Tamsin

by Peter S. Beagle

  Fifteen

  A couple of weeks later, Christopher Herridge told Meena his family would be moving to Africa in September. Meena cried more than ever, and I felt terrible, because I’d known, and maybe I could have found some way to warn Meena even a little, to soften the blow. But I hadn’t said anything, because Evan had warned me billy-blinds don’t always get things right. More secrets.

  I didn’t see Tamsin for some while after that night. Every evening I’d find some reason to wander off to the places where we usually met, but she wasn’t ever there. Once I even went up to the third floor and spent maybe half an hour walking back and forth outside the secret door. I could have opened it and walked in, but I didn’t. It’s hard to explain why now. Most of me missed Tamsin in a way I’d never missed anybody—not Marta and Jake when I started school here, not even Mister Cat when he was in quarantine—but one small part of me was scared utterly out of its mind, because this was getting too big for me, and I knew it. One night I had a dream about that big golden-eyed creature Tamsin called “old friend,” and another night I dreamed about the Other One. She’d told me he was gone, vanished, but the dream didn’t think so. I was back at her door, and this time I pushed it open, and he was waiting, sitting in her chair. I didn’t see his face, but it was him.

  To keep from thinking about her so much, I started being helpful around the Manor. I cleaned up my room without anyone’s having to ask me, and then I went ahead and cleaned the boys’ rooms, which got them both mad at me—Julian especially, because his spiders got loose. After that I hung around Sally, volunteering for every damn thing she needed done—washing, cooking, weeding her little kitchen garden and stirring up the compost pile—even refinishing musty old furniture or running errands to Evan out in the fields, when she couldn’t stand it and had to get rid of me. I made everybody really nervous during that stretch, including Mister Cat. He’d either disappear for the whole day—probably with Miss Sophia Brown, whom I didn’t see either—or else he’d follow me around, saying sarcastic things in Siamese, which he only ever speaks when he’s really mad, or when I’ve surprised him. Mister Cat hates surprises.

  Tony was the one who called me on it. He just came straight up to me one afternoon when I was out hanging laundry and asked, “All right, what have you done?”

  I had a mouthful of clothespins, so I had to mumble, “Drying your damn legwarmers, you really want to know. And your sweaty old Fabrizios.” Tony goes through tights like Julian through crawly things.

  “You’re being good,” Tony said. “You’re being unbelievably, unnaturally, abnormally good. Julian’s the same way when he’s done something really awful nobody knows about yet. Let’s have it, Jenny.”

  I got furious, of course. Tony can still do that to me once in a while, sniffing out something absolutely true and getting it totally wrong. I said I wasn’t up to anything, and hadn’t been up to anything, and what the hell did he know about anything, and about Monmouth’s Rebellion—did he think old Roger Willoughby might have been involved in it? Tony’s harder to sidetrack than Evan, but you can do it.

  “Roger Willoughby? Possible, but I doubt it, rather. He wasn’t gentry-born, but he wasn’t a little Dorset yeoman, either. He’d have known what the Stuarts were like, and he’d probably have waited to see how things fell out.” He rumpled his hair, exactly like Evan, and added after a moment, “But I’d bet at least some of his farmhands took off with Monmouth, poor sods. Why do you want to know?”

  “Just curious,” I said. “Just wondering about stuff.” Tony gave me the kind of look Mister Cat gives me when there’s only dry kibble in his dish, but he left it alone. I went on hanging laundry and thinking about Tamsin. As much as she’d told me about herself—family, childhood, the farm, the Black Plague, even the name of her horse—there were pieces missing. I could feel their shapes sometimes, when we were together, actually feel the empty outlines of things she wasn’t telling me. I didn’t know if she’d been around for the Rebellion, or what she’d thought about it when it was happening. Or why the billy-blind had warned her twice to sit still—or why she hadn’t come inside on a wild night, and died of it, for that matter. I didn’t know what questions I ought to ask her, and I didn’t know what questions I didn’t want to hear the answers to. Only that I wanted to be with her.

