Under the Green Hill (12 page)

Meg ran up to her brother, who was standing in a daze, staring at the place where Gul Ghillie had been. There was a strange hollowness about him, the bewildered look of a man who has stared into the sun too long and paid the price with his vision. He seemed older somehow, more handsome, but hardly the same Rowan. Meg took him by the shoulders and shook him until his head lolled.

“What did he want?” she almost screamed. “What happened? Did you tell him you wouldn't fight?” She let go of his shoulders, but her hands, balled into tight fists, rested on his chest.

He looked down at her as if noticing her for the first time, and his smile was distant and condescending. “I gave him my life,” he said softly.

She stared at him, bewildered. “What?”

“My life. I gave it to him. He placed his hand on my chest, just here”—he put his own fingertips on his breastbone, between her two fists—“and when he took it back there was an egg in his palm.” He gave a little laugh. “A tiny speckled egg. That's how significant my life is.”

“Your life? What do you mean?”

“My life. My soul. Whatever you like. I gave it to him, and he put it into an egg.”

“But…but…”

“Because I am their champion. I am
her
champion. A bird will take the egg into the forest, and build a nest, and keep it warm, keep it hidden. When the Unseelie Court chooses its champion, he, too, will have his life placed in an egg. We will serve them till the end, in success or failure. There's no turning away now.”

“But…but…it doesn't make any sense! How can your life be in an egg? You
are
alive. You're standing right here in front of me. It's a trick! He's trying to trick you into doing what he wants!”

Rowan gazed down at her with a certain sympathy. How could she ever understand? “It's no trick,” he said, patting her dark-brown hair as though she were a frightened puppy. “This isn't something they could force me to do. They choose a champion every seven years, but he has to go willingly. I've pledged myself to their cause, and my life is theirs until it is decided at Midsummer.”

“I won't let you!” Meg wailed. “I'll tell Auntie Ash! I'll call Mother! They'll drag you home, where it's safe. I won't let you do this!” But her heart cried out, Too late! You had your chance to tell someone.

“Don't you see, Meggie? I'm bound now. Unless I refuse, and another takes my place, I am bound to fight at Midsummer. If you locked me in my room, the champion from the other side would still seek me out. If I refused to fight but none took my place, it would change nothing. Even if you took me back to America, it wouldn't do any good. At dawn after Midsummer Night, one of the eggs will hatch, and that bird will push the other egg from the nest. One of us will die. And I promise you, it won't be me.” He straightened and stiffened, and looked so manly that Meg hardly knew him.

She grasped at the solution he offered. It seemed so clear to her. “You said you can get out of it if you refuse to fight? Then you have to refuse! You have to! Let someone else fight.”

“No, Meg, I won't.”

There was something about his tone that halted all argument. He sounded like a grown man.

“Oh!” she said, angry amid the tears. “It's all just so…so stupid! I'm going to stop it!” She ran away from him, from the house, her eyes so blurred that she stumbled.

“There's nothing you can do,” Rowan called after her. But she paid him no heed.

She rounded the edge of the Rookery, crossed the road, and kept going. At first she didn't know where she was headed, just that she had to get away from the horrible things that were happening. How could he be willing to fight in the Midsummer War? How could they let him? He was only a child, scarcely older than herself. What confidence could they have in him? He was brave enough, as a rule, tall and strong for his age, perhaps, but certainly no warrior. It was as though everyone else had been blinded to some very simple truths that she saw all too clearly. In a way, she was right. For all that he believed himself a willing participant, Rowan was under a fairy glamour. And perhaps the fairies themselves lived under the veil of some illusions, for in Rowan they saw their champion. But did they care, Meg wondered, if he died? Auntie Ash said their morality isn't like ours….

It wasn't until she was deep in the forest (did the Ashes' rules count for nothing?) that she realized she was going to the Green Hill. The enormity of her decision stopped her in her tracks. She was alone in the place where all of those…things…dwelled. And she was prepared to charge up the Green Hill and tell those fair lords and ladies that they could never have her brother. She gulped, and leaned against a tree. I can't, she thought. But then she steeled herself. I have to. That's all there is to it. And she set off again, at a slower pace, delaying the inevitable but pushing resolutely forward.

