The cloth was so cold against her skin it made her hop and gasp.
She had just tied the belt when she heard a meow at the window. There stood Tom, pressing against the glass, looking annoyed to be out in the snow.
Down at the village he had seemed dangerous. But now he was a cold old cat, and she couldn’t resist letting him in. When she raised the sash, the burst of freezing air that engulfed her made her squeal.
“Come in here, you! Hurry up!”
The cat rushed past her and in an instant was curled up in front of the fireplace.
“You’re a weird one, kitty-cat. How’d you get out here in the first place? Did you follow me?”
The cat stared at her. She wanted to stroke him but thought better of it.
“If you ever want a kiss,” she said softly, “you know who loves you.” She puckered up and went “mmmmm,” but the cool seriousness of the cat’s gaze silenced her.
This was unexpected. Could an animal see into a human sou!?
Nervously she returned to her preparations. She had to break the ice on her pitcher to wash. The soap was homemade and smelled powerfully of peppermint. It smelled, as a matter of fact, very much like Constance Collier, like Ivy, like Robin. It smelled like this house. And it wasn’t only mint, was it? There was in it a hint of some more exotic herb.
After her wash she dragged on her muddy shoes and wished she had some heavier ones, and also a good jacket or sweater.
And she wished Tom would stop that staring! Could there be laughter in a cat’s eyes? Either he loved her or he disdained her. Or worse, both. Even though she was dressed, she still felt naked.
It took the faint tapping of flakes at her window to draw her mind away from him. October 19 and already it was snowing. If such weather held, this was going to be a long, cold winter. She peered through the hazy glass. What magic she saw, me world transformed to philosophical purity, silent but for the hiss of snow against snow and the rattling of bare limbs.
As the sky lightened she saw that the snow had touched me autumn colors of the trees with white. The perfection of the colors together, the pillowy razor of white, the staring reds, the oranges and browns, went to the center of her, for the scene the snow had created was truly a wonder of nature.
When Constance came along, swathed in a huge woolen robe, nothing but a face in the dark folds, Mandy was still motionless before the window. “I know,” Constance said, touching her shoulder with long, light ringers. “You’ll need the clothes we got you. Why didn’t Ivy—” She went to the door. “Ivy?”
Louder: “Ivy!”
From downstairs: “I’m in the kitchen, Connie.”
“We need Amanda’s warm things. She’s practically naked, the poor girl.” She turned around. “Ivy’s quite new to big-house responsibilities. But she has a good heart. A very good heart.”
Her footsteps sounded on the stairs. A few moments later she appeared with another stack of clothes topped by a pair of stout hiking boots. “I’m sorry, Mandy. I completely forgot the rest—the important stuff, too. I think it’s too cold for me today.” She looked down at Mandy’s feet. “What’s your shoe size?”
“Seven and a half.”
“Hiking boots have to be a little bigger to make room for the socks. I think I guessed right, though.”
“I’m glad you thought of them at all.”
“You need good shoes. You must learn every inch of this estate as if it were your own,” Constance said.
There was a beautiful hand-knit wool sweater of rich, iridescent brown, and beneath it something huge and dark and gray. Mandy put on the sweater and unfolded the mysterious garment.
It was a hooded, ankle-length cloak made of the tightest homespun she had ever seen. Down the front were monogrammed a five-pointed star, a triangle, a sickle moon, and two other, more obscure symbols.
It was tied about the neck with a red silk ribbon.
“This is wonderful.”
“You like it?”
She swept it across her shoulders and tied the ribbon. Ivy raised the hood. The cloak was heavy and warm and altogether magnificent. “Oh, Constance, I love it. Really love it!”
“It took half a year to make. The weavers started in April, We made it just for you.”
Mandy looked at her. What she had just said didn’t make sense.
“I’ve been watching you ever since you were a girl,”
Constance added. “And when I saw your work in Charles Bell’s book, I knew it was time for you to come to me.” She smiled. “Change your domes and come down to breakfast. We’re wasting time.”
The table, when Mandy arrived, was spread with a redchecked oilcloth. A fire roared in the huge old stove and the windows ran with condensation. Mandy sat down to a plate of pancakes and syrup. There was a side dish of blackberries and a pitcher of fresh cream. Tea of an herb unknown to her completed the meal. “Everything you’re eating came from this estate. It can feed you four seasons of the year. And if you like homespun it can clothe you, too.”
“The village—”
“It’s an experiment. The villagers are trying to live really close to the land. Everything at the village comes from the surrounding fields and forests. The village lives by the breath of the earth, which is the weather, and the heartbeat of the earth, which is the seasons. And they live close to one another, too, unled except by the necessities that the land imposes.”
“Who are they, Constance? Are they witches, like we thought in the town?”
“Friends. Most of them are from Maywell. Some from farther away. They’re people who want to be reinitiated into personal contact with the earth. The village is an effort to balance old ways with new.” She smiled. “Because we have drifted so far from our relationship with the planet, many people have a tremendous need to rediscover their inner love for her. That’s what the village is about. It is only me first of its kind, I hope and trust.”
