Lavender-Green Magic

by Andre Norton

  “Ask her!” exploded Holly angrily. “She just doesn’t make sense. It’s all the fault of that dumb pillow. She slept with it last night and now she thinks that somebody called ‘Miss Tamar’ told her how to get into a maze—Crock!”

  Holly came to a stop, staring ahead. Of course this was as mixed up as that silly dream. But she was seeing it. Your eyes couldn’t imagine things all by themselves—or could they?

  There was Judy, all right. And she was not running anymore; she was standing still, her face turned toward them. She was smiling now and she waved to them to hurry. But it was not Judy which was so astounding; it was those—things on either side of her, like the posts of a door which had no top at all.

  The brush which had seemed such a dull brown-gray when Holly had started away from the barn-house was not the same now she had come this close. Instead the bushes did have leaves, shiny dark green ones. And two of those bushes, standing much taller than Judy, had been clipped in a queer way to look just like—cats! Big green cats sitting up with their tail tips covering their paws, their faces much like Tomkit’s.

  Tomkit had settled at Judy’s feet in exactly the same pose. His eyes were large and yellow-green; someone might have used him for the model when those hedge cats had been made. Now he got up, stretched his front legs, and went on, past Judy, past the cats, into the brush-walled way they guarded.

  “Come on!” Judy again waved vigorously toward Holly and Crockett, was gone before Holly could stop her, or even call. And, once she had passed between the guardian green cats, they could not see her at all.

  “Crock, we’ve got to get her out!” Holly began to run again. She remembered Grandma saying people could be lost in a maze—what if they could not find Judy? She was so frightened now that her heart pounded hard.

  Then the green cats were on either side and she passed them, Crock right behind her. This was a green tunnel, for the bushes were so tall their uppermost branches met above in a loose woven roof. At their roots were other plants, less tall, but also as vividly green. As if this was summer instead of fall. The scent of their small purple flowers was strong.

  Underfoot was a pavement of very old gray stones. In all the crevices around these were small plants, which, when the children stepped on them, gave forth a very spicy smell. They caught sight of Judy again just a little ahead, where there was a forking of the tunnel-like way. She was shifting from one foot to the other and waving them on.

  “Hurry! And you’ve got to follow me,” she burst out before they joined her. “I know the way—the right way! Just as Miss Tamar showed it to me. It’s this one—”

  She turned right at the fork to enter another stretch of tunnel. It was growing warmer. Holly jerked open the zipper on her jacket, pulled off her cap to stuff it into her pocket. Why, it felt like summer now. There were other plants among those with the purplish spikes of flowers: some flowered, some with differently shaped leaves. When the children brushed past, each seemed to loose a new scent at the lightest touch of coat edge or sleeve.

  The three came to another forking, and here again sat a tall cat clipped from the hedge. But of Tomkit there was no sign. He must have traveled far faster than they were going, for they were now slowed to a walk. It was very quiet in the maze tunnels, but the warmth, the scents of plants and flowers somehow quieted Holly’s fears. She found herself looking more closely at the plants, none of which she knew. Though she did see what she thought was an odd-looking, cramped-up little rose, its petals all squeezed together, twining in and out among the hedge plants at one place.

  Judy led them confidently onward, always to the right when there was a choice of ways. Holly had lost all sense of direction, and, though she thought that they might indeed be circling inward as the lines on the pillow top had gone, yet she could not even be sure of that.

  Twice more they passed tall hedge cats, each facing in upon the way. However, there was nothing in the least frightening about them. Crock got as close as he could to the last, trying to figure out how the hedge itself had been trained to grow, or had been clipped, to make that living green figure.

  They had all shed their jackets now, slinging them over their shoulders. For, while they could not see much of the sky overhead, a summer sun surely hung there. Holly paused to push up the long sleeves of her T-shirt. But Judy plodded steadily ahead as if she were on some very important errand.

