Angel in the Woods

by Rachel Starr Thomson

  I meant to scorn it. But even as I tore the parchment and let the wind take the pieces, I made a very different decision. I would go again to Brawnlyn House, there to cut off every tie I had made with the Widow and her daughter.

  Chapter 22

  changes, part 2

  I made my way up the long drive to Brawnlyn House. The twisted, barren branches of the gardens seemed to reach out for me, the dead vines and intricately arranged stones covering the ground like some dormant evil. I turned my eyes from them and approached the doors, resolute. Every step I took was reproach to me. Alas that my feet should be so familiar with such a place! When last I had come this way, it had been in the full flush of pride. In one night I had betrayed the inhabitants of the Castle and exposed the Pixie to vanity, disappointment, and now, the destructive power of guilt. I wanted to tell her that the guilt was mine, but she had not let me speak with her since the night of the ball.

  Lady Brawnlyn greeted me as ever she had. I bowed shortly, disdaining to step forward and kiss her hand. If she noticed my coldness, she did not show it. Genevieve was absent, for which I was glad.

  There was a light in the Widow’s eyes that I did not like, and a peculiar tone to her voice that filled me with aversion. “I am glad to see you,” she said. “I feared it might be some time before you came our way again. I have heard rumours that you have been distinguishing yourself once again, my Lord Hawk. I had thought that perhaps your travels were taking you away from us.”

  Her eyes searched my face as she spoke, but I believe that I kept it impassive. A dark, dreadful calm was coming over me: the calm of certainty and disgust. I knew her words now for flattery, and I knew that they cloaked something deeper.

  “Tell me,” she said, “where is the Pixie? Surely this would be a fine time for her to accompany you.”

  My voice was tight, almost strangled. “She will not be coming this way again,” I said.

  The Widow raised her brow at me, but said nothing more on the subject. She leaned forward, dropping a cube of sugar into her tea. In doing so, she cast a deep shadow over the silver tray before her. I realized anew how dark the sitting room was, shrouded in drapes and carpeting, well hidden from the sun.

  “It is just as well that you have come alone today,” she said. “Hawk, hitherto you have served me well. Now I have a matter of great importance to give into your hands—of paramount importance, not only to the safety of this land, but to your own future happiness.” She folded her hands and lowered her voice. “Tell me,” she said, “what would you risk to recover a treasure—a fantastically great treasure—out of the hands of thieves? You must know that much of it would become yours.”

  It chilled me to know that, had she brought up such a thing only a short time ago, I would have been trapped by her spider’s promise. More, I felt a pang of fear deep within me. Days ago I had watched a great treasure change hands. Could the Widow be speaking of any other?

  “There is a thief,” she said. “Someone hidden away in my lands who has gathered riches through extortion, blackmail, and robbery. Much has been taken even from the treasury of my own family: gold, Hawk, more than you can imagine. Its location has been kept a deep secret, but days ago a small part of the treasure came to the light. My guards found it in the possession of carnival men, careless drunkards who flaunted it stupidly, openly. Enough gold to buy up this house and all the land it sits on.”

  “Well, then,” I said. “You have caught your thieves.”

  “No, Hawk, no,” she said, the light in her eyes growing more strange and frightening. “They were vile, ignorant people, who obtained a piece of the treasure by their own vicious means—but no, they do not have it all. What they have is only a fraction. The treasure is much greater. It is great enough to make you the equal of any king.”

  She spoke to my old love of adventure; to my old greed for reknown. She spoke, moreover, to my fears and suspicions. I did not know how the Giant had come by the gold I had seen change hands. It might well have been by mercenary means. Yet I knew that, until I knew more, I could only trust him.

  My pride had been broken, and with it, the Widow’s power over me. I drew myself back, and her searching eyes meant the flint in mine with displeasure and some confusion. She had not thought me so far out of her reach.

