Under the Green Hill (22 page)

“Bran…oh, Bran!” She could say no more.

“Don't hesitate, girl! Don't think about it. Draw and shoot. There is no other way!” His armored chest was laid bare, and the Hunter's Bow quivered in her hand.

She steeled herself. “I won't kill you. And if you won't kill me, then there's nothing they can do.” She glanced down to the battlefield at the foot of the hill, but she could see no signs of life. “We'll just go down there and tell them. No one will die this year.” It seemed perfectly reasonable to her. After all, the fairies could not force them to do battle—despite what she had once believed.

But Bran, to her amazement, only laughed grimly. “You think to change the order of things? You think the sacrifice will not be made merely because you say so? Even if we lay down our weapons now, one of us will die at dawn. My life is theirs, as is yours. At dawn, one of the eggs that hold our lives will be crushed.” (But my life isn't in an egg, Meg thought. Only yours and Rowan's. What will that mean in the end?) “It will be mine, for your will to live is strong. And then I will die a death more horrible than any your arrow can inflict. Kill me, Meg. Better to be slain cleanly by a friend than to have my life ripped away from me, my body torn apart by the rabble. I am not meant to see the dawn. Do me the kindness of letting me die as I wish, cut down by the Hunter's Bow. It will be an easy death.”

Meg, stunned by his words, backed up a pace. “I won't…I can't! I'll tell Gul…I mean the Seelie prince. He'll understand.”

“Do you think they care for you, Meg Morgan? Or for me? We are nothing to them. We live for an instant in a brilliant flash, then fade away. What is that to one who will live as long as the earth itself? The war to them is only another bacchanal; they have no understanding of what it means to end a life, to fall at the hands of another. They ape our lives and our deaths down there, but it is no more than mummery. Come tomorrow, they'll all be the same as ever.”

“But…I saw them fighting. I saw fairies being killed.”

“You saw what they wanted you to see—as we all do. In the fairy glamour, you saw a war, you saw Seelie and Host kill each other. But it's no more real than a dream, Meg. No more real than…than the years I spent under the Green Hill. You and I are the only real things here. And soon it will only be you. There is no other way, child.” His eyes were suddenly kind and pitying.

“It should have been your brother. You should have been spared this. But it does not matter now. Do what you must, Meg Morgan, and do it quickly.”

“I won't!”

“One of us must die this night! Do it!”

“No!”

“Then I will give you no choice,” he whispered, and with a wild war-cry swung his weapon once around his head and then charged at Meg, ax poised to lop off her head.

Her eyes were closed when she loosed the arrow, but her aim was true. She opened her lashes to a brilliant dawn, not knowing if she'd stood on the Green Hill a minute or a year. Before her lay Bran, pierced through the chest by a white-fletched arrow, his arms splayed wide, the fell ax on the grass near his lifeless hand. A black cloud rose from the direction of the Rookery, grim against the golden sky. The rooks were coming to the battleground.

Six lords of the Seelie Court bore Bran's body home. The Seelie prince himself carried the unconscious Meg in his arms and laid her in her bed. She'd collapsed as the first crows settled on the fairy remains strewn at the foot of the hill.

Had she been awake, though, she would have seen a strange sight. Just a few minutes after dawn, as the survivors of the Midsummer War were regrouping, the corpses began to stir. Decapitated bodies groped the ground blindly in search of their missing heads. Fairies got into heated arguments about whose severed limbs were whose, and accused others of trying to get better arms and legs than they'd started out with. When body parts and owners were reunited, they snapped seamlessly back into place and worked as though they had never been sundered. Soon not even a bruise or a bent leaf on the ground indicated that there had been a fierce battle the night before. Bran was right. However terrible the war had seemed, it was in truth no more than a pantomime, a mockery of human life and death. The dead fairies were revivified, the injured healed, and all was exactly as it was before. Except for Bran.

According to the custom of the countryside, they laid Bran on the dinner table, for in most farmer and shepherd households that (or the marriage bed) is the only furnishing stately enough to display a body. The fairies left them, and Phyllida and Lysander stripped Bran of his armor. With gentle hands, as though any roughness could hurt him, any pain reach him, his daughter worked the arrow free and bathed the wound. When the blood was wiped away, there was scarcely a mark, only a narrow slit on his left breast. It did not seem possible to Phyllida that so small a wound could cause the demise of a man as great as Bran. Even on the endless banqueting table, he seemed imposing. Even in death, there was grandeur to his body, power in limbs now pale. Her father, her mountain! He had been gone from her life those many years, and she'd not lost hope. But what hope was left to her now? She bent her head to his chest, and wept for a father twice lost to her.

Upstairs, Meg was just coming around. At any other time, fainting would have been a matter for harshest ridicule. Now Silly was sympathetic and uncharacteristically tender with her sister. She petted her head and held her hand until Meg sat up and looked around. Silly expected her to burst into tears—and wouldn't have blamed her. But though Meg's face was ghastly, she did not weep. She felt drained and empty, too weary for words. If any emotion remained in her now it was anger—with possibly just a little relief when she remembered that Rowan's life had been preserved.