The Green Hill has a magic to it—not every traveler can find it, even if she knows exactly where it lies. Perhaps it was because Meg was of Phyllida's blood, perhaps because the fairies favored her. Or maybe when one traveled with an earnest purpose the paths became clearer. In any case, Meg's feet turned unerringly in the direction of the Green Hill, and once again she saw what so few others have seen.

The hill, brilliant emerald in the afternoon light, was bare and lonely. Whatever magic it possessed, it kept its secrets hidden that day. She ran around the base, searching for the entrance she'd seen so clearly the night before. But the hill was solid, and she found no levers or buttons, nor even a rock that might serve to open the Green Hill. At last she gathered her courage and climbed to the summit. Not one living creature beyond the birds and insects stirred in her sight. In a voice at first halting, she called out, “Where are you?” No one answered her call.

“I know you're here!” she cried. “I know you can hear me. You can't have him! You can't make Rowan fight for you! He's just a boy!” Still the hill was mute.

Meg stood on the top of the Green Hill for a very long time, railing against the fairies as few would have dared. At first she was angry, and cursed them with every oath she'd learned from Silly. Her voice grew hoarse from shouting, and at last she began to weep, hot tears falling into the green herbs. She sank to her knees, unable to go on, but she beat upon the hill with her fists until she felt near to collapse.

Finally, utterly worn out with emotion, she fell silent, and even her tears stopped. Her head sank until it rested on the turf, and she remained like that, with half-sobbing breath, until she felt a hand on her shoulder. She scrambled around (and it was very like Meg to realize, as she did so, that she was getting grass stains on her knees, and think what a chore it would be to get them out), and her puffy red face turned up to find the fairy prince gazing down kindly at her. He looked so noble and so gentle that she burst into hopeless, inarticulate sobs again.

The fairy prince, who had seen the world begin and would see it end, looked with pity on the little creature huddled at his feet. “Do not grieve for the warrior who is not yet fallen,” he said, placing a hand upon her disheveled brow.

Sniffing loudly, she wiped her eyes and tried to steel herself once more into anger instead of sorrow. “You're sending him to his death,” she said miserably.

“Oh, can mortals see into the future?” he asked her with a low laugh. “Because I cannot. I do not think my queen would have chosen your brother if she thought his chances so poor.”

“He's just a child!” she protested. “Why would she choose him? He doesn't know how to fight.” In fact, though Rowan was strong and agile, he'd taken pains all his life to avoid fights. Even the sore temptation of Finn Fachan hadn't made him bellicose, though with him Rowan had been pushed nearer than ever before. Rowan was a diplomat, a peacemaker.

“The queen chooses who she will. It was your brother's choice to accept.”

“She put a spell on him!”

“She casts a spell on all who see her, even you…even me. But Rowan was not forced to agree, and only he can change his mind. There's nothing you can do.”

“But…”

“And do not call him a child. He's older than you, Meg Morgan, and don't you think you're old enough to know your own mind about things? You're his sister, and would protect him if you could. Rowan doesn't seek your protection. If you want to aid him, help him train. Time grows short, and he has much to learn. Don't hinder him with your doubting words. Be his sister and his friend. Be a child of Phyllida's blood, and let the bones fall where they will.

“I will come to you tomorrow—at the foot of the garden, where the trees are thickest. There, Rowan will receive his weapons, and begin to learn to use them.

Training is lonely work, and I think he would like his family there to encourage him. But keep the others away. They should not know.” He turned and walked down the hill, and it was a moment before Meg had the presence of mind to go after him. There was so much more to ask him, and she still hadn't given up on finding a loophole, some way of keeping Rowan safe.

“Wait! Why do you fight a war, and why once in seven years? Does it really keep green things growing? And why does a human have to die?” But by the time she got to her feet and peered down the hill, it was bare of all save herbs and butterflies.

“Blast these fairies!” she mumbled, then called, “Come back!” She waited a while in the sun and the breeze, but no one came, and at last she made her weary way homeward.

