The Gates of Sleep (14 page)

Elizabeth got a mischievous look on her face. “Young
lady, if you go into London, I am going to see to it that your wardrobe
contains
nothing
but Bloomer fashions! I want every young man who sees
you think that you are a hardened Suffragist with no time for mere males!”

The look of dismay on Marina’s face made both of the
older women laugh.

“But Elizabeth, if you dressed me in those, mightn’t
they think I’m—fast?” Marina said, in tones of desperation. “After
all, aren’t some Suffragists proponents of Free Love?”

“Not in those clothes, they won’t,”
Elizabeth responded, still laughing. “Uncorseted, buttoned up to the
neck, with more fabric in a single leg of those contraptions than in two
trumpet-skirts?”

“I hate to say this, but those Bloomer fashions
are
hideous,” Margherita admitted, as Thomas and Sebastian entered, listened
to the topic of conversation for a moment, and exchanged a thoroughly masculine
look
of bafflement. “I
know
that they are sensible and
practical, but do they have to be so ugly?”

Elizabeth shook her head ruefully. “Frankly, no, I
don’t think so. Well, look at those lovely gowns you make for yourself
and Mari! Really, I’m envious of your skill, and if I could find a
seamstress to copy them, I would. Those are practical
and
handsome.”

Mari looked a little surprised. “Are they really?”
she asked. “They aren’t fashionable—”

“They aren’t the fashions you see in the
society sketches, true,” Margherita agreed, and sighed, exchanging a look
with Elizabeth. “I don’t
like
most of the fashions that
PBs wear. I couldn’t breathe, much less work in them, and they’re
so tightly fitted I can’t imagine how a lady gets through an hour without
splitting a seam.”

“Oh, society!” Elizabeth laughed, after a
moment. “PBs and debutantes don’t live in the real world, much less
our
world! Can you imagine for a single moment the Jersey Lily
summoning Elementals to her? Or one of those belles at Margherita’s loom?”

The mere thought was so absurd, of course, that Marina
laughed; Margherita smiled, and Sebastian and Thomas looked ridiculously
relieved. “Speaking of summoning Elementals—” began Thomas.

“Not over supper!” all three of them exclaimed,
and laughed, and turned the conversation to something more entertaining for all
five of them.

Marina woke with a start, her heart racing. What had
startled her awake?

She listened, heard nothing, and pulled back the covers.
Feeling both foolish and groggy, she went to her window to look outside. The
clouds were returning, scudding across the face of the full moon, passing
shadows across the ground. As the shadows passed, the pale, watery light
slicked the bare branches of the tree beside her window with a glaze of pearl.

There was nothing moving out there.

It must have been a cat. Or an owl.
But why would
a cat or an owl have awakened her? It hadn’t been a sound that made her
heart pound—it was a feeling. Marina was troubled, uneasy, and she didn’t
know why. She couldn’t sleep, yet her mind wouldn’t clear, either;
she felt as if there was something out there in the darkness looking for her.
This was nothing as concrete as a premonition; just a sense that there was
something very wrong, something hostile, aimed at her, but nothing more
concrete than that.

There was no logical reason for the feeling. It had been a
lovely evening, Uncle Thomas had consented to read aloud to them, something he
very rarely did, although he had a wonderful reading voice. Then she herself
had brought her musical instruments down and played, while the other four
danced in the parlor, with Sarah and Jenny as a cheerful audience. She had come
up to bed in a pleasant and mellow mood, thinking only of what she planned to
try tomorrow with Elizabeth in the workroom.

But the sudden fear that had awakened her, the unease that
kept her awake, wasn’t going away.

She listened carefully to the sounds of the house. There
was nothing from next door, where Elizabeth was. And nothing from the bedrooms
down the hall, either. Whatever was disturbing her, it was nothing that any of
the others sensed.

Perhaps
their
shields are a little
too
good…

After all, shields obscured as well as protected.

Now that was an uncomfortable thought.