Tom came into the room. He stood beside Constance’s chair, looking up at her.
Mandy dug into her pancakes. They were sour and heavy and delicious, made of a rough-ground flour and raised by their own rot, with neither baking powder nor yeast added. With one of those swift, amazing leaps of his, Tom jumped onto the top of Constance’s head. Mandy was so startled she all but threw her fork. But Constance hardly seemed to notice the creature that had draped itself over her scalp like some kind of lunatic far hat with eyes.
The eyes sought Mandy. Didn’t he ever stop staring?
“Amanda, today I want you to begin your work. To try to do something very special and very difficult.”
Constance had leaned forward. Her tone was serious. But she looked—well—fantastically odd with the cat on her head.
“I want you to take your sketchbook and go out onto Stone Mountain and find the Leannan Sidhe and draw a picture other.”
Mandy remembered the statue in the maze. “The Fairy Queen—do you mean mere’s a statue of her up there, too?”
“Go across the hummocks to the foot of Stone Mountain. You’ll find a path starting at a grove of birch.
Just a track. It’ll be tricky to negotiate. Climb the mountain until you come to a big rowan bush. Really huge. Do you know what rowan looks like?”
Tom crawled down her shoulder and disappeared under the table.
“To me a bush is a bush, Constance. I have no idea.”
“Look for smooth gray bark, red-orange leaves, and clumps of red berries. You really can’t miss it. It’s the only one like it on the mountain. Just beyond it you’ll find a large round stone mat’s got figures etched into it. But they’re weathered, so you won’t be able to make them out. You sit yourself down on that stone. Sooner or later fairy will come. The Queen is instantly recognizable.”
Surely her leg was being pulled. “You mean—real fairies?”
“I mean real fairies. They’re about three feet tall, very broad-shouldered the men, and they’ll be wearing their whites because of the snow. White breech
es and tunics, mottled white caps. And she will be in white, too. A white gown of silken lace. She’s blond, and she’ll have rowan in her hair. You’ll see.”
She was so serious about this that Mandy became embarrassed. Constance Collier must be senile. “You see these fairies?”
“My dear, fairy are quite commonplace in the Peconic Mountains. They live all through this end of Jersey and Pennsylvania. And they are not tinkerbelles and tom-tits, either, they are very real. Don’t look for pixies, look for small, solid beings who are very real. They are as much a part of the planet as people and trees and cats. Much more man we. They’re a Paleolithic survival, dear. The fairy were exterminated in western Europe during the Middle Ages because they’re pagans. They follow the Goddess. This country is so big the fairy never got discovered. Even to this day there are parts of Stone Mountain that man hasn’t explored. And all a fairy needs to hide is a bush not much bigger than a pillow.”
Mandy felt cut adrift from reality. This woman was rational and sane and serious.
“They built the burial mound you drove past coming here. And the hummocks out in the back pasture—those are the remains of a fairy city built before the Iroquois conquered this valley.” She tossed her head. “The same families that built those houses have been up there on roe mountain for thousands of years, waiting for the day when they can come down and reclaim their city.”
“What are they—I mean—what about language? Do they speak English? What should I say? And what if she wants money to sit for me? Tell me what to do.”
“Show the Queen respect. Bear in mind that we have been on this land three hundred years, and the Indians two thousand years. The fairy have been here since before the ice. Think of that. A hundred thousand years, maybe longer. You are on their land, we all are. Their Queen is the highest and most sacred being you will ever see in your life.” She paused. “Of course they may not show her, they’re unpredictable that way.”
As she had spoken, Constance Collier’s voice had rolled through the room, commanding, powerful, full of strength and assurance. It was the opposite of senile. This was the very voice of wisdom, and in spite of their incredible nature, Mandy found herself forced to listen to Constance’s words.
“Time is short, girl. Go your way. And don’t make a fool of yourself by getting lost.”
Ivy shrieked and jumped back from the table.
For an instant Mandy thought she was reacting to the wild things Constance was saying, but then Tom’s head appeared from under the tablecloth.
“I’m sorry! He stuck his nose between my legs!”
“Honestly, Ivy. You’re awfully edgy this morning.”
“His nose is cold.”
“You know to keep your legs crossed when he’s around.” She looked at Mandy. “Watch out for him.
He can be a tricky devil.”
Ivy moved away from the table. With a glance at her watch Constance told Mandy to get started.
“But I have no idea what to do!”
“I gave you your instructions. I want you to fall back on your own ingenuity. Amanda, darling, this is only the second test, and it’s not the hardest. Please get going.”
“Now, wait a minute. What test? You must be some sort of a lunatic if you think I’m going to go traipsing around snow-covered mountains looking for fairies! I was brought here to illustrate a children’s book. That I’m willing to do.” And that was that—
“I can’t tell you what I’m offering you, Amanda.” She looked at the cat, who was now sitting on the drainboard licking the lip of the hand pump at the sink. “If I did he wouldn’t like it.”
“The cat wouldn’t like it?”
She nodded. “Something very odd might happen. You’d be surprised at what he can do.”
He continued licking the drips off the pump.
