Drowned Country

by Emily Tesh

  Quiet followed Maud’s story.

  “I got there too late,” Tobias said abruptly. “Always feared as much, when I saw it’d left you in a ring. You’re mazed, miss; you’re fairy-mad. Like a mouse that’s looked a snake in the eye. Better go home to your parents.”

  Maud stared at him a moment in silent outrage and then turned to Silver. “Do I seem mad to you?” she demanded.

  “You seem like a very unusual young lady,” Silver said carefully.

  “Unusual! And so you’ll cart me home and send me to bed without my supper, will you? And then my parents will send me for rest cures, and cut off my correspondence, and take my books again, and—” She stood up. Her right hand was in the pocket of her corduroys: not a casual gesture, Silver understood perfectly well, because that was the pocket with the revolver in it. “Well, gentlemen, it has been terribly interesting to meet you. For a moment I thought at least one of you would understand. If you’ll excuse me, I mean to chart the road to Fairyland, to discover its history and its society, and by interview and observation to ascertain the nature of its inhabitants. I know the way; I have walked it before. Good night.”

  She moved swiftly, swinging the canvas pack up onto her shoulders, leaving the cleaver; she was halfway up the ladder Silver had barely noticed in the far corner of the room before either Silver or Tobias had time to react. Tobias moved first.

  “She has a gun,” Silver said behind him as they started up the ladder, “for God’s sake, be careful—”

  Tobias grunted in assent.

  So this was what they were now: partners in a professional matter, hunters of the supernatural, rescuers of alarming young ladies. So this was what became of falling in love with a marvel out of legend.

  Silver thought he might, in time, become resigned to it.

  * * *

  In the flickering firelit shadows of the vampire’s lair, Silver had half-forgotten where they were. Emerging behind Tobias onto the hillside above Rothport, he took a great gasp of the cold sea air and felt tremendously grateful for it. Tobias put out a hand to steady him when he stumbled. It was an unthinking kindness, like passing a coin to the tramp. Silver could expect nothing from him, now, except the kindness that ran deep in his nature as the current of a rushing stream. But it was good to breathe freely again. The death-scent lingering underground had been mostly his imagination, he was sure. Mostly.

  The ruined abbey’s bones rose out of the earth about them, dark and slick with rain though the skies had cleared. Below them Rothport curled around the dark blot of the bay, its one string of gas lamps flaring like stars to mark the line of the high street. Silver could not see Maud at first. Then Tobias said sharply, “There!”

  The girl was standing at the very edge of the cliff. Silver understood, with a sudden lurch, one way a child from a seaside town might make sense of a shining road. The moon above was high and full and very bright; and Maud’s lanky figure swayed a little.

  “Miss Lindhurst!” Silver cried, and then remembered. “Maud—wait!”

  Tobias was a coiled spring at his side, readying himself to tackle her, which struck Silver as a very bad idea. Maud had gone still. Mazed, fairy-mad, whatever that meant; he felt a flicker of irritation—how many things must Tobias know that he had never yet mentioned?—but Silver schooled his face to calm and went a little closer.

  When her figure stiffened he stopped. Tobias was lurking in his shadow. Silver prayed that he would have the sense not to interfere. From here he could see past the cliff’s edge to the murmuring shadows below. By daylight it would be a beautiful sea view. The full moon was painting the caps of little waves with pale light. “You must be very sure of your road, Miss Lindhurst,” Silver managed, with an approximation of good cheer.

  Maud cast him an icy impatient look, just visible in the gloom. “I am,” she said. Silver put out a hand towards Tobias to hold him back from any foolish heroics. Heaven alone knew what the footing was like. The odds were good that any man trying to grab Maud away from that deadly edge would only go over the cliff with her, and the two of them would be swallowed together by the water below—no, Silver recalled his glimpse of the bay that afternoon; the water gave way to stark black knife-edges of rock below the abbey.

