Angel in the Woods

by Rachel Starr Thomson

  A trio of girls poked and pulled at one of my arms, and one grabbed my hand and looked it over. “He’ll do!” she said. “He’s made boats before, I’m sure!”

  One dark-curled child beckoned to me with her finger. I leaned over so that I might look her in her blue eyes. “Have you built boats?” she asked.

  “I haven’t,” I confessed. “But I have built bookcases.”

  “We don’t need those,” she told me, sadness coming over her face.

  “I can learn to build boats,” I told her, suddenly afraid lest the girls should find fault with me. “Indeed, I can learn very fast.”

  The child before me smiled. Her face was radiant when she did. “I’m Izzy,” she told me.

  “Certainly not,” I rejoined. “You must be Isabelle.”

  She smiled even more. “Only the Poet calls me that.”

  “You don’t mind if I do?” I asked.

  She shook her head, dark curls bouncing around her shoulders. “I think it’s a beautiful name,” she said.

  (Off to one side, the child with the goose was looking into the woods with her head cocked slightly. “Angel?” she said, but there was no answer.)

  A younger child, probably four or five, tugged at Isabelle’s hand.“Izzy, Izzy,” she said. “Let’s go back! Nora said not to be long. And if we help with the laundry, we can build the boat.”

  Accordingly, they started back at once, pulling, pushing, and sweeping me along with them. As we made our way up the hill, the Castle appeared before me in all its glory.

  It was a great house, and very old, built of massive grey stones. In places it was nearly overgrown, but here, as we headed across the front lawn, everything was well-kept and beautiful. We passed beds full of flowers and stately old trees that made shady places especially for children to take shelter in on hot days. The front doors, I realized, were standing open, but the room beyond was in shadow. Before the doors, a great mess of contraptions and wash basins and lines had been set out, and females of various young ages were hard at work washing linens and hanging them up to dry. Multitudinous sheets already waved gently in the breeze, like sails over a sea of green grass. In the center of all the commotion, a young woman was bent over a washtub. She looked up as we approached and took everything in with one sweep of her eyes. I recognized the look on her face. It was no-nonsense, dreadfully grown-up, and more importantly to me, distinctly unwelcoming.

  I did not have time to tangle with the owner of the imposing face, for a male voice suddenly called across the lawn, startling me. I turned and saw a slender man beckoning to me from behind a tree.

  “Ho, you there!” he called. “Come and speak with me, good sir!”

  There could be no doubt that he was addressing me. I was the only “sir” in the immediate area. I looked around to seek permission, but none of the gaggle protested. Half of them had already skipped away to other parts of the lawn, and some were playing hide-and-seek behind the laundry. The imposing face might have had something to say about it, but I quavered slightly at meeting her just then, so I made my way across the lawn to the willow where the man waited.

  He was, as I said, a slender fellow. I’d no doubt I could have easily pounded him into the ground. My feeling of superiority deepened as he was slightly flushed and obviously uncomfortable with meeting me, even if he had initiated the meeting. He wore fine clothes, with billowy sleeves and a golden belt, and a small lute hung from his shoulder.

  “Look here,” he said. “Did the Angel truly tell you you could stay here?”

  “He did,” I said, though I wasn’t at all sure what the Angel had told me I could do.

  “Oh dear,” the man said. “Do you mean to tell me that you… that you actually saw him?”

  “Well, yes,” I answered. “It was dark, but I saw him. Have you never seen him?”

  He shook his head mournfully. “Not in all the months I’ve been here. He watches me, but has never given me the honour of seeing him.” He looked up at me. I was rather taller than he was, and I felt that my shoulders were very broad. “Was he very fearsome?” he asked.

  I lowered my voice. “Indeed,” I said. “He would terrify a lesser man.”

  The man nodded again. Then he seemed to gather up his courage. He stood up to his full height and looked me in the eye. “Look here,” he said, “I don’t know why you’ve come, but if you’re after Illyrica, I shall fight you for her.”