  Late one July afternoon, I went off for a walk by myself, feeling glumpy, which is one of Julian’s words for being stupidly miserable. Meena’s mother had been supposed to drop her off with us to stay the weekend, but something family came up and she had to cancel at the last minute. Between that and not being sure if I’d ever see Tamsin again—and not even knowing where the hell my cat was—I was glumpy enough to realize that I hadn’t been this glumpy in a pretty long while. Which only made me glumpier, dumb as that is.

  There’s a place I still go to when I’m feeling like that. It’s on the downs, above the sheep pasture, what’s left of a shepherd’s hut. No roof, one wall, a few foundation stones, a few rainy splinters of a floor. Evan thinks it’s a hundred years old, no more, but it could just as easily be from Tamsin’s time, you can’t tell. I hike out there, and I sit on the ground with my back against that last wall and the sun on my face—or the fog, either—and I watch the butterflies and feel sorry for myself. Love it.

  I was amazed to see the black pony grazing peacefully right by the old hut. There’s never anything bigger than a rabbit on that long slope, except for the sheep, away off—but there he was, stocky and small as the New Forest ponies, and black as Mister Cat himself, almost purple in the shadow of the wall. No saddle, no bridle, no shoes, mane and tail stiff with burrs, he never looked up as I came near, being so careful not to spook him. “Look at you,” I said, keeping my voice really low. “You’re wild—you’re a genuine wild horse. Hello.”

  The black pony didn’t even flick his ears. I said, “You’re also a mess. I’ve got a friend named Meena—she’d spend a whole day currying you, combing you out. Me, I couldn’t care less, I’m not much into horses, Just shove over a bit, I want to sit down.”

  He raised his head then, and I saw his eyes. They were golden as the rising moon, before it turns pale and small; they had long horizontal pupils, like Wilf’s billygoat, and they were too big for that shaggy, shanty face. And they held me. They made me come closer, one step after another, until I had one hand in that brambly mane and was just about to scramble up. I knew what he was, I remembered what Evan had told me—a fine black horse, absolutely black, inviting you to get on his back and take a ride—but I couldn’t look away. He blew softly through his nostrils and nibbled my sleeve, just like a real horse.

  I heard Tamsin before I saw her. “Ah, no!” and it sounded like a trumpet, ghost or not. “That I’ll not have! Get from him, Jenny!”

  The big yellow eyes let go of me, and I stumbled back so hard I almost fell down. Tamsin blew by me as though a hurricane were driving her and blazed up between me and the black pony, clearer and more solid than I’d ever seen her, even in daylight, she was so angry. “Rogue, scoundrel, swinger, is it thus you’ll dare treat my friend? When you’ve seen us together, when I’ve called you time and time to acquaint with her—”

  And the black pony spoke.

  “I do not come when I am called. You knew that once.” His voice was deep and even—no whinny in it, nothing like that—and his mouth didn’t move at all. But there wasn’t any question that it was him speaking. The voice went exactly with those eyes—the same eyes I’d dreamed those first nights at Stourhead Farm—it went with the way he held his head, with just a slight quirk in the neck, as he looked at us, and with what I felt looking back, which was a weird kind of calm fear. Nobody’s going to understand that. I knew what he was, and I knew he was dangerous—miles more dangerous than boggarts or billy-blinds or voices behind the bathtub. But I wasn’t afraid of him. I should have been, but I wasn’t.

  Tamsin was still steaming, absolutely furious. “When I knew you, I’d her age, and you never wo
uld have done with me as you planned for her. You were kind to children then, Pooka.”

  “I have never been kind to any,” the black pony answered her. “I am I, and I do what suits me. You understood that, too, Tamsin Willoughby.” But he lowered his head briefly before her, and she reached out to touch him—just for a second—before she remembered that she couldn’t. He said, “I did not grieve you gone. I cannot. But it suits me to see you again.”

  She wasn’t letting him off that easily. “Aye, well, it does not suit me to find you cozening my Mistress Jenny to mount your back and be hurled into some mire, miles from her home. She is my friend, as much as you were—more—and you’ll treat her as you did me, or answer for it. Jenny Gluckstein, she’s called.” She whipped around to face me, one arm thrown wide, burning bright as a lacy cinder flying up the chimney. “Jenny, this creature is the Pooka. Pay no mind to the shape he wears, for he’s none of his own, and no soul neither. Ware him ever, trust him never, but when the wind’s right he has his uses.” She turned back to the black pony. “Say, have I proclaimed you fairly, then?”