  His hand collided with Tobias’s chest, nearer than he’d thought. Tobias was still in just his shirtsleeves; Silver could feel the warmth of him. And he could hear the big man’s breathing, slow and measured; the breaths of a frightened man calming himself. Not now, he chided his own skittering thoughts, and snatched his hand away.

  “Well?” said Maud.

  Silver had not really had a plan after wait. He improvised. “I believe you were right,” he said. About what? The girl clearly longed to be right; she had read Silver’s father’s work, she corresponded with experts under an assumed name— “About the chicken-and-egg problem,” he said. “You were quite right.”

  Maud half-turned towards him, frowning. Little black pebbles skidded away from under her feet.

  “It could be that supernatural places give rise to magical beings, but it could just as easily be the case that the presence of a supernatural being effects a—a transformation of place,” Silver said. He was making it up as he went along. “You must grant, therefore, that it is entirely possible that with the death of the, er, tenant, Rothling Abbey has already reverted to being an ordinary romantic ruin, rather than a place of power—”

  “You won’t stop me,” said Maud.

  “I only think,” said Silver, “that you ought to have some insurance. What a waste of your plans and preparation it would be if you hurled yourself to an untimely death instead of onto your road just now, all because you lacked—”

  He stopped.

  Maud’s long face and small mouth lent themselves well to sneering. “Lacked a suitably magical companion?”

  The shape of what Silver had just talked himself into unfolded before him, alarming and wonderful. A scientific expedition to Fairyland; what an absurd, brilliant idea. It was just the sort of thing a former version of Henry Silver would have hurled himself into without a second thought. It was just the sort of thing he had always loved. And on that clifftop, with Tobias Finch big and solid and utterly untouchable standing a foot away, nothing waiting for him but the loneliness of Greenhollow, his ruined house, an angry dryad—oh, the joy Silver felt, all at once, at the thought of something positively mad to do.

  “Yes,” he said, and smiled at her, unforced. “May I offer myself?”

  “You,” she said, with obvious disbelief. Her eyes flicked sideways to his companion.

  “Mr Finch is what you might call a retired supernatural being,” said Silver, feeling the words on his tongue coming light as quicksilver. “I, on the other hand—”

  The Wood was not here on the height; this place had been wind-scoured for millennia. But as Silver very carefully took another pace towards Maud on the cliff edge, as he swallowed back a gulp of hysterical laughter, he thought of that drowned forest he had sensed earlier. It was there, just at the softening edge of the world, under the vast darkness of the ocean. Silver rather theatrically lifted a hand, and as he did, there was a change in the quality of the sound which murmured and murmured below the cliff. The wind soughed in the branches of trees that were not there. Maud had turned all the way towards him now, her eyes wide, and Silver smiled at her and plucked from the creeper that had just twined its way up the ruined black wall closest to him a handful of pink and white blossoms. He held it out to the girl.

  With a rather good charming air—if he said so himself—he added, “You read my article, I believe you said.”

  “The Hallow Wood,” said Maud. She looked at the posy of flowers uncertainly, and then met Silver’s eyes. Her slim shoulders squared.

  “My name first,” she said. “When we publish. This is my expedition.”

  “Alphabetically, of course,” said Silver. “It’s a privilege even to be invited, Miss Lindhurst.” And before she could corr
ect him, he corrected himself: “Maud.” He was still awkwardly holding the posy. Maud had not taken it. He tossed it carelessly aside as he added, “I hope you will consider me in the light of a brother—a brother in scholarly inquiry, if nothing else.”

  After a long pause Maud said, “Very well.”

  Silver took another step closer. There was now so little distance between them that he could offer her his arm. The black pebbles were falling away into darkness under his feet as well as hers. Behind them the ruins of the abbey were rain-slick, shining faintly under the moon; and as Silver glanced back, he saw Tobias bend and pick up the silly little posy of pink and white flowers. They looked small and foolish in his big hands, and they were wilting already. It was too dark to make out Tobias’s expression. Not that it mattered, because the days when Silver had exerted his utmost powers to decoding Tobias’s small changes of expression, his rare frowns, his rarer smiles—those days were over. An expedition to Fairyland, Silver told himself; an opportunity, a delight. Something mad and wonderful to do, because the world was not devoid of marvels after all.

  Maud’s right hand settled carefully on Silver’s left forearm.

  That meant her right hand was an instant or two further away from the damn revolver in her pocket.

  This was the moment when Silver had intended to use what little force he could bring to bear—he was not a Tobias Finch, but for all her height, Maud was a slim young woman—to drag her backwards while she least expected it. This was the moment he had meant to remind himself and Tobias and his bloody mother too that he was not a nonentity and not a fool either. He had let the picture lurk quietly under the surface of his thoughts, knowing very well that the best way to tell a lie was to believe it entirely in the moment, but it had been there: Miss Lindhurst escorted safely home, to grieving mother and pompous father. Tobias impressed. Mrs Silver impressed. After which Silver himself would—would turn to Tobias and say with a charming air—

  No, turn his back to Tobias and remark lightly to his mother—

  No, no: return to his ruined manor house, and perhaps say something witty and intelligent to—

  To whom? To Bramble?

  He was missing the moment. Already Maud was furrowing her brows as she took in his expression, and he was a man standing on a cliff above the ocean on the edge of a deadly fall onto razor rocks, arm in arm with a girl with more courage than sense. Tobias was looking on with Heaven alone knew what expression in the dark, and the moon was shining on the water, and there was a soft sighing of the wind, rustling in the leaves of a drowned forest, filling all the air.

  And then, with a sense that did not belong to an ordinary mortal, Silver was aware of something bent and strange in that chilly murmuring air; as if the night were doubled over on itself, and a hole torn through it.

  “Good God,” he said, “there really is a road.”

  Maud stiffened. Silver grabbed ahold of her hand before she drew it away entirely. “I’m sorry! I shouldn’t have doubted you. Don’t— You need me, I swear you do.” It was true; it was the Wood that was calling that strange path into being. He was sure of it; he could feel it. But he needed her as well. Something marvellous had left its mark on her, and it was at her feet that the shining road began. “Your name first,” he reminded her. “When we publish.”

  Maud’s lips pressed tight together. “My name first,” she agreed, and hoisted her canvas pack a little more firmly on her shoulders.

  “Silver!”

  Tobias’s voice was hoarse. Silver had somehow, for the first time since he had come to Rothport, genuinely forgotten that he was there. He turned now to give Tobias a brilliant smile, unforced, uncalculated, entirely sincere. It was not that it no longer hurt to look at him. The queer ache endured, as it had continuously from the moment he’d set eyes on Tobias again and found him larger than memory, sterner and kinder and more ordinary and entirely himself. By God, how Silver had loved the man! He had loved him to the tune of fourteen months spent pitying himself in a thorn-girt fortress. But there was no use dwelling now: Silver was even able to admit to himself, here, at last, that the whole mess had in the end been entirely and predictably his own fault.

  “Once again, my dear sir,” he said, “I am going to have to ask you to explain matters to my mother.”

  Perhaps he should not have made a joke of it. The last time Silver had asked him that favour, he had been on the point of getting eaten alive by an ancient and evil parasite power in the beautiful, appalling form of Fabian Rafela.

  Oh well. It didn’t matter now.

  Silver stepped off the cliff and onto the road to Fairyland. Maud came with him. She was clinging to his arm a little, though her expression was set. Fearless, yes: but she had not been totally oblivious to the potential of those dreadful knife-edged rocks.

  “Silver, for God’s sake!”

  Tobias moved fast for such a big man. But the road was not there for him, and the edge of the Rothling headland was less forgiving of his heavy tread than it had been of slim Maud and light-footed Silver. Not pebbles but whole clods of earth skidded away from under his boots. Silver saw it happen, saw his balance fail, saw him begin to fall.

  No, he thought or said; and Time itself shifted around him in answer.

  Down they went all together, Maud with a shrill cry and Tobias with a shout and Silver himself concentrating too hard to make a sound. Down they went, breaking branches of protesting trees as they went, gathering bruises and cuts aplenty; down to a half-forgiving landing in a dim and wild wood that had vanished under the rising waves ten thousand years before.

  II: The Fairy Queen

  Two years ago

  ON A MARCH MORNING around dawn, after a night of honest conversation—conversation, with Tobias Finch!—Silver made a joke, and Tobias blinked once and put his big hand on Silver’s jaw and kissed him.

  What a shock it was, after months of flirtation that might as well have been aimed at an amiable wall. What an astounding, delightful shock, to find oneself sincerely admired, and wanted, and liked—and by such a sober and immovable rock of a man as Tobias Finch!

  March was casting off her chills; the twigs of the hawthorn budding; the bluebells coming into carpeting bloom as spring breathed out over the wood. Silver, enchanted, even found himself in charity with his mother. She was pleased to see him well, she said; and in that stiff little sentence he heard more human feeling than he had ever known her to express before. Her eyes were wet, and she dabbed at them aggressively with a handkerchief, as if daring him to say anything. Silver, quite overcome, embraced her. When she squawked in surprise, he laughed. The laughter rolled up out of him like the bubbles of the rushing Haller Brook.

  (Later Silver wondered if the air of spring had been a part of it. Perhaps he had been drunk on the season. Perhaps he should never have expected such a budding green joyfulness to last.)

  Mrs Silver lingered at Greenhollow Hall for most of a month, and Silver only fought with her twice. Both times they cut themselves off before the squabble could really get going; both times they each glanced at Tobias, big and quiet and trying not to look unhappy, and thought the better of their disagreement. Silver’s mother liked Tobias. Silver had never seen her like anyone half so much. She liked his solidness, she liked his practicality, she liked his tidy habits and his gruff manners and his excellent aim with a pistol. “I am so very pleased,” she said to Silver once, “that you seem to have developed some good sense in your personal affairs at last.”

  This was by far the most approving thing Mrs Silver had ever said about any of Silver’s entanglements. She had an eagle eye for spotting them, and a scathing tongue for the failings of each. In the high good humour that possessed him near every moment of that glorious spring, Silver grinned at her and said, “I admit, madam, that I have done much worse.”

  “Hmph!” said Mrs Silver.

  A week later she departed. It was almost May; bumblebees bumped and rolled through the air around the lavender bushes
like drunken sailors, and Mrs Silver had her own business to attend to. She announced it briskly at dinner on a Tuesday night and was gone by Thursday morning.

  “I’ll tarry a while yet,” Tobias said the night before she went. He sat on the edge of the bed and passed Silver a cup of water. His manner was abrupt. Silver realised, delighted, that he was being shy.

  But it was only then that it occurred to him, for the first time, that Tobias might leave.

  “My dear fellow,” Silver said, trying not to sound panicked, “more than a while, surely. You cannot mean to leave me to Bramble’s tender mercies.” He forced anxiety out of his expression and stretched out, luxurious, smiling, on the white bedsheets. “It’s odd—I thought she liked me—but she seems to have grown less approving of late. Do you think she might be jealous?”

  Tobias ducked his head. “Foolishness,” he muttered, but there was a smile lurking on his face.

  “In her position,” Silver said, with growing relief, “I would certainly be jealous.” There, let him forget about it. Tobias enjoyed being teased; Silver was happy to tease him.

  But Tobias shook his head. “I’ll tarry a while,” he repeated. “For the summer, maybe.”

  “Tobias,” Silver said, sitting up, more serious as he perceived that Tobias really meant it, “Greenhollow has been your home much longer than it has been mine. I cannot perceive any reason you should ever leave.” He brushed his hand over the swell of Tobias’s bare arm. “Not now.”

  “She’s not young,” Tobias said, “your mother. It’s a dangerous business she’s in. And she pays me a wage.”