  I shook my head, trying not to laugh. “I am not, as you say, ‘after’ anyone.”

  The man heaved a sigh. “Three passages of the moon I have been here this time—three months. I sing and I play—I woo her with all the gifts given me, with my pen itself, and with what does she reward me? A smile here, a token there… ah, but I would die for her smile.”

  He was a ridiculous little man, and suddenly I knew he was the one the Pixie had called “the Poet.” But for all his woe and billowy sleeves, I thought I saw sincerity and a true heart in him. I placed my hand on his shoulder. “Be a man of honour,” I told him, “and I shall put in a word for you with Illyrica.”

  He brightened immediately. “Oh, I say,” he said. “That’s very kind of you.”

  Someone tugged on my hand. I looked down to see a small member of the gaggle. “Come,” she told me. “You must come and see Nora.”

  I nodded my good-bye to the Poet, who seemed very much bettered by my promise to him, and followed the child back across the lawn where the laundry was still being done. This time the young woman was not bent over her tub. She was standing, very straight and tall and slender, and her arms were folded. She was looking right at me.

  “I suppose you’re waiting for a welcome,” she said. The words were stern, but there was some good humour in them. “Don’t expect anything too grand. This may be a castle, but you’ll not be a lord in it.”

  I recognized the tone at once. This was the Nora the Pixie had spoken of, who made condescending comments about townspeople.

  As if to confirm my guess, a whirlwind of colour and loveliness appeared from behind a nearby sheet, and the Pixie let out a whoop of delight. “It’s you!” she said. “I knew it would be you. Nora, the boy from the market has come. Boy, this is Nora. She’s all of our mother, and sister, and best friend in the world.”

  Nora’s eyes softened considerably when the Pixie appeared. She even managed a smile. The smile was not for me. I couldn’t imagine that she’d ever be my best friend, or sister or mother either. But I stepped forward, bowed, and said, “My name…”

  The Pixie cut me off. “None of that,” she said. “No one brings outside names here. I name you Sparrowhawk, because you’re strong and you have very interesting eyes, and you’re looking for something.”

  Nora’s eyes met mine in that moment. There was a question in them. A challenge. Almost a threat. She wanted to know what I was looking for. I cleared my throat, intending to find words to answer her question. To tell her that I had come in search of adventure, that I was a boy trying to make the journey to manhood, and that I thought I could make a name for myself here somehow. But the intensity of her look stole my ability to speak. I felt suddenly like a marauding weasel looking into the eyes of a she-wolf whose children I had threatened to disturb.

  She looked away, hefted a pile of laundry in her arms, and thrust it at me. “Fold these,” she said.

  So I did.

  Chapter 5

  the manifold secrets of laundry

  There are few things more damaging to a young man’s ego than to be told that he cannot fold a sheet properly to save his life. Nora told me so, without care for my pride, as she shook out the sheets I had just finished and refolded them, moving with an expert grace and speed that put me to shame. The Pixie laughed gaily when she heard it, also without regard to my feelings, and took my arm.

  “Let him come with me, Nora,” she said. “He can help me hang the curtains.”

  Following the Pixie into the castle with my arms full to the bursting with curtains, I
found it in me to wonder how I, the wandering hero, came to be doing housework. The open doors led into a shallow room with a high ceiling and green rugs, from which various other doors concealed passages that led into other parts of the great stone house. I followed the Pixie through a door to the left, up a flight of stone steps along which open windows let in the breezy glory of the morning. I staggered slightly under my load but was careful not to let her see it, and all the while questions ran up and down staircases of their own in my head.

