father would know I was prying and peering. I don’t want him knowing I’m about.”

  She blinked in surprise and put her half-eaten sandwich down. “But—why?”

  “He’s meddling in dark things,” Robin said, his frown deepening. “And I may be strong, but there are things as strong as I am, or stronger, unless I call on things I had rather save for some dire time.”

  He snapped his mouth shut, as if he had said more than he intended to.

  “But . . . the others said that, too, and wouldn’t explain,” she ventured plaintively. “I know that he’s blighted things just by his extreme unhappiness, but I’ve never noticed anything else.” She paused a moment. “Will he hurt me? Harm them? What does all this mean?”

  Robin shook his head with irritation. “I bain’t a mind reader,” he snapped, his accent turning odd and thick. “This be mortal magic, and none o’ mine. Happen ye should be the one lookin’ out for it, bein’ mortal an’ all. If’e harms the land, that’s my business. If ’e meddles with the Sons of Adam and Daughters of Eve, ’tis yours.”

  Startled, she looked into his eyes at that moment and found her breath caught in her throat. Those eyes . . . those were not the eyes of Robin, her playfellow, nor Puck the prankster, nor even Robin Goodfellow, her mentor and teacher. Those were the eyes of something old, old as the moors, old as the stones beneath them. Those were eyes that had seen Queen Elizabeth alighting from her barge on some Great Progress, had seen the Wars of the Roses. He had watched the Saxons overrun what was left of the Romans, watched the Romans slaughter Boudica and her daughters, had borne witness as the Druids made their sacrifices to the Three-Faced Goddess and the Horned God. Those eyes had watched all of that, and he had done nothing—because these were all mortal affairs, and Robin’s care and concern was for something much larger than human lives.

  She once again was conscious of how other and different he was. And how much like a mayfly she must seem to him—short-lived, due to die in a day.

  She had seen glimpses of this, the true Robin, before. It didn’t frighten her, but it did remind her very sharply that Robin was not, had never been, and would never be “safe.”

  “I beg your pardon,” she said, casting her eyes down. “You’re right, of course. Unless he does something unthinkably vile to the land, this is my responsibility. I won’t forget that again.”

  “Eh, lass,” Robin replied, his tone softening. He put a finger under her chin and tilted her head up so she could look in his eyes again. They had gone back to being—just eyes, without that terrible sense of age to them. “Forget the fellow’s your father. It may be he’s come to his senses again. But perhaps not. What he meddles in—” Robin shrugged. “It’s nothing that answers to me; he’s got his protections up and about him, and I can’t get past them without him knowing that I have. It may be that his protections are nothing more than to keep the meddlesome Masters from disturbing his gloom, but there is something going on behind them that casts a shadow on the land. Take care. Be wary.”

  And then, as abruptly as it always did, Robin’s mood changed. “Is that a treacle tart I see in there?”

  7

  PETER held his thumb up at arm’s length and peered at it. He had no idea what this was supposed to have to do with painting, but he had been assured that all painters did this. Something to do with perspective, though what his thumb had to do with it, he was dashed if he knew.

  Just another reason why all painters were balmy.

  Another reason was probably in the paints themselves. As a Master he was well acquainted with poisons, because all too often the hand of man was dumping them in his precious waters. He knew their effects, he knew how to get rid of them, and he certainly knew how to recognize them, and the tubes he was lugging around and plastering indiscriminately on his canvas were full of deadly things. Lead, cadmium, arsenic, mercury, cobalt . . . he knew plenty of artists who absent-mindedly held brushes in their teeth or even licked a brush to get a pointed end. He had never q
uite realized until now how dangerous that was.

  He was being as careful with these things as if they were explosive. Each brush was cleaned carefully, and the resulting contaminated turpentine was properly dealt with. He badly wanted to deliver a stern lecture to each and every artist he knew, now, but . . . well, most of them wouldn’t even listen, and the ones who would, already knew of the dangers. Small wonder so many artists died young.

  “Are we still bein’ observed?” he asked Garrick in a low voice. Garrick, who had a pair of binoculars to his eyes, chuckled.

  “No m’lord, and we haven’t been for the last ten minutes or so. I beg your pardon, but my attention was caught by that kite.” Garrick’s disguise was that he was an avid bird-watcher and was taking advantage of his master’s mania for painting to indulge his own predilection. It made for an excellent reason for Garrick to peer around with a pair of binoculars. And that permitted him to be on lookout duty.

  “Well, good, because I am dashed if I can make anything better out of this nasty daub.” With relief, Peter put down his palette. “I’ll be only too happy to chuck it in a fire when we get back. And here I thought you were getting a bit too caught up in your own disguise.”

  “I know enough about birds, m’lord, to be quite interested in them. Though it is largely an interest driven by what, m’lord, they can tell me about what is going on below them.” Garrick had the binoculars up to his face again. “For instance, that kite has been following the two children that were watching us. I suspect they are frightening things up ahead of them.”

  “Acting as the beaters, eh?” Almsley chuckled. “Deuced clever of the bird. So?”

  “So it is steadily moving away from us, so although I cannot see the children, I assume they are doing the same, m’lord.” He set the optics down. “Now, m’lord, the usual?”

  “The usual, Garrick. Time to earn our keep.” Peter put the palette down and capped the paints, then moved away from the easel to a spot he had selected earlier.