The Ashes noticed that there was something going on with all their summer charges. Meg was silent through lunch, absent as the sun sank lower, and markedly distant over supper. Rowan had the sort of distracted, glowing look they mistook for young love, Finn's eyes shifted restlessly from person to person, Silly giggled unaccountably, and Dickie's brow was furrowed as he tried to assimilate the information he'd gathered and remember whether
ano
meant “year” in Latin, or something quite rude. James was the only one who seemed his usual self, and he sang little songs under his breath all through the meal.

That night they all had their own rooms, and Meg retired early to hers. Meg didn't think she'd be able to sleep. When our minds are so full and frantic, we think they can never find the peace of slumber. But our bodies know better what we need, and she only tossed on her pillow for a few minutes before she fell into a refreshing sleep untroubled by dreams.

For those first blissful moments on waking, she forgot all about the previous day, and lay in cushioned comfort as the new light of morning crept past the half-drawn curtains. When her memory returned, it was like a physical blow, and she doubled over where she lay, clutching her knees to her chest. She meant to have one more talk with Rowan—she meant, in fact, to have as many as it took, despite the Seelie prince's advice—only this time she would be entirely calm and rational, and would reason her brother into agreeing with her.

That was her mistake, she thought. She had tried to appeal to him through emotion, and with what must sound to him like an insulting doubt in his abilities. Her new tack would be actually to appeal to his loyalty to the Fairy Queen. You want to serve her, Meg would argue. You want her side to win. But don't you see it would be ever so much better for the Seelie Court to pick someone with a bit more…experience? It will help the queen if you let someone else fight in your stead. Perhaps that tactic would succeed where a sisterly concern for his safety had failed.

But she was forestalled by the entrance of one of the housemaids, Rosemarie, who came with tea, and water for washing. She threw open the curtains and tidied the room a bit as Meg got dressed behind a screen. Meg had hoped to find Rowan before the others gathered for breakfast, but Rosemarie was of a mind to gossip.

She chatted blithely about an otter who was stealing chickens, a cousin with the mumps, and her aunt's rheumatism until Meg lost interest. It got a bit more intriguing when she turned to the exploits of Jack, who, it seemed, had been on the verge of being fired for four years.

“Never does a lick of work, and always after the lasses. If you ask me, Jack's days are really numbered now, or will be as soon as the lady finds out he's been pestering poor Lemman. Not that he'll get anything from her—he just likes to tease. Still, I think it mighty unkind, tormenting the poor wee beastie. 'E says she don't care, but I don't rightly know about that. She never talks, see, or even looks at you much. We don't bother her. She works the dairy, and I tell you, the coos never gave more milk than under her care. But she pays you no more mind than a cat at its cream.”

“Can't she talk at all?” Meg asked, coming out from behind the screen.

“Ah, she used to. Used to sing something fine, too, though it were always unhappy songs. Least, they sounded mournful. She sang 'em in another tongue, and I never could make 'em out. That was before her man died. I never will know how such an ill-favored lout as Gus Leatherman got the hand of a girl like that. Have you seen her? She's a pretty little thing, the sort you don't see very often. Makes you look again, she does. Reckon I wouldn't like her much if she had more to say for herself,” Rosemarie added with a laugh. “But I do feel sorry for her. Her man, he was caught in the mill wheel and drowned, 'bout three months after he brought her here. The Lady kept her on. Guess she had no place to go. If you see that Jack heading toward the dairy, you tell him to go…well, go do something. You can do that, you know, being the Lady's kin.

“Oh, I almost forgot, the Lady wants to see you this morning. Says you've done some exploring on your own, but there's a tuthree things she'd like to show you. Graveyard, likely. All your kin are buried here, going back hundreds of years. Quite a thing to think about, isn't it? I never heard of my own kin farther back than my grandmother, and I couldn't tell you where their bones lie for the very life of me. Well, go along to breakfast, and the lady will find you.”

Phyllida joined them at their meal, and gathered up the Morgans. Finn and Dickie were told they were welcome, too, but Phyllida made it seem that it wouldn't be much fun, even for those who were obligated to go. “Moldering old gravestones,” she said offhandedly, giving the others a perfect opportunity to decline. Dickie wanted to spend as little time in the pollen-y outdoors as possible, and was really eager to submerge himself under the dusty leaves of knowledge. Finn wanted to consult with Dickie on his progress before putting some of his theories to the test himself.

