Only after they were gone out of sight did Eleanor knock on Sarah's door and let herself in.
"I've met Reggie!" she burst out, unable to hold herself back. "And Sarah—he recognized me!"
"Well, and he would, wouldn't he, being an Air Master—" she began, but this time Eleanor interrupted her.
"Yes, but there's no Sylphs around him, and no Air energy," she continued, and went on to describe what she had learned watching the fire night after night.
When she was finished, Sarah stood next to her own hearth, arms folded over her chest, tapping her foot. "Hmm. That's a different kettle of fish altogether. It almost sounds like—" But then she frowned, and shook her head. "No, I don't know. And it's not right to speculate. I don't know nearly as much as your mother did, and sending you off in the wrong direction wouldn't do either of you any good."
"Sarah!" Eleanor cried indignantly. "At least give me a hint!" Sarah pursed her lips, and ran her hand through her hair. "Well, if I were to guess, and not being a Master, I have no business in guessing, I would say that something happened to him to make him afraid of using any magic. Now, when a Master decides not to use any magic, none at all, sometimes they stop thinking straight, and their heart—not their heads, the thinking parts, put the heart, the feeling part—is so frightened that the heart decides that means no magic by anyone else is going to get used around them either. So magic around them gets kind of—swallowed up. Things that the heart decides usually happen unless the head is well in charge." Sarah shrugged. "But that's just a guess. People like me don't have enough magic to do that sort of thing."
"But if that's the case, then why couldn't I tell him about Alison?" she asked, feeling desperate now. "Why didn't that spell stop working?"
Sarah grimaced, but with an air as if it should have been obvious to Eleanor that she had no idea why these things had happened or not. "Don't know. Maybe because that spell is stronger. Maybe because the spell to keep people from recognizing you is set to work on them and the one to keep you from telling people the truth is set to work on you." She shook her head. "I don't know, I'm just guessing. I'm not the Master Alison is, nor the Master your mother was. I know I've had my own counter-charms set that let me see you and talk to you freely, but then, I already knew what and who you were and I had a bit of your baby-hair I could use to work them. I don't know the complicated spells; I never bothered to learn them. I'm only strong enough to work cantrips and charms. In the case of countering what's on you, I can make them work for me, but not other people, unless I were to set the charm on each one of them. And maybe all of this guessing is going wide of the mark. I've no way to know."
It was terribly frustrating. To know that she had someone within reach who probably could help her break the spells that were on her, if only he knew what was going on, was agonizing.
"What do I do?" she wailed. Sarah gazed at her sternly.
"You stop whingeing for one," the witch replied. "It isn't going to help. For another, if you can find out what it is he's so afraid of, maybe you can do somewhat about it. Do that, and he may come out of that shell he's built around himself. If you can crack that, he should see you're set about with spells yourself, and wonder why, and try untangling them himself. But you can't do any of that if you're wasting your time feeling sorry for yourself."
Eleanor felt herself flush with anger, but kept a curb on her tongue. Sarah was right—but the witch's tongue got oversharp when she'd had a long day. And it wasn't as if Eleanor's day had been any shorter.
"Now, in the meantime," Sarah was already continuing, "While you're here, you might as well learn something. If Alison ever decides to challenge you Master to Master in a Sorcerer's Duel, your little Salamanders aren't going to be causing her more than a minute of amusement. So you might as well start learning how to call the Greater Fire Elementals, and the best time is now. We'll start with the Phoenyx."
Eleanor was quite ready to fall asleep on Sarah's floor when the wilting of her rosemary sprig told her it was time to go. When she got back, she made up her bed on the kitchen floor again, rather than take the chance of stumbling on the stairs and waking the household. She thought she saw eyes in the embers as she drowsed off—not the golden eyes of the Salamanders, but a hot, burning blue. . . .
Reggie showed up faithfully in the meadow at teatime, every day— though after the second day that the girl failed to materialize, he had brought the 'bus with him, so he could go on down to the pub if she didn't show up. After the third day, as he sat in the sun and listened to the wind in the grass watched the branches overhead with their haze of new green buds, he wondered why he kept coming here—there was nothing very special about her—
—well, other than her quick wit and agile mind.
It wasn't as if she were especially pretty; certainly not compared with all the elegant, doe-like creatures his mother kept trotting past him. She was as raw as a young filly and just as awkward. She seemed to be as poor as a church-mouse, too, from the state of her clothing.
That was odd; as he recalled, old Robinson had been something in the way of a manufacturing fellow, and when he'd known her last the girl had certainly dressed well enough. But maybe the money was all gone, thanks to the war. There were a lot of places that had failed; couldn't get the raw goods they needed to keep making whatever it was they were making.
She looked as if she worked for a living. Maybe she was a maid now, or a kitchen-girl. Or maybe she worked in one of the other