  “My lady,” I said, “I did not come today to accept your commission—or any one of your words. How deeply you have been involved in the events of the past few days I cannot know, but I do know that I trust you no longer. You have no more control over me.”

  The Widow stood slowly. I felt small in her presence. “Take care, Hawk,” she said. “Think of how much I have offered you. Think what alliance with me has brought you—will bring you!”

  I did think of it. I thought of the Poet, still sitting at the foot of Illyrica’s bed, and of the fear I had lately seen in Nora’s eyes—for though she had not told me, I knew that she feared the Giant had given far more than he could afford in Illyrica’s ransom. I thought of the Pixie, of the radiance she had lost as she sat caressing an old flour bag, of the freedom that had been torn from her when evil followed her home. I thought of myself and the traitorous wretch I had become.

  “Widow Brawnlyn,” I said, “you have brought me nothing but regret. From this day on I wish nothing more to do with you.” I was nearly at the door. She raised her voice to me one last time.

  “Consider, Hawk!” she said. “Consider well what you throw away!”

  I opened the door and looked back at her. “You have nothing which could possibly tempt me,” I said. “For you have nothing to offer that is of any true worth.”

  I turned and stormed out of the drawing room. I stopped short in the foyer. Genevieve stood on the stairway, looking down at me. We did not speak to one another. I turned and left Brawnlyn House, as I thought, forever. I knew that Genevieve had heard my parting words. I could not be sure whether I was glad of it.

  I said nothing to the people at the Castle about my visit to Widow Brawnlyn and her daughter. The further events of the day nearly drove it even from my mind. For it was on the same day, early in the evening when the sun was just beginning to die, that the Pixie packed up her few meager belongings and went away.

  Chapter 23

  i go into exile

  Winter folded its grey wings and slept, and spring came to the Castle at last. The woods bloomed, the grass grew lush on the lawns, and the Castle turned nearly into the paradise it had been when I first came to it. But it was not truly the same. The Pixie’s absence was constantly felt. Even the merriest of the little girls seemed subdued without her. Nora and I wanted to go out and look for her, but the Giant forbade us. I did not like his answer, but I had learned to trust him. In any case, I believed that he knew where she was and that she was safe.

  The children were growing. Nora and Illyrica spent many an afternoon in the Castle or out on the lawns mending, taking out hems, altering sleeves, and darning stockings. Illyrica taught the Poet to use a needle, and he sat with them: sometimes helping them sew with his long fingers, sometimes playing the lute or reading to them as they worked. Only rarely was he away from Illyrica. The Giant, who had once limited the Poet’s time at the Castle and restricted him to certain seasons, now allowed him to be with us constantly. I had no objection. He had earned it; he had proved his love.

  Nora’s eyes were weary in a way that I had not seen before. Perhaps it was that she missed the Pixie; perhaps she worried for the Giant and his secrets; perhaps it was simply that the care of the Castle was growing. I tried to ask her about it, but she waved me away.

  It was just as well. The Castle’s unorthodox family had faced many changes, but now at least they were at peace. The Giant still roamed the woods, protecting those he loved and keeping them supplied with food. I began to feel that they did not need me—that, moreover, I did not deserve to be among them. And so it was, as yellow flowers grew and white lilies-of-the-valley burst out all around the Castle and filled the air
with their fragrance, that I sent myself into exile.

  I told the Giant that I would be going. He nodded with hardly a word. I said a vague goodbye to the children, not caring if they saw the tears in my eyes as they threw their arms around my neck. I removed the arms of a four-year-old and tweaked her soft chin; stood up, and saw Nora step out of the kitchen.

  She wiped her hands on her apron and looked at me quizzically.

  I doffed my cap and said, “I’m leaving.”

  Nora frowned and looked away. “Why?” she asked.

  “I—”

  I licked my lips. I could not give her an explanation. I was not entirely sure why I was going away. “It is time I went,” I said.

  Nora nodded. She held out her hand. I took it and kissed it. “Safe journey, Sparrowhawk,” she said.