  “Indeed.” The black pony was cropping grass, not looking at either of us, not even raising his head when he said, “I see you, Jenny Gluckstein.” Nothing more than that.

  “Come,” Tamsin said to me. I wanted to stay and talk to the Pooka, or anyway hang around and watch him a while longer, but there wasn’t any arguing with Tamsin in that mood. She swept ahead of me without looking back, and I followed her over the downs. I turned once, but the shadows around the ruined hut had lengthened a lot, and I couldn’t see the black pony.

  “Evan told me about pookas,” I said when I caught up with Tamsin. “I thought it was just a story.” Tamsin didn’t say anything. I said, “He wouldn’t really have hurt me, would he?”

  “God’s death, who knows what a pooka will do?” Tamsin’s answer came so short and hard and impatient that I actually stopped in my tracks, as surprised as I’d been to hear a pony speak to me. She knew right away, even though I was walking behind her, and she stopped herself and actually put her arms around me, which she’d never done before. I felt a tiny vanilla breeze on my skin, moving in my hair.

  “Dearest Jenny, forgive me, forgive. I was most affrighted, as I’ve not been since… since I was just so affrighted for another—long ago, when I was as you are. My anger was never at you, but with myself, who even then knew far better than to call a pooka friend.” She stepped back from me, and she sighed a little. “He is no one’s friend—no one’s—yet he proved truest friend to me once, when none were by. You may trust him well enough now, Jenny, for he knows you as mine—but never forget that you will never know him. The Pooka’s mystery even to the Pooka, I think.”

  “He really can change his shape?” I asked. Tamsin nodded. I said, “Could he look like you, or like my mother? Or Mister Cat? I need to know.”

  “Always you may tell the Pooka by his eyes. All else changes, not those.” The setting sun at her back struck right through her just then, and made her face glow and tremble like a candle’s flame. I can still see her. She said, “He will not bait you again with such sport, have no fear. One day you may yet ride him to a safe ending, and no thorn bush. Come, Jenny, your dinner will be cold, surely.”

  I think about that, too, her bothering to consider my needing to eat, when she couldn’t keep centuries straight in her ghost of a mind. She wouldn’t say anything more about the Pooka the rest of the way, because she was set on teaching me a song her sister Maria had taught her—the one who died of the Plague. It was a ripply, simple tune, repeating and repeating like a birdcall, but I’ve forgotten most of the words. It starts out like this:

  “Oranges and cherries,

  sweetest candleberries—

  who will come and buy?

  who will come and buy?

  Daughters I have plenty,

  ten and twelve and twenty,

  fit to please the gentry—

  who will come and buy?”

  I wish I remembered all of it. I still go around singing the bits I remember to myself, because sometimes the rest of a song will come back if you do that. Maybe if I could call back the whole song, Tamsin would come with it, the way she was then, shivering so brightly in the sunset. It’s not right to wish that, but I do.

  When we were almost at the Manor, I said, keeping my voice as light as I could, “So many weird things running around on just this one farm. Pookas, Black Dogs, boggarts, billy-blinds—”

  “Oakmen,” Tamsin interrupted. “Remember, Jenny. And the Old Lady of the Elder Tree—though you’ll not see her, surely, and more’s the pity of it. Even the Pooka steps aside for her when she moves.”

  “Oakmen, right,” I said. “Oak groves and Oakmen. And the little whatevers I heard in the bathroom, and probably whatever Mister Cat was fighting with the other night. I don’t want to know anything about mean old ladies—I just want to know, are there a whole lot more? I mean, is this normal for England, or is it just Dorset?”

  Tamsin laughed that spring-rain laugh of hers. “Alas, my poor Jenny—awash in hobgoblins, besieged by bogles. Truly, there are no such creatures in your New York?”

  “Only in junior high school,” I said. “Never mind. Just introduce me as they come along.”