  The maze tunnel took a sharp turn, bringing them into the open. Holly blinked. Where—how—? She stared at what lay ahead of them now, and could only believe that somehow this was after all a dream, one which had begun realistically enough with the events of the morning and then turned into a kind of fairy tale.

  Before them was an elaborate garden. But such a garden as Holly had never seen, even pictured in a book. Immediately ahead their path led straight into its heart. Plants and flowers grew in carefully measured clumps, some beds round, some narrow, some curved in half circles. Each bed held a different plant. However, the path itself cut straight across the garden, except in the very center, where it ringed around a pool.

  Beyond the garden (which bore a likeness to Grandma’s quilt with its precisely shaped pieces here being the different colored plants and flowers rather than cotton bits), was a house.

  It was much smaller than the barn. And it had an odd appearance as if it had not really been made by men, but had somehow grown out of the ground. The roof had wide shingles, which were gray but patterned with a growth of green moss. And the boards that covered the outside walls were unpainted also, green-moss grown, running up and down, instead of crossways as in most of the frame houses Holly had ever seen.

  A very large chimney of rough stones stood in the middle of the house. Small ferns grew between its cobbles here and there. The windows were small and quite high in the walls, while their panes were cut as glass diamonds fitted into dark metal strips. To one side of the house was the round top of a well. And, farther beyond that, a bench on which there were straw-covered, cone-shaped hives from which bees came and went.

  The big front door stood open, and on the doorstep sat either Tomkit or his twin brother busily washing a hind paw, looking entirely at home.

  Judy moved forward, down the path which led around the pool straight for the house. Holly thought she could see a faint trail of smoke curling upward from that very large chimney. It was plain someone lived here. The garden was very well tended, there were the bees—but who? And why didn’t Grandma know or tell them about this near neighbor?

  “I don’t get it.” Crock threw his jacket on the ground. “I just don’t get it! This is summer, not October! And who—”

  Crock was right. It was summer, only Holly refused to admit it. She did not dare think what that might mean. This was a dream, it had to be a dream! She closed her eyes—she’d just be waking up in the barn-house.

  But when she opened her eyes, it was to see Judy almost through the garden and nearing the door. Suddenly it seemed to Holly that that door was waiting—maybe waiting to catch them—like a trap.

  “Judy!” she screamed at the top of her voice, beginning to run again. “Judy, don’t!”

  Judy never turned or looked, nor did she pause. She was going right on! If Holly could not stop her in time, she was going right on into the house.

  “Judy!”

  Holly rounded the side of the pool. Here, in this quilt-garden, the flowers and spice smells were even stronger. Only she had no time to look, she had to stop Judy or something would happen. What that something might be she could not tell, but she was afraid of it, so much afraid.

  Tomkit sat up in the same position that the green hedge cats had taken. He had the solemn look of one who was waiting—

  Holly put on a last desperate burst of speed. She caught at Judy’s shoulder.

  “No, Judy!”

  “But there be nothing here to affright thee, child.”

  Judy had not said that, spoken in those queer-sounding words. The voice had surely come out o
f the house beyond.

  TAMAR

  Holly still held on to Judy with a firm grip.

  “Don’t you go in there, don’t you dare!” she cried fiercely.

  Judy tugged and pushed to free herself. “What’s the matter with you, Holly? All the time we’ve been here you’ve been saying don’t do this, don’t do that. I’m getting tired of you telling me what to do. Now you just let go of me, do you hear?” Placid Judy rarely flared up like this. A last thrust freed her arm, and she marched straight into the shadowed interior of the queer-looking house, as if that were as safe as the barn, and Grandma were waiting with lunch for them inside.

  For a moment or so Holly was so surprised at Judy’s rebellion that she did not move. Then she saw Crock also on his way to the door.

  “Crock!”

  “What?” He hardly turned his head at all. “You know, Holly, Judy’s got it right. You think you know it all, but you don’t. You sure don’t!” With this parting shot he vanished after Judy.