  A girl of about twelve passed us on the steps, greeting the Pixie and favouring me with a stare. A few minutes later another skipped by, singing to herself. (I was quickly discovering just how many steps a castle can harbour, and how blithely a Pixie can charge up them without a thought for the weight of curtains—but I did not complain.) The appearance of the girls quickened my questions. Who were they? Where had they all come from? From the rumours of the townspeople I had expected to find the lot of them imprisoned against their wills and imperiled by some evil force, but from what I had seen they were menaced by nothing more frightening than Nora and her laundry tubs. Peril enough, I thought to myself as the Pixie called back that it was “just a little farther.” Yet there was still that terrifying figure in the woods. The memory of the Giant fell over me like a shadow. The stairs ended. The Pixie pushed a pair of doors open, and I found myself standing in a magnificent library with high, curtainless windows through which the sun was streaming gloriously.

  The Pixie soon had me climbing a ladder beside the windows, dragging a heavy length of purple cloth up to the top rungs, where I balanced precariously while she ran nimbly up another ladder and fiddled with draping the curtains every which way. My perch afforded me a good look out the window. The library looked down on more lawns, rolling away from the castle in beautiful green patches criss-crossed with rose bushes and hedging. Beyond that the woods rose, menacing and dark.

  Once more I felt that a shadow had fallen over me. The woods surrounded the castle completely, and somewhere in their dark fastness the Giant waited, coming upon unsuspecting travelers in the night. I didn’t know why he had let me through, but I was struck by how otherworldly this place was—how isolated, how full of mystery. I cast a sidelong glance at the Pixie, her face flushed and lovely as she leaned over the window, the sunlight catching in her hair and the warm colours of books framing her. She was a prisoner here. They all were, in some way I couldn’t understand.

  A movement on the lawn caught my eye. It was the Poet, strolling along with his lute in his arms, strumming to himself. I gestured at him.

  “Doesn’t he help with the laundry?” I asked.

  “The Poet?” the Pixie said. “Oh, no.”

  I managed a smile as the Pixie pulled a length of cloth from my hand, unsettling my balance in a way I didn’t like. “Seems a bit unfair,” I said.

  “Not at all,” she answered with a twinkle in her eye. “The Poet is a genius. He… writes.”

  She had finished with her end of the curtains, so she issued orders for my corner and I followed them. As I descended the ladder, I took in the long rows of musty old books and the paintings that hung here and there among them. The library had the feel of a room well-used and well-loved, but very old.

  “Whose house is this?” I asked.

  The Pixie gave me a strange look. “Ours,” she answered.

  “It must have belonged to a very old family,” I said. “Some of these books look generations in age.”

  “I suppose so,” the Pixie said.

  I caught her eyes suddenly. “Where did you come from?” I demanded. My stomach twisted in a peculiar fashion as I asked it.

  The Pixie looked at me for a long moment. I thought she seemed worried—as though we shouldn’t be talking about such things. “I don’t know,” she told me at last.

  “Well, don’t you want to know?” I asked.

  I had asked the wrong question. The Pixie turned on her heel and left the room. I remained, with an armload of curtains at my feet and a heart wracked by guilt. I had broken the Pixie’s merry exterior, and somehow I felt that I had done something terribly wrong.

  Minutes later, one of the library doors opened and the Pixie reentered. Her expression was solemn, but she was not angry with me. She approached me slowly, almost reverently, holding a bit of cloth in her hand. She stopped a few feet away and held it out to me, the sun’s rays picking up bright strands of thread and making them shine.

  I took it hesitantly. She was waiting, so I looked away from her face and down at the cloth in my hand. It was silk, its edges ragged as if it had been torn from a larger piece. Embroidered in delicate green and purple thread were the letters R.S. F.

  “This is all I have from my old life,” the Pixie said. “I can remember nothing. So you tell me. Where did I come from?”

  I wanted to answer her, but there was nothing I could say. She took the scrap of cloth back and laughed at me. “You look as though I’d just handed you a death warrant,” she said.

  “Well…” I answered, “well, doesn’t it make you sad?”

  The Pixie’s eyes were twinkling again. “No,” she said. “Not especially. But it gives me an air of mystery, which I like. And it’s more than most of the girls have. Come, Sparrowhawk. There are other windows to curtain. And many more steps to climb.”

  I followed her out of the library with my arms full of drapery, glad that the conversation, for now at least, was over.