  Julian ran out of the house, yelling, “Jenny! Jenny, dinner!” I expected Tamsin to vanish like a shot, the way she always did when there was the least chance of anyone else seeing her. But this time she stepped back until the shadows hid everything except her eyes and the swing of her hair. Her voice was really quiet. She said, “My Jenny, I will never see your own land, yet well I know night’s as dark there as in Dorset. And night is not ours, and never will be, not till all is night. I tell you it will not, Jenny—never any more ours than the sea, for all we plough and harrow up that darkness. What yet swims in the deepest deep, I’m sure none can say—and not even the Pooka knows all that may move beyond the light. But you have friends there now—do but remember that, and you’ll come to no harm. You have friends in the night, dear Jenny.”

  About then Julian caught sight of me, and started waving his arms and bellowing, “Jenny, Jenny, come on, it’s cock-a-leekie!” He knows that’s my favorite soup, ever since Evan’s sister Charlie taught Sally how to make it. He came running and threw his arms around me, and started dragging me toward the house, telling me about some experiment he’d been doing with sliced cucumbers, sugar, and three snails. I’d gotten so I could usually feel it when Tamsin left me, but I never felt it this time. I think she stood there in the shadows and watched us go.

  After dinner, Tony and I washed up, and then I went outside and sat in the double swing that Evan had rigged to a branch of the old walnut tree near the tractor garage. The evening was still warm, practically balmy; we hadn’t had one of those since the sweltering night when I first walked with Tamsin. I was looking around for her without really expecting to see her, and I was keeping an eye out for other things, too—maybe the Pooka, maybe the billy-blind. I still wasn’t sure he was right about bangs.

  Evan made that swing with a nice high back, so it’s really easy to fall asleep in it. I dozed and woke a couple of times, and the second time I had a bad dream. I was still in the swing, in my dream, and it was still night, only now the Manor was really far away, practically on the horizon. There was someone walking toward me, slowly, his face half in shadow, half in moonlight. I tried to jump off and run, but the swing turned into the Pooka, and I was on his back and couldn’t get down. The Other One came right up to the Pooka amd mounted right behind me, wrapping his long arms around me. I screamed, and Sally said, “Shush, baby, it’s me, it’s just me. You were looking so adorable.”

  She was in the swing next to me, with my head bumping on her shoulder. My skin was really cold, my mouth was dry, and my neck hurt. Sally said, “You looked so much the way you did when you were little, I just couldn’t help giving you a hug.”

  I mumbled something and sat up, trying to str
aighten my hair. The moon was high, which always makes the night darker here, I don’t know why. Sally told me Meena had called, and I said I’d call her back tomorrow. We stayed in the swing for a time, not saying much, but Sally kept trying to cuddle me and look at me at the same time, and you can’t do that, not the way Sally looks at you. Finally I said, “What? Say it already, and let’s get some sleep. What’d I do?”

  Sally got all indignant. “Nothing—you haven’t done anything—why are you so suspicious?” She went on like that a bit longer, and then, without missing a beat: “It’s just that you’ve become so—so solitary lately. Going off by yourself so much, not asking Julian or anyone to come with you. Julian’s feelings are really hurt, did you know that? And Meena—Meena’s been noticing it, too. She asked me about it when she was over the last time.”

  I felt horrible. I said, “I’ll talk to her. I’ll do something with Julian, we’ll play croquet or something. It’s just that I’ve been sort of needing to be alone these days. To work a few things out.”

  She didn’t immediately ask, “What things?”—Sally’s much cooler than that, and much trickier, too. She nodded, and didn’t say anything right away; but when I started to get up out of the swing she said, “Could I help? Is it something I could maybe—I don’t know… just tell me, Jenny. If it is.”

  These days I have a pretty good idea why Evan fell in love with my mother. Norris, too, for that matter. Back then… back then, what the hell did I know about love and grown people? But I did have my moments, once in a great while, and that was one of them. I looked at her for a change, staring hard through the darkness, seeing the dead leaf in her hair and the motheaten collar of that gray cardigan she’ll never give up on, seeing that her eyes were as wide as Tamsin’s, and brighter in the moonlight. I flicked the leaf away, gave her a kiss on the cheek, took her hand, and we walked back to the house.