Phoenix and Ashes (40 page)

Slight
smiles. “Might,” Ross offered.

After
all, everyone poached. Especially now. But no one wanted to admit he knew how
to.

“Now
mind,” Reggie went on, carefully not meeting anyone’s eye,
“He’d have to be careful of the season. We wouldn’t want any
orphaned bunnies. Not unless there were youngsters who knew how to catch them
and raise them on goat’s milk or something of the sort.”

“Orphaned
beasties is a sad thing,” Michael Van agreed. “But the kiddies do
like to make pets of ‘em. Wouldn’t hurt for ‘em to go
looking, now and again, just to make sure. No one’d set a snare this
early, or at least, I misdoubt, but there’s other things that make orphan
bunnies. Dogs.”

“Cats,”
put in Albert.

“Stoats,”
offered Ross, who Reggie knew for a fact kept ferrets. “Even badgers, can
they catch ‘em.”

Reggie
had a long pull on his beer, hiding his smile. That was settled, then.
They
knew that he would tell his gamekeeper not to pull up proper rabbit snares, and
he
knew that anyone that caught a doe out-of-season would send his
children, or a neighbor’s to look for the nest. And he’d probably
lose a pheasant or two; some temptations were too strong to resist.

But
he’d have lost a pheasant or two anyway, probably more than one or two.
When you worked vigilantly to keep someone from doing something he felt he had
a right to do, he often felt justified in taking a little revenge.

Giving
tacit permission, on the other hand, was likely to make them more honest.

He’d
never felt very comfortable about telling people they couldn’t snare
rabbits on Longacre property, anyway. After all, what did
he
ever do
with them except in that they kept foxes fed for the autumn hunts? And smart
foxes would steal the caught rabbits from the snares anyway. Oh, there was some
rabbit shooting in the fall, or there had been before the war, but most
gentlemen felt that rabbits were poor sport compared to birds. When meat was
getting hard to come by, and hideously expensive, even with the illicit pigs in
the woods, a rabbit was a welcome addition to the table.

Besides,
you have to wonder how many of my generation are going to be particularly
interested in shooting things for span, when all this is over…

He
sighed, and signalled another round, while the talk drifted amiably to other
shifts for keeping food on the table. Pigeons were being considered, though
with some doubt. As Ross said, “Once you get the feathers off, hardly
seems worth the time.” With the river so near, and plenty of free grazing
at the road’s edge, geese were popular, but the problem was sorting out
whose belonged to whom. Goats were not highly regarded. Having eaten goat on
occasion in France, Reggie fully understood why.

Tonight
there had been no bad news from across the Channel to stir up melancholy, good
spring weather here and summer coming, and the school treat and fair so fresh
in everyone’s mind, the conversation stayed relatively light.
“Relatively,” since no one really had the heart for games of darts
or shove-ha’penny in this pub. When Reggie left, it was in an even temper,
and not the same unsettled state he’d arrived in.

So
when, just past the last house in the village, a black mood descended on
him—it made no sense.

It
came down on him like a palpable weight, and it wasn’t grief. It was
bleak, despairing anger. It made him shift gears with a harsh disregard for the
complaining clatter his motorcar made in protest. It made him want to strangle
his grandfather—or hang himself, just to show the old man. Or both. It
made him want to find that baggage of a girl and—

And
that was where his good sense finally overpowered his mood, because the images
that began to form in his mind at the thought of Eleanor were so vicious that
they shook him, shook him right
out
of his mood. He looked sharply
around, having even lost track of where he was, only to find that he was on the
driveway of the manor and didn’t recall actually turning in through the
gates.

What
is wrong with me
? he thought, aghast. And, now with a frisson of fear,
Am
I going mad
?

Because
he could not imagine a sane man thinking those things that had just come into
his head.

Now
feeling both depressed and afraid, he parked the motor and went straight up to
his room, not wanting to encounter either his mother or his grandfather.

His
valet wasn’t about, and he didn’t ring for him; in this mood, he
wanted to be completely alone—was this some new phase to his shellshock?
Or was this something else altogether, the sign that he was truly coming to
pieces in a way that would make him dangerous to those around him as well as
himself?