“I don’t mind if you’re eccentric. In fact, I’m flattered that you trust me enough to be yourself with me.”
“Amanda, this is not senility or eccentricity. What’s more, it’s terribly important.” Her voice was pleading now. “You must do it. More is at stake than you can possibly know.”
“What? What’s at stake? I came here to illustrate—”
“Hush! Forget that book. It was just a pretext to get you here.” She reached across the table, grabbed Mandy’s collar with trembling fingers. “You must trust me, just for a little while. Amanda, I’d rather kill myself than lie to you. Please trust me.”
Tears appeared at the edges of Constance’s eyes. Mandy reached up and took the old woman’s hands in her own. “I can do with a hike. I’m sure I’ll be fine.”
She simply could not turn down such a heartfelt appeal. The only thing to do was just open her mind and let things happen. Whatever she found on the mountain, she found.
If there really were fairies—well, what fun. She got up, drew her cloak around her, and went out. The door slammed behind her. She pulled up her hood against the gusts of Snow. The flakes were small and very hard, and they rattled against the thick wool. Mandy set out, her boots crunching the powdery half-inch thickness that crusted the ground, her face stinging in the fresh wind off the mountain. The clouds were low and gray; the sun was a smear in the east. As she walked along, Mandy’s heart thrilled.
She was so gay she thought to sing. Whatever happened on Stone Mountain, it was going to be highest adventure.
Even if she was really intended to enlist her imagination and draw the most wonderful Fairy Queen ever created.
She went down past the maze and through the herb garden.
Beyond the garden the land sloped farther down, then rose abruptly up the side of the first of the hummocks. When she reached the top she saw a group of men far off to the south working on her car with ropes and wooden pulleys. They wore deep brown homespun, and she could just catch the edges of a work song, the rhythm of the chant but not the words. The tone of their voices fairly lilted. The joy in them, open and unrestrained, carried clearly across the air.
Down the hummock she scrambled, trying to avoid getting her cloak caught in the bushes at its base.
“Amanda!”
A male voice. “Who’s that?”
A bush trembled. Instinctively Mandy backed away. There had been something harsh about that call, something that made her cautious.
A face, youthful. Satyr-like, appeared in the shrubs. With a great shudder of snow Robin stood up. He came close to her. “Where are you going?” he asked. He stood directly in front of her, dressed in a long wool cape, wool trousers, and a heavy coat belted at the waist. “You’re going to the rowan, aren’t you?”
Mandy said nothing.
“You know how the fairies keep themselves such a deep secret? If somebody sees them they don’t like, that person never comes back.”
Still Mandy said nothing. Robin seized her and kissed her with cold lips. “I love you!”
He was still a boy, and the road between seventeen and twenty-three is a long one. It was years since she had heard “I love you” uttered with such enthusiasm. “Thank you,” she said. How pale and controlled by comparison.
“Connie didn’t tell you anything about how to act, did she? About how to survive.”
“I didn’t get the impression they were dangerous.”
“Oh, but they are. They’re very dangerous. They have the fairy whisper. Nobody knows what it is, because it kills instantly. And they have tiny arrows made of splinters. The poison on the arrows gives you a heart attack, and no doctor can ever tell that you were poisoned. Hunters that die in the woods of cardiac arrest—half of them paid with their lives for seeing fairy.”
“Constance never even hinted at danger.”
“But there is! You’re being tested. Constance thinks you’re the Maiden, but they can’t be sure until the Leannan looks into your heart. She has all the fairy knowledge. She’ll read you like a chalkboard and either kill you or accept you. It’s all the same to the Leannan.”
“You’re telling me I coul
d be killed?”
“If you aren’t just exactly who you’re supposed to be, the fairy can’t let you go. Surely you can see that.
They don’t want civilization meddling in their affairs. Anthropologists after them, for heaven’s sake. They saw what happened to the Indians, and they know that all their own kind in Europe were exterminated.
They’re very defensive, the fairy.”
Mandy began to entertain the notion of turning back. “Can you answer me one question?”
“Probably not.”
“Why me? Why am I being put through this—initiation or whatever it is.”
“You mean you don’t even know that? Constance is really playing it close with you.”
“She must be.”
“You’re unique, Amanda. She’s been watching you all of your life. Why do you think your father was transferred to Maywell? She brought him here so you would be close to her. What Constance knows—it’s impossible to tell, but she had the help of the Leannan at her disposal, as well as all the traditional lore of the witches. She commands a high and rare science, and you have to be very careful around her. You are old in the craft, Connie says.”
“Which craft?”
“Oh, wow, you’re really in a hole. Wicca, darling, witchcraft.”
“I thought that was it. All the town rumors are true, then. Everything.”
“Oh, not everything. By no means. All the good rumors, let’s say, and none of the bad! We’re learning the old ways again from Connie, and from the Leannan and her folk. And you are going to be our next Maiden, which is a sort of protector, especially if we’re under pressure from the outside. And our group is growing so fast, it’s only a question of time before the pressure starts. The very word ‘witch’ conjures up terrible images in people’s minds. They think we’re evil.”