“Where is Rowan?” she asked.

“In his room,” Silly said. “Asleep, or something like it. I shook him, but he wouldn't wake up.”

“Dreaming of his victory…,” Meg murmured, then, “Dickie! Oh…he…”

“Dickie's downstairs. His clothes are a mess, and he looks a little smug, but he's fine other than that. What happened to him?”

Meg told her the story as far as she knew it, from finding Lemman's otter pelt to Dickie's heroism. Silly was fascinated by the horrible Nuckelavee and utterly overcome by the thought of Dickie's rash bravery. “And to think I've been making fun of him all this time, laughing at his sneezing and wheezing.” And she made a noble vow never to think badly of anyone again…a resolution she managed to keep exactly one day.

“Did they bring Bran back here?” Meg asked.

“Yes. He's downstairs.”

She swung her legs out of bed. “I'm going down to see him.” Silly caught her arm as she was leaving. “Don't be too hard on yourself, Meggie. You did what you had to do.”

“Did I? That doesn't make it any better.”

Meg crept quietly into the room where Phyllida was still bent over Bran's body. I did that, a little voice chastised her. That terrible thing…I did that. But he would have killed me. No, he wouldn't have. But I killed him. The guilt of a child obeying its elders or a soldier following orders is particularly poignant.

Meg made a little sound, and Phyllida turned, flinching like a frightened animal. How can I look at her and not hate her? Phyllida thought. And yet how can I look at her and not thank the powers that she's alive? Meg stood at her side, mourner and victor, and looked down at the lifeless man, wondering, as all do when a vital thing grows still, whether it was not some illusion. Oh, if only it were another fairy glamour, Meg thought.

“I wonder…,” Phyllida began softly, but trailed off.

“What do you wonder?” Meg asked.

Phyllida said, as if talking to herself, “I wonder if it would have been best to leave him where he was. He was happy under the Green Hill. His return brought happiness only to me. He found none himself.”

She fell silent, and after a time, unbidden, Meg told her the day's tale. Phyllida was momentarily roused from her sorrow when she heard of Lemman's restoration to fairyhood. “Bewitched the boy, did she?” Phyllida said with the barest glimmer of a smile. “And now he dreams that his deed is done. Has she gone? I'd like to see her, to wish her well. But no doubt she's eager to quit this place.” She dabbed at her eyes with a handkerchief embroidered with thistle heads, and pulled herself away from Bran's body with some effort. By force of will, she became at once practical and businesslike. She was the Lady of the Rookery, the Guardian, and she had duties to do.

“Get Silly and James, and Rowan if you can rouse him, and come to the ash grove. We must cut down Bran's ash tree.”

 

Rowan slept on, a faint smile on his face, and though Meg was somewhat alarmed that she couldn't wake him, he seemed otherwise healthy. Part of Lemman's glamour, Meg thought, and assumed it would wear off eventually. She gathered Silly and James, and on the way found Dickie. Since he'd played such a vital part in the previous night, she asked him to come along.

“How did you get away from the Nuckelavee?” Silly asked him. “It sounds terrible.”

But Dickie shrugged it off as if it were no great matter. “Nothing's so bad if you know what its weaknesses are. A Nuckelavee can't cross freshwater, 'specially if it flows south. They come from the ocean, you know. This one must have taken quite a circuitous route to get here without crossing any. Anyway, I just ran until I came to the stream—which happens to flow south at that point—and then thumbed my nose at him from the other side. My friend Tim Tom was there. He's a Urisk. He doesn't look like much, but the Nuckelavee seemed to be afraid of him. Tim Tom sprang across the stream, and the Nuckelavee galloped away. Nothing to worry about, really.” Still, he basked under Silly's admiring gaze.

They met Phyllida on the lawn by the ash grove, and stood with her until Lysander strode from the shed with an ax that reminded Meg unpleasantly of the past night. But this one was heftier—a woodsman's ax, with a thicker, duller head and a wooden haft worn smooth in the shape of Lysander's hands, which were nearly as strong at eighty-six as they had been at twenty. He presented himself before Bran's ash tree as though it were a person, taking off his hat and bowing.

“Bran is felled!” he called. Did the mighty tree tremble, or was it only the morning breeze that made its limbs quake? “Bran is hewn! Bran is dead!” And he raised his ax to smite the tree that was Bran's partner, that held a piece of his life.

But the ax never fell. Even in the bright morning sunshine, a new radiance was seen, pale gold and glowing as it came from the forest. Lemman walked like a wood goddess, a serene divinity come to ease their woe. For there was no doubt in the minds of those who saw her that any pain would be lessened, any trouble made lighter, just by her presence. Lysander froze at the sight of her.

“Stay your hand,” she said. There was a gentle smile on her lips, as though she had an amusing secret she thought she might share. “Would you deny Bran his last chance at life?”

Phyllida stepped forward. “Bran was killed at the Midsummer War, slain by the Hunter's Bow. His body lies within the Rookery.”

Lemman looked at Phyllida with mingled kindness and pity. “Ah, Phyllida! In all your years as the Guardian, haven't you learned that things are not always quite as they seem?”