  I left her with a troubled heart. The sun was shining on a dew-jeweled world. Beneath the cherry trees the Poet was leading Illyrica by the hand and gesturing up to the blue sky. I took a step toward them to say goodbye, and found that I didn’t have the heart. The little hawk tapestry Illyrica had given me for Christmas was folded and tucked against my breast. I squared my shoulders and walked away. If they saw me go, I do not know. I didn’t look back.

  As I had come, in what seemed another lifetime, so I left. There was nothing in my dress to indicate that I was anything other than a common wanderer. I caught a ride on various farmers’ carts. When I could not ride, I walked; when I could not walk, I slept; and when I could not sleep, I laid awake and tried to puzzle out what it had all meant—what the recent past had done to me, and what it would mean to my future. I could not tell.

  After a journey of two weeks, I crested a ridge, sea wind in my hair. My old home lay before me, cold and impassive. Once an ancient fortress, its stone walls were surrounded by crumbling defenses. There was little activity on the brown, outlying moors. There rarely ever was. My family owned good farmland, but it was some distance away. The land around our home was desolate, and the sea that roared in the distance sang a stormy dirge over the landscape.

  I presented myself to my uncle, the lord of the manor. He received me cordially, even with some familial gladness. When he called me by my real name, the syllables sounded strange in my ears.

  “You are welcome home,” he told me. “But I think it only fair to tell you that things have changed.”

  I had laid my cap on the table in front of me. I worked the cloth with my fingers. “Changed?” I asked.

  “You have been gone some time,” he said. “My boy, your aunt has at last given me a child. I have a son.”

  I felt the news more than I heard it, deep in the pit of my stomach. It meant that the land where I now stood would never be mine. I did not know why it should surprise me so. It had always been a possibility, after all—though one which most had long since given up on.

  “Congratulations,” I told him.

  “You are of course welcome here,” he said. “We have no intention of turning you or Sarah out.”

  “Thank you,” I said. “It is good of you.”

  Sarah. My sister. I felt eyes on me even as the discussion came to an end. I turned to find her watching me with grave brown eyes. She was taller than when I had last seen her, her hair longer and just as straight as ever. She wore a brown dress that fell to her ankles. The hem of it was a little stained and torn from walking the moors.

  “Hello, Sarah,” I said. I walked over to her and kissed her cheek. She did not respond. Instead, she looked at me as though she was trying to remember who I was.

  “I thought you were dead,” she said at last.

  “No,” I told her. “No, I am very much alive. How—how old are you now?”

  “Thirteen,” she told me.

  “Ah.” I nodded. She was a stranger to me. She always had been. We had grown up together, but I had never before seen anything in her to pay much attention to. I had left her to my aunt and the occasional nurse.

  My uncle was good to me. When he saw that I would go crazy with idleness, he gave me work to do. I spent many of my days in the city, many miles off, representing the estate to the bankers and businessmen there. It was a wearisome job. I found myself longing for the woods, for the lawns, for the shining white walls of the Castle. When I returned home, my ears strained to hear the sound of laughter or the Pixie plucking a lute to call the children into the soft room. Dressed in starched, straight clothes, I missed the humble ways of the little paradise I had left. As I had done in the past, I took to riding bareback by the sea, letting the surf and the endless grey at once soothe and exacerbate my loneliness.

  Sarah did little to alleviate my sense of isolation. She was a peculiar child, odd as they are who are young and too much alone. There were no other children anywhere near; she had no friends. I wondered if she ever had. The old manor had many secret passageways and hidden tunnels of a nature not unusual in such an old house, and Sarah knew them all. She had a way of turning up underfoot, to stand and watch without a word, and then disappearing again.

  One night I returned from riding, soaked with sea spray, to find Sarah sitting on the floor at the foot of my bed. She was examining a piece of cloth by lamplight.