  Around Holly the gentle breeze of summer curled, bringing with it heavy scents from the garden. There was the hum of bees. It was all so peaceful, welcoming—yet something far inside her was wary, uneasy. This simply was not real! She knew that early October was fall, and cold. There were no flowers left, not outside the green walls through which Judy had led them. And this house—Grandma, Grandpa had never said a word about it. The old Dimsdale house had burned down a long time ago. So this could not be that one. Who did live here? And why had Judy dreamed a way to this very door?

  Holly could not pretend to herself now that this was still a dream she was having. No, it was something else, but strange and not right, and she was afraid. Judy and Crock, they had gone in—she would have to go too—she had to.

  Reluctantly she went, step by slow step. There was a kind of perfume in the air coming out of the doorway, meeting her full face as she entered.

  Within seemed all one large room, with a huge fireplace, almost as big as the one in the barn-house, facing her. There were two fires burning in it, one at either end, and over each swung pots supported by chains which appeared to hang right down the chimney. A woman stood by one of the pots, stirring its contents with a slow, even turn of a very long handled spoon. She glanced up at Holly and smiled, and then went back to watching the bubbling liquid in the pot, as if that was a task which required close attention and care.

  The big room was none too light, though some sunshine came through the windows at the other end. Also it was very crowded with a number of things Holly could not sort out at first. The woman herself held her full attention.

  The stranger was perhaps as tall as Mom, but as to looking like Mom, or any other lady Holly knew—no! Holly shook her head to deny what she was seeing. Because that woman stirring the pot—she could not be real. Unless she was dressing up for some reason.

  Last year, when Mom had taken them to see Williams-burg, there were ladies there who showed people through the old houses. And they all wore old-time dresses to match the houses they were guides in. Perhaps this woman was playing at being a part of the old times in the same way.

  She had her dark hair all pulled back tight with a white cap over it, shaped like Mom’s nurse’s cap, only one which fitted much farther down over her head, to hide most of her hair. Her skirts (there were two of them, the upper one caught up on both sides to show a lower one) were very long and full. The lower one was a kind of yellow-white, and the upper one very dark blue. Above these she wore a long apron of the same yellow-white as the underskirt, and her bodice fitted tightly and was laced down the front. Around her shoulders was another piece of whiter cloth, like her cap, which was cut as a very wide collar and fastened up tightly to her throat.

  Holly remembered where she had seen just such a dress before—in her history book. The woman was dressed like the Pilgrims in the scene of the first Thanksgiving. Yet she did not seem conscious she was wearing a costume at all, rather as if this dress were the only right one.

  Since she had not spoken again or given any sign she knew the children were here, except to smile welcomingly at Holly, Holly studied the room. It was certainly overfull of things. Now that her eyes had adjusted better to the lack of strong light, she was able to see details.

  Back against the walls were chests, very heavy and solid looking. Above those were cupboards. There was a long table in the center of the room, against which Crock and Judy now leaned their backs, as they watched intently the woman at her slow, careful stirring of the pot. On this were bowls and pots, a number of things all in disorder. And, alongside the table on the door side, was a bench. There was one tall-backed chair, and on that sat Tomkit, his eyes half closed as if he were about to go off into a nap.

  By the fireplace stood a high-backed, longer seat, also two stools on which sat a jug, and several pots, with long-handled spoons and a couple of burnished copper ladles. And from the big beams overhead swung bunches of dried plants strung up by their stems.

  Holly had gotten only that far in her survey of the room when the woman began to sing, quietly as if to herself:

  “Lavender’s blue, dilly, dilly!

  Lavender’s green.

  When I am king, dilly, dilly!

  Thou shalt be queen.

  Who told you so, dilly, dilly!

  Who told you so;

  Twas my own heart, dilly, dilly!

  That told me so.”

  From that old rhyme she swung into another:

  “The hart he loves the high wood,

  The hare, she loves the hill;

  The knight he loves his bright sword.

  The lady—loves her will!”