  Chapter 6

  evening in the castle

  I followed the Pixie around for nearly two and a half hours, hanging curtains in a vast multitude of rooms. By the end of it my arms and back ached and I was beginning to feel more and more likely to fall off a ladder in a moment of exhaustion and die. My eyes were tired from the sun’s pouring into them all morning. At home I had never given thought to the work our housekeepers did. I would have pooh-poohed the very idea that they might like a young man’s help. Now I was beginning to feel sorry for them.

  Despite her prosaic occupation, the Pixie grew more mysterious to me by the minute. The scrap of cloth with its initials fascinated and haunted me. She might be royalty, kidnapped from her cradle so some despot could have her throne and left here to live in obscurity forever under the Giant’s dreadful eye. Or perhaps her mother had been a fugitive from a foreign land, and had given the Pixie the scrap of cloth to somehow lead her back home—or else the Giant had simply taken her from some happy cottage somewhere. The possibilities were endless, and the Pixie, with her radiant beauty and laughing eyes, seemed to fit every one perfectly.

  And then there were the others: all the others. They seemed to come from every nook and cranny in the castle, their numbers growing all the time: forty or more of them, with Nora the oldest and unchallenged leader; the Pixie their muse; and Illyrica, whom I nearly knocked over by turning around quickly without realizing she was behind me, their pale and silent ghost. The three were the oldest of the Giant’s charges, and the little girls adored each of them in their own way.

  The sun began at last to set behind the great trees. It cast rays of fairy light over the lawns and gardens. I had been huddled with the gaggle for some hours around a heap of lumber near a small creek that ran behind the house, trying to make sense of the piles of lumber and half-attempts at building which they called a boat. With the setting of the sun they began to tug at my hands, leading me out from the deep green shadows of willow and water back toward the house, whose white stone walls glowed with the pinks and purples of the sky, deepening in a velvet twilight.

  We passed through the wooden doors, and music greeted my ears: the soft plucking of a lute, a serene, welcoming song that held in its notes the good-hearted dying of the day. I expected to see the Poet, but he was nowhere in sight. Rather, the Pixie was seated on a wooden bench in the flagstone entryway, the Poet’s lute cradled in her arms, smiling and greeting each of the children in turn with her eyes. She turned her eyes on me as well, but it was not with the same
look of welcome. For once her look was inscrutable.

  The doors to a large, soft room were thrown open, and into it the children pulled me. It was soft, I say, because it was furnished with hundreds of cushions and curtains, and deep rugs adorned the floor. Flames danced merrily in fireplaces at each end of the room, and the occupants of the house were already gathering around them; sitting in little circles, laughing and talking. At one end Illyrica sat with two little girls in her lap and one hanging around her neck, a look of contentment on her face. The girls chattered merrily to her, but not a word did she answer. Illyrica never did, for she was mute. She was a pale, ethereal beauty, with white-blonde curls that she tied at the nape of her neck and blue eyes that spoke more eloquently than voice ever could—but only rarely did they say anything. Illyrica kept her own counsel, even with her eyes. The one flaw in her beauty was a scar across her throat. Though no one ever told me so, I supposed it to be the cause of her silence.

  Nora sat cross-legged at the other end of the room, surrounded by little girl-children who lay in every possible position on the cushions all round. A thick golden book lay open in her lap, and she was reading from it. Her voice was quiet yet commanding, and her audience was riveted. She looked a very different figure here than she had standing marshall over the laundry pots. Her face was rosy from the day’s work, and her eyes shone with deep delight—whether in the children or in the story, I could not tell.

  Isabelle and the others who had brought me in let go of my hands and rushed to join their comrades around Nora. She looked up when they joined her. Something fell over her face when she saw me, and her voice faltered, but a moment later her shoulders were square and resolute and I was ignored as she continued to read. I was saved from awkwardness when the Pixie appeared behind me, the lute forgotten, and clapped her hands. The whole room surged to their feet at once, and the soft room was abandoned for the dining hall.