  I strode across the room and opened the heavy drapes, letting the fading evening light fill the room. Without a word I pushed the windows wide open, scattering sea birds and allowing the distant sound of waves to reach us. Then I turned to look at Sarah. I could see now what she was holding. It was Illyrica’s picture.

  Sarah pointed to the white house in its bed of verdant green. “Where is this?” she asked. Her words were clipped short, as they always were.

  “That is the Castle,” I said. I lowered myself down to the floor beside her, and pointed to the woods. “And these are the woods where the Angel lives.”

  She looked up at me without smiling. “Why does he live there?” she asked.

  “He protects the girls who live in the Castle,” I said. “There are many of them, and every one is a princess.”

  Sarah ran her thumb along the grey and white and brown threads that made up the hawk. “And what does the hawk do?” she asked.

  “He watches over the Castle,” I told her. “And they teach him how to fly.”

  We fell silent as the sun set over the sea, deepening the shadows around the bed. We could hear birds crying over the surf. Somewhere in the moors cattle were lowing.

  “That’s me,” I said suddenly. “They called me Hawk.”

  Her brown gaze was unwavering. “Then why are you here?” she asked.

  I looked at her, brown and serious in the deepening eve. And I knew why I had come back. I smiled, an awkward smile, and touched her cheek. “I came back for you,” I said.

  She looked back down at the picture and picked up the lamp again to shed light over the threads. “Will we go back there?” she asked.

  “Yes,” I told her.

  Chapter 24

  nora

  With Sarah in my care, the journey back took twice as long. Alone, I had been willing to forego meals and walk long miles, but I was determined that Sarah should not go hungry. At many places along the road I stopped and worked in the fields for hire, paying our way across the provinces. When I had done particularly well, we would sometimes even sleep in an inn. Although Sarah was given to wandering the moors alone at home, she did not like to be out at night. The world was too big for her then. She was accustomed to burrowing in her tunnels and cubby holes at night, and the open blackness frightened her. Whenever we slept out of doors, I would find a low-hanging branch—or else gather sticks and build a framework—and drape my cloak over it so that she had something between her and the night.

  The result of our slow progress was that summer was half-spent by the time we reached the edge of the darkwood. It was now nearly the season in which I had lived in the woods under the Giant’s tutelage. The world under the canopy of leaves began to tantalize my senses the moment I stepped beneath the trees. Everything was thrillingly
familiar and inexplicably strange; like entering a world one has known only in dreams—good dreams. Sarah’s eyes were wide as we followed the nearly invisible paths into the forest. She was searching it out, taking in every sound and movement and scent. This was a wilderness very different from the moors, and well I knew it.

  The sun was just beginning to set as the trees thinned and I caught sight of the glimmer of white walls. “Look there,” I told Sarah. “There is the Castle.”

  “I can’t see it,” she told me.

  “Well then,” I said, and swooped her suddenly off her feet. I lifted her to my shoulder as she kicked and clutched at my head in shock and nervous fear. And then, in a beautiful moment that I would ever after remember, she laughed. It was a small laugh, born as much from relief that I was holding her securely as from surprise, but it was a laugh.

  “Can you see it now?” I asked her.

  There was silence. I turned my face up to see her. She was staring off through the trees, brown eyes deep, a small smile playing on her face. “Yes,” she said. “I can see it.”

  With Sarah still on my shoulder, I started to walk toward the Castle. She tightened her hold with hands and knees, but made no protest. I stopped short when we stepped out of the trees. The Castle sat on its hill, glimmering all the colours of pearl in the light of the setting sun. Clouds heaped in the sky made the sunlight fall in beautiful golden waves over the lawns, and there a lone figure walked. Her hands were slightly outstretched, palms turned up, as though they would take in all the glory of the fading day.

  It was Nora. She had let her hair down, as I had only seen it once before, and it fell in long tresses to her waist. Her skirts flowed out behind her. Sarah’s hands came around my forehead as she leaned forward. A warm breeze began to blow, as though it was running to Nora’s open hands. It pushed her hair away from her face and made the long strands dance.