If
that were the case—

Then
,
he thought, grimly, as he got himself ready to sleep without the aid of his
valet
I had better keep away from Eleanor. For her sake. At least until I
know—

And
that was his last thought as he drifted off into a fully drugged sleep.—
at
least until I know. One way or another. And if I am—I am going to have to
make sure that there is nothing I can do to harm her
.

Alison
and the girls did not put in an appearance that evening, and Eleanor took
herself to Sarah’s cottage in a mood of prickly determination. As she had
hoped, Sarah had anticipated her coming, and had laid out her mother’s
workbook and the few bits of paraphernalia that a Fire magician deemed
necessary.

But
her mind wouldn’t settle, and even the Salamanders that now always appeared
whenever she was around an open fire and either alone or with Sarah, could not
be calmed. Reflecting her restlessness, they wreathed around her like agitated
ferrets, never pausing long, twining around wrists, arms and neck. They were a
distraction, and she welcomed it.

Sarah
was not in much better case. She couldn’t keep her mind on business
either. Finally, after the third attempt at scrying by flame, she threw up her
hands.

“It’s
not going to happen,” she said, with a snort of disgust. “Your mind
isn’t on it, and neither is mine. What’s got
you
all of a
pother, anyway?”

“Reggie,”
Eleanor said, wrinkling her nose, and described the quarrel. Even though they
had made it up, she was still annoyed with him. It was difficult not to be.

I’ll
try to settle my mind so I don’t go to sleep on it—
but how
could he have been so obtuse?

“Men!”
Sarah said, with a dismissive contempt. “A dog’s more protective,
and a cat will catch mice, but a man causes more problems than he cures, I
swear it. I’d have been angry too, in your place.”

Reluctantly,
Eleanor felt moved to defend him. “He did apologize,” she admitted.
“Eventually.”

“And
then he ran right back to his pack at the pub, where they are all maligning the
female race even as we speak,” said Sarah, with just a touch of a sneer.
“I know; I heard his motorcar go by and stop at the Broom. By the time he
motors home, he’ll be feeling perfectly justified in speaking every word
he said.”

Eleanor
felt her temper flare again, and throttled it down. “Well, then I hope he
has a hangover for his pains,” she replied. “Why are
you
so out-of-sorts?”

“Something
nasty is out there tonight,” Sarah said abruptly, and uneasily, casting a
glance at the windows, where the curtains were drawn tight against the dark.
“It can’t pass the bounds I put on the village, but I can feel it
pressing against them. Whatever it is—or
they
are, since I
can’t tell if it’s one thing, or several—they’re
angry.”

Eleanor
felt her annoyance with Reggie melting away. “What is it?” she
asked, urgently. “More of those Earth-goblins?”

But
Sarah shook her head. “No. I’d recognize those. This is very
different. More of this world than the goblins are. No, it’s something
else. If I didn’t know better—and come to think of it, maybe I
don’t—I’d say it was spirits. Ghosts.”

Eleanor
blinked. “Ghosts?” Somehow it had never occurred to her that, along
with Elemental Magic and everything else, ghosts might be real, too. “But
why would ghosts be trying to get into the village?”

“Now,
that’s where you have me,” Sarah admitted candidly. “I
don’t know. Ghosts usually don’t leave the spot where they’re
rooted. Sometimes it’s a place they loved, sometimes it’s one where
they had something terrible or wonderful happen to them, but mostly it’s
where they died or their bodies are buried. It takes a lot to uproot them, and
a great deal more to set them to some new task of haunting. That’s why I
can’t imagine why or how it could be spirits.”

Eleanor
shivered, and cast a glance towards the windows herself. “What else could
it be?”