  Then she laughed happily. Suddenly Holly found she herself was smiling. She did not understand why, but she had lost, for the moment, all that unhappiness which had been a sore place in her since the telegram had come. Tomkit had curled around and gone to sleep on the big chair. And Judy and Crock were smiling, too.

  “Now”—the woman moved quickly, reached out a pair of tongs to take the pot handle in a firm hold and swing the pot itself off the chain hook and onto the flat rock of the hearthstone.

  “Done well, no ill”—she looked down into the depths of the still-bubbling liquid within it. “It shall cool, then thee shall see—but I must make amends for such a sorry greeting. Blessed be!”

  She raised her hand to make a little gesture toward them. She might have been counting them, one, two, three. A strange look at each, Holly thought; it was not as if she looked at them, but into them. For Judy and Crock she had a smile, but when she came to Holly, that smile faded a little and Holly drew back a step. She felt as if she had done something wrong. However, her uneasiness lasted for only a second. Once more the woman was smiling—or rather, the girl was—

  The odd dress and that cap over her pulled-tight hair made her look older than she was, Holly thought. Her skin was tanned as if she were out in the sun a lot, and she was not pretty. Her chin came to a too-sharp point, and her nose was somehow too long. However, when she smiled at you, you forgot all that.

  “You are Miss Tamar,” Judy spoke.

  “I be Tamar,” the girl nodded. “Though there be others hereabouts as have other names for me. Thou art?”

  “I’m Judy Wade,” Judy replied promptly. “This is my brother Crock—Crockett. We’re really twins, but nobody ever knows till we tell them. And that’s my sister, Holly. We’ve just come to live at Dimsdale.”

  “Dimsdale,” repeated Tamar. Now her smile was gone. “Aye, I be forgetting once again. That be not the Dimsdale that was, but the Dimsdale which is which thee knows. Still lies the shadow.” She shook her head regretfully. “Still lies the cruel shadow—”

  At last Holly found courage to speak up. “Where is this—this house? Grandma and Grandpa, they never told us about it, or you!” She wondered if she had spoken rudely, because Crock was glaring at her.

  “This house be where it has always been,” Tamar answered, but not with the fac
ts that Holly felt she desperately needed to know. “It was, is, and will be—for it be of the earth and gifts of the earth.”

  Now she was smiling once again. “Ah, ’tis good to have young faces here and guests beneath this roof yet once again. Aye, be that not, Tomkit?” She spoke to the cat as if she expected him to answer. But he only opened his eyes and looked at her sleepily.

  “Is Tomkit yours?” Judy wanted to know. “Grandpa found him on the dump, he thought somebody had thrown him there.”

  “Tomkit be his own puss, he goes where he lists, does what needs to be done,” Tamar replied. “Aye, child, no one may own a puss. It be his choice to live under thy roof, or another’s. Tomkit I know, and he knows me. But never do I say Tomkit be mine to use as I will, for he hath a life of his own, and no man, or woman, or child, may own any life but his own. That be the Law.

  “Does not that Law say plainly: ‘That thou lovest all things in nature. That thou shalt suffer no person to be harmed by thy hands or in thy mind. That thou walkest humbly in the ways of men and the ways of the gods. Contentment thou shalt at last learn through suffering, and from long patient years, and from nobility of mind and service. For the wise never grow old.’” She said those words solemnly, like the grace Grandpa said at meals.

  After a moment she ended: “So mote it be.”

  Those last four words echoed queerly through the room, almost as if they had been repeated very softly by other people. Yet none of the Wades had done so, and certainly Tomkit could not.

  “There must lie truth within the heart,” Tamar said, as she reached again for the cooling pot and lifted it to stand on its three stumpy legs on the table, “lest thy every effort be doomed to failure. And there be truth in this syrup—that will I take book-oath upon.”

  She worked swiftly, lining up a half-dozen small, dull clay jars, and into each she measured by ladlesful the contents of the pot. It was from the thickened syrup that the perfume-sweet smell came.

  “What is it?” Judy wanted to know. “That smells like perfume and like something good to eat both together.”