The Morgans followed Phyllida, and the excursion was really better than they expected. The graveyard, at the south side of the Rookery, was an extensive hilly patch full of odd monuments and crouching, leering gargoyles. Nearly every stone had a story attached to it—some maudlin, like that of Abigail May, who died in 1765. A graying statue of a dog lay on her sunken gravestone, looking mournfully at the inscription. “She had a little terrier dog she loved. A passing tinker stole it, and she followed him on foot all the way to London to get it back. She never did find him, but the story goes she came upon another dog that looked just like him near Blackfriars, and scooped him up even though he growled and bit her. She was that sure it was her own Bonnie Boy. Dragged him all the way home; then they both died of rabies. Funny thing is, her own dog showed up after that, and he never would leave her grave. Sat there five years. They made a little hut for him, for the winter, but even in the worst weather he wouldn't leave. Always did his business on Samuel Greave's monument, which was fitting, because he was a notorious dog-hater.”

Some plots held the remains of warriors, with strange or stirring tales. “This one is my great-great-grandfather Captain Horatio Berkeley, who sailed with Admiral Nelson. He was a teetotaler—a very unusual thing in our family—and every time he got his daily portion of brandy while aboardship (he was an officer, you see—the others only got grog), he stowed it away in a cask. He thought how nice it would be to surprise his fellow officers with all his saved brandy if the war lasted and provisions ran low. But then Admiral Nelson was shot and killed, and they were weeks from home. Well, he was a hero and a lord, and couldn't get a burial at sea like an ordinary sailor. All the same, he'd start to get pretty rank if they held him until he could be returned to the bosom of his family. Then Captain Berkeley had the marvelous idea of pickling the admiral in his conserved brandy. They folded him double and shoved him in the cask, and when he came out weeks later, he looked as fine as he did in life, if somewhat pruned.”

She went from grave to grave, telling her tales, and the children forgot their preoccupation with fairies under this fascinating tutelage. They didn't realize it, but this was one of the oddest family graveyards in England, perhaps in the world. In most such yards, a single name predominates. A man founds the dynasty, and passes it on to his son. The line, the name, the property, and the titles run through the masculine descendants. The new blood in the family is all feminine. But in this strange family, tradition stipulated that all inheritance pass along the female line. Only a woman could be Guardian of the Green Hill, Gladysmere, and surrounding lands. And so, with each generation, a new name was brought into the family, as the daughters, heirs of great responsibility, took husbands to keep the line strong. There had been a caretaker or two through the ages who never wed, but even this was no obstacle to succession.

Phyllida Ash led them next to a hollow somewhat beyond the graveyard where grew nine elegant trees that looked like inverted hearts on slender trunks. Each leaf was a spearpoint. “These are your ash trees. Or, rather, the family ash trees,” she said, walking up to one of the larger trees and patting its grooved bark.

“Oh, you mean because of your name?” Silly asked.

“No, dear, that's just a coincidence. The ash tree has long been a symbol of life, like Yggdrasil, the Norse world tree, which held all of creation in its roots and boughs. These trees don't go quite that far—they only hold the life of one person. When a member of our family is born, an ash tree is planted. Those who marry into the family get a tree somewhat later. This one is mine, more than eighty years old. This is Bran's, only a little older, because of course he didn't get an ash of his own until he married my mother. And here is Lysander's, which has grown nearly as tall as mine, though it was planted twenty years later. A very vigorous tree, his. This is your mother's—let me see, thirty-seven, no, thirty-eight years old—and your father's, just a year older than Rowan's.”

The Morgan children saw four trees in a row—two quite robust, nearly the same height for Rowan and Meg, one somewhat smaller beside them for Silly, and at the end a healthy little sapling no more than four feet tall, James's tree.

“You planted trees for us, even though you never met us? Even though you might
never
have met us?” Meg was touched.