And yet, there still was nothing concrete out there,
nothing she could put a finger on. She thought about getting a glass of water
and summoning an Undine, but—

But if there is something looking for me, that’s
the surest way to tell it where I am.

But the unease only grew, and she began to wonder if there
was any possibility she could get downstairs into the workroom—which
would at least have the primary shields on it—when something else
occurred to her.

She didn’t
have
to summon anything, at
least, not of
her
Element. She had Allies; she had always known about
the interest of the Sylphs and other Air Elementals, but Elizabeth had taught
her that they had a special connection to her, how to ask them for small
favors. And a call to one of them would not betray her presence.

The thought was parent to the deed; she opened the window,
and whistled a few bars of “Elf Call” softly out into the night. It
didn’t have to be that tune, according to Elizabeth; it could be
anything. Whistling was the way that the Finns, who seemed to have Air Mastery
in the national blood, had traditionally called their Elemental creatures, so
it worked particularly well for one who was only an Ally. It was nothing that
an Air Elemental could take offense at. After all, any within hearing distance
could always choose to ignore a mere whistle, even one with Power behind it.

There was a movement out of the corner of her eye, a
momentary distortion, like a heat shimmer, in the air when she turned to look
in that direction.

Then, as she concentrated on the Sight, the heat shimmer
became a Sylph.

It did look rather like one of the ethereal creatures in a
children’s book—a gossamer-pale dress over a thin wraith of a body,
and the transparent insect wings, too small to hold her up in the air, even at
a hover; pointed face, silver hair surmounted by a wreath of ivy, eyes far too
big for the thin little visage.

She looked, in fact, like one of the child-women ballet
dancers often sketched in the newspapers. Except that no ballet dancer ever
hovered in midair, and no matter how thin a ballet dancer was, you couldn’t
see the tree behind her
through
her body.

“Little sister,”
the Sylph,
“I
know why you call.”

Marina had often heard the expression, “It made the
hair on the back of my neck stand up.” Now she understood it.

“There is danger, little sister,”
the
Sylph said urgently.
“Great danger.
She is
moving, and her
eye turns toward you. It is this that you sense.”

“She? Who is
she?”
Marina asked,
urgently.

“Beware! Be wary
!” was all the Sylph
would say.

Then she was gone, leaving Marina not at all comforted, and
with more questions and next to no answers.

A LUSTILY crowing rooster woke Marina with a start, and she
opened her eyes to brilliant sun shining past the curtains at her window. She
sat straight up in bed, blinking.

The last she remembered was lying in bed, trying to
decipher what the Sylph had said. It had seemed so urgent at the time, but now,
with a rooster bellowing to the dawn, the urgency faded. She threw off the
blankets, slipped out of bed, ran to the window and pulled the curtain aside.

The window was closed and latched, and although she did
recall closing and latching it when she went to bed, she didn’t remember
doing so after summoning the Sylph. She thought she’d left it open; she’d
been in such a state of confusion and anxiety that she’d gone straight to
her bed from the window.

Had she summoned a Sylph? Or had it all been a particularly
vivid dream? Other than the window being shut, and that was problematical,
there was nothing to prove her fears of last night had been real or imagined.

Except that last night there were clouds crossing the
moon and a steady wind
—and
today there’s barely a breath
of breeze and not a cloud in the sky.
Could the weather have changed that
drastically in a few hours? She didn’t think so, particularly not here,
where winter was basically rain interrupted by clouds.

She opened the window, and closed it again quickly—it
was also
cold
out there! It couldn’t be much above freezing, and
she didn’t recall it being that cold last night. Surely it would have
been colder last night than it was now!

That seemed to settle it—she must have dreamed the
whole thing.

There was an easy way to check on it, though. Despite her
misgivings of last night—which now seemed very misplaced—her
guardian’s shields surely were
not
strong enough to keep them
from sensing trouble.