“But he's dead, Lemman! He's been dead for hours. I tell you, he lies in the Rookery, and now his ash must be cut down.” She felt as though Lemman was mocking her.

“But how can he be dead, good Guardian, if the egg that holds his life is yet unbroken?”

“That cannot be,” Phyllida insisted. “It was broken at dawn, pushed from the nest by the bird that hatched from the other egg.”

Lemman laughed, and the sound filled Meg with unlooked-for hope. “The two courts are in a tizzy, running mad through the woods!” Lemman said. “Never has such a thing happened. This child has stirred things up to no end, and now the cauldron bubbles over.” She blessed Meg with a smile. “The white-feathered life-egg keeper has fled the country in disgrace.”

“What do you mean?” Phyllida asked, knowing, but unwilling to let false hope tear at her heart.

“The two life-eggs can't be found!” Lemman cried, joyous at the joke. “The keeper's friend Micawber swears they were fine the day before the Midsummer War. The White-Handed Birch Lady says nothing, though I think she must have been asleep. Someone made off with the eggs, and the ritual cannot be completed. Though his body lies dead, Bran's life is held…somewhere. Who can say where? If his body and his life can be united, then it must be that Bran will live again. Even the laws of the fairies must bend to the laws of nature. He is not really dead as long as his life is preserved in the egg.”

“Rowan's life is in an egg, too,” Meg said. “When I took his place, it happened so fast—weren't they supposed to put
my
life in an egg? What's to become of Rowan now?”

At this, the faintest line appeared on Lemman's brow. “A life-egg only hatches when one wins the Midsummer War—then the bird flies back to the body, and the person is whole again. Now both eggs are in limbo. If Rowan's is broken before it is returned to him, he will die.”

Meg stifled a cry in her hand. Would it come to this, that, despite the sacrifices, she would lose them both? “Where could they be? Who would take them?”

“Even the fairies do not know, though they search the woods now. The only thing certain is that Rowan's egg is yet whole, for he lives, though he sleeps between life and death. The charm I laid on him is passed, and now a greater spell holds him. His egg at least must be found, lest two are sacrificed in the Midsummer War.”

“We'll find both of them,” Phyllida said resolutely. All traces of tears were gone. She was a woman of action again. Bran was not dead, any more than when he'd lived under the Green Hill. For the moment he was out of her reach, but now that she knew there was a chance to win him back, no force on earth could stop her.

Let the eggs be discovered! Meg thought desperately. Let my terrible deed be undone!

“How can we find them?” Luck had brought her Lemman's otter pelt, but who could find two tiny eggs in all the world?

“The fairies search the forest,” Phyllida said. “If they get the egg first, won't they…?” She looked to Lemman.

“Yes. According to the rites of the centuries, they will break Bran's egg, and he will pass forever into unknown places. But Rowan's egg they will return, for his life is no longer forfeit.”

“Will you help us, Lemman?” Phyllida asked, beseeching.

“What I can do, will be done,” Lemman said. “In return for the kindness you have shown me in my captivity. But should my people find the eggs first, it will be as I have said. So it has always been.”

“I'm sick of things being the way they've always been!” Meg shouted suddenly, and glared fiercely at Lemman, as representative of all her folk. Meg stormed off to the house. What could she do? How could she find them where all the fairies had thus far failed?

As she went through the Rookery, she slammed as many doors as she could. This made her feel a lot better for a little while. She had to do something to feel as though she was helping, but she really had no idea where to begin. She was on the verge of frustrated tears again when Finn, roused by the commotion, poked his head around the corner.

“'Sup, Meg? Skin yer knee? Didn't get invited to the fairy ball?” But she shot him a look of such ferocity that he sobered and asked her, with more sincerity than he generally displayed, what ailed her. Another time, she might have been softened by any genuine interest from Finn, but on that day she snapped at him.

“Get out of my way! I'm looking for something!” She tried to shove past him—though there was really no more reason to look in that room than any other—but he blocked her path.

“What are you looking for?” Anything she was that upset about was bound to be good.

“None of your business! Shove off!” Still he stood in her way, and asked her again.

She had enough self-control not to hit him. When she had tried twice more to sidestep him and failed, she finally said, just to get rid of him, “Two eggs. I'm looking for two eggs, okay? Now, get out of my way!” Here she did give in to some violence and pushed him, then ran past him into the downstairs library, where she hastily scanned every shelf without hope. She was about to run to the next room—she'd likely have searched every room in the Rookery until she collapsed from nervous exhaustion—but, once again, Finn barred her path.

“Two eggs?” he asked, and there was something in his voice, a certain slyness to his face, that brought her up short.

“What do you know?” she demanded, her body taut and her little face tense.

“Oh…well…there's eggs in the kitchen, and eggs in the henhouse….”

“Finn!”

“Making an omelet? Soufflé?”

“Finn, please! Do you know where the eggs are? One's speckled brown, and the other's…Oh, I don't know what the other one looks like, but they were out in Gladysmere Woods, in…in a birch tree, I think. Oh, Finn, if you know, you have to tell me. Rowan's life depends on it. And Bran…he…he's…”