“I
don’t know,” Sarah replied, and shook her head. “Whatever it
is, it won’t disturb anyone inside the bounds, and outside, well,
you’d have to be able to see them, and most people can’t.”
She pulled on her lower lip with her teeth for a moment. “I’m
inclined to think at the moment that it’s just a blow-up left over from
May Eve. That’s one of the four Great Holy Days when the boundaries
between the spirit world and the real world are thinned. Witches—well, we
tend those doorways on those days—let the ones that want just to look in
on their loved-ones out, and keep the doors open so they can all go back at
daybreak. You know the old song, where the lady’s three sons come back to
her? She called them on May Eve—‘I wish the wind would never cease,
nor flashes in the flood, till my three sons return to me in earthly flesh and
blood.’ ”

“But—”
Eleanor began.

Sarah
shook her head. “Can’t tell you more than that; it’s
witch’s business. But like every other job, witches have been lost to the
war, and if one of those doors wasn’t tended—or if it was opened by
someone inexperienced who let it slip closed too early—” She
shrugged. “If that’s all it is, then they might be angry because
they know a witch is in this village, and they want me to let them
through.”

“Well,
why don’t you?” Eleanor asked, reasonably.

“Because
I don’t know what door it is.” She sighed. “If things
don’t improve, I’ll have to arrange something, but otherwise,
we’re probably better off leaving well enough alone. There’s always
the chance they’ll find their own way over. There’s help on the
Other Side if they truly want back.”

Eleanor
wanted to ask more, but the look on Sarah’s face told her that she
wasn’t going to get anything more, so she changed the subject. “One
of the books I found in the library talked about fortune-telling cards,”
she said instead. “And the one they talked about seemed—well, it
seemed to make more sense than some of the other things I was reading.”

Sarah’s
tense expression eased. “Ah. The Tarot. I can see where that’d be
useful, and fit right in with your mum’s notes. Wait a moment.”

She
turned and went to a cupboard, bringing out something rectangular wrapped in
silk. She set the package down on the table and unwrapped it. It was an
oversized deck of cards.

“These
are the Tarot cards,” Sarah said, picking up the well-worn pasteboards,
and separating out one smaller stack from the rest. “The ones
that’ll be the most use to you right now, for giving you things to think
on, are these—”

She
fanned out the cards in her hand; Eleanor could see that they didn’t look
anything like playing cards. They were pictures, like the one she’d seen
in the book, called Strength.

“These
are the cards called the Major Arcana, the most powerful in that there’s
the most meaning packed into them, and the most symbolism. There’s
twenty-two of them, and this,” she pulled one out of the deck “is
the first, the last, or the card that travels through the whole deck. And in
this case, since you’re the Seeker right now, this card represents you,
on your journey through the Powers as you try to master them.”

Eleanor
looked down at it; the card showed her what looked like a young man, dancing on
the edge of a cliff. There was a little dog at his feet, the sun overhead, and
he held a rose in one hand, and a stick with a bundle on the end, like a
Traveler, in the other.

“The
Fool,” she read aloud, and looked up. “Why is that me?”

“Well,
you’ve
had all that study; when you look at the stories about
King Arthur and the Grail, who do they call the Perfect Fool, and why?”
Sarah countered.

“Percival,”
she replied immediately. “Because he was innocent, unschooled. He could
ask questions no one else would, because he didn’t know he
shouldn’t.”

“And
that’s our Fool,” Sarah replied, tapping the card with one finger.
“The Fire in his card is his intelligence; he burns with curiosity and
the need to know things. He’s perfectly innocent; he breaks the rules
because he doesn’t know they’re there and doesn’t know he
should abide by them. Sometimes that’s for good, and sometimes it can
bring disaster. He’s the Seeker, who moves from card to card looking for
wisdom. He’s fearless, because he doesn’t know he should fear. He
isn’t worried about being on the edge of the cliff, because he
isn’t thinking about the next minute when he might fall off, he’s
thinking about
right now
, and besides, for all he knows, he’ll
step out into the empty air and it’ll hold him.”

Eleanor
studied the card closely. “So if he’s concentrating on
now
,
he isn’t looking forward?”

Sarah
nodded. “That’s the negative side of him. He’s not at all in
the spirit, and very much in the body. He breaks rules that sometimes
shouldn’t be broken and will bring him grief when they are. He can fall
off that cliff. He means change, but change isn’t always good.”