She turned away from the window, and hurried over to the
fire to build it up again, then quickly chose underthings and a gown and
dressed for the day. Perhaps her thick woolen stockings were unfashionable, but
at the moment, she would choose warm feet over fashion! Then she made for the
kitchen, pausing only long enough in the little bathroom to wash her hands and
face in the warm water that Jenny had brought up and left there, clean her
teeth, and give her hair a quick brushing.
I almost wish snoods were
fashionable again, as they were ages ago,
she thought, pulling the brush
through the thick locks, with impatient tugs.
Then I could bundle my hair
up into the net and be done with it for the day. Sometimes I think I ought to
just cut it all off.

But if she did that, Uncle Sebastian would never forgive her.

Or he’d make me wear horrid, itchy wigs.
He
already did that now and again, and the things made her skin crawl. Bad enough
to be wearing someone else’s hair, but she could never quite rid herself
of the thought that insects would find the wigs a very cozy home. It was
horrible, sitting there posing, sure that any moment something would creep out
of the wig and onto her face!

She ran down the stairs to the kitchen, wanting to be there
when everyone else came down. If anyone else had awakened with a fright or even
an uneasy stirring in the night, they’d be sure to talk about it. In a
household full of magicians, night-frights were no laughing matter.

The problem was, of course, that she didn’t have
enough experience to tell a simple nightmare from a real warning. And with all
the praises being heaped on her for her current progress with Elizabeth, she
was rather loath to appear to be frightened by a silly dream.

And it wasn’t as if there had actually
been
anything menacing her, either! Just a vague feeling that there was something
out there, some sinister hunter, and she was its prey. Now how could she ever
explain an hysterical reaction to something as minor as
that?

“Good morning, Sarah!” she called as she flew
in at the kitchen door, relieved to see that she was the first down. She wouldn’t
have missed anything, then.

“Morning to you, miss,” the cook replied, after
a surprised glance. “Early, ain’t you?”

“Cocky-locky was crowing right outside my window,”
Marina replied, taking the seat nearest the stove, the perquisite of the first
down. Even in high summer, that was the favored seat, for whoever sat there got
the first of everything from Sarah’s skillets. “I know he’s
Aunt’s favorite rooster, but there are limits!”

“I’ll tell Jenny not to let them out until you’ve
all come down of a morning,” Sarah replied with a chuckle. “She won’t
mind, and it don’t take but a minute to take down the door. She can do ‘t
when she’s done with fetchin’ water upstairs.”

She handed Marina a blue-rimmed pottery bowl full of hot
oat porridge, which Marina regarded with resignation, then garnished with sugar
and cream and dug into so as to get rid of it as soon as possible. Sarah had
fed her a bowl of oat porridge every cold morning of her life, standing over
her and not serving her anything else until she finished it, and there was no
point in arguing with her that she never made the uncles eat oat porridge
first. She would only respond that Aunt Margherita ate it, and what was good
enough for her lovely aunt was good enough for her. Never mind that Aunt
Margherita actually
liked
oat porridge.

For that matter, so did the uncles. They just never were
made to finish a huge bowlful before getting served Sarah’s delectable
eggs fried in the bacon fat, her fried kidneys, sliced potatoes, her home-cured
bacon, country ham, and home-made sausages. Not to mention her lovely thick
toast, cut from yesterday’s loaf, which somehow was always golden, warm
enough to melt the butter, and never burned—

—though Marina had long suspected the touch of one of
Uncle Sebastian’s Salamanders for that particular boon.

Or scones, left over from tea or made fresh that morning,
with jam and butter or clotted cream. Or cake, or pie. That oat porridge left
very little internal room for all the good things that bedecked the breakfast
table.

No, the uncles got a much smaller bowl, and unless Sarah
was running behind, they got it along with the rest of their breakfast. Sarah
never scolded
them
if they left some of it in the bottom of the bowl.

Such were the trials of having the same person serve as
cook and nursery-maid, she supposed, trying not to think about the porridge she
was eating. It wasn’t so much the flavor, which reminded her strongly of the
taste of iron but could be disguised with cream and sugar. It was the texture.