“Every member of the family—that I know about—gets a tree. And who's to say I didn't know you'd be coming, eventually?” She tapped the side of her nose in a gesture the Morgans had not seen before.

“But shouldn't there be more?” Meg asked. “Why aren't there trees stretching back as far as the gravestones?”

“The trees are each bound to a person's life. When he or she dies, the tree is cut down. Generally used to make the casket, though not always, and the roots are dried and put on a bonfire after the funeral. Many, many trees have grown here, and many have fallen.”

“If the trees are connected to a person's life, what happens if the tree dies before the person?”

Phyllida looked at Meg sharply, but then said, “Why, I don't believe it's ever happened. Ashes are hardy trees, and of course we take care to keep them safe from rabbits and such when they're young. I doubt there are better-cared-for trees in the county than these. Sometimes the trees are omens, and wilt and droop when their person's death is near. It is said that saving the tree can save the person. But you certainly wouldn't want any harm to come to your ash tree.” She gave a delicate shudder.

“Why plant the tree in the first place, if it would be so bad if it dies?”

“People with ash trees tend to live longer, and fall ill less. Trees are strong, and they don't suffer the same way humans do. They can withstand a great deal. It is sometimes helpful to have a part of your life bound up in something so solid, so enduring. It's a very old magic, and generally not spoken of, but, given who you are, I suppose there's no reason to keep it from you. It is said that if you hover at the very gates of death, if all hope is gone, your life can be saved by your ash tree. The tree is hewn, split straight down the middle, and you are passed through the cleft. Then the tree is bound up, and if it heals, and lives, why, so do you. But splitting a tree nearly always kills it. And what if you were wrong, and the person wasn't really about to die? Well, they'd die for sure once their ash was killed. So it could really only be done when there was no other hope.”

Meg wasn't sure she liked all this. Her life bound to a tree she hadn't even known about until this moment? Rowan's life held captive in an egg? Was it in the egg, and the ash, too? How could life be separable from the person it belonged to? It had never occurred to her that our lives may not be entirely our own.

Phyllida took them next to the outbuildings: a stable that housed two lazy hunters, four pied carriage horses, a quiet saddle horse, and a cream-colored pony named Persephone; a henhouse that supplied the estate with eggs, though they bought their roasting chickens from somewhere else; a low red building that held tools, fertilizer, and assorted useful flotsam; and the dairy and cowshed, Lemman's domain.

The Rookery cows led a very comfortable life, rising late and breakfasting on succulent grasses and grains before offering up their milk, and then heading out, sometime around noon, to a nearby field to do a little grazing and chew their cud. Each of the twenty or so cows had her own stall with a low swinging gate, but each cow also knew how to open that gate, and when left to her own devices sometimes bunked with a friend or took a midnight stroll around the shed. The cows could also unlatch the main gate to the dairy, which the Ashes thought a good precaution in case there was ever a fire, but the conscientious cows never strayed when they weren't supposed to. Lemman, their caretaker, had an almost magical control over the beasts, and they always did her bidding. She slept in a loft inside the dairy, and rarely left its confines except to accompany the cows on their daily pilgrimage. When the children met her, she was milking the last of her charges, a shaggy red Highland cow.

I say “met,” but though Phyllida offered an introduction, Lemman never looked up from her chore or offered any indication that she was aware of the Morgans. The steady sound of milk hitting the pail did not falter, and her cheek did not move from the cow's side. The cows, however, seemed quite interested in the newcomers, and lowed welcomes as they stretched their necks for a closer look. At Phyllida's urging, the children stepped hesitantly forth to pet them. It's more intimidating than you might think to make overtures to a cow. If you're not used to them, they seem awfully big. But these were kind cows, and very gentle, and though they crowded close to the Morgans they were careful about where they put their hooves and moved in an orderly fashion, each yielding her place to another when she had had a good sniff and gotten her ears rubbed. They were all the colors cows come in, some pure white, others brown, some calico or patchwork. One was brindled, one blue-ticked, and one, the smallest, was a pale dun that was almost yellow. Her left horn turned downward, her right one up, and something about her expression made her seem particularly intelligent. On some secret cue, she moved to the door and waited at the boundary, while the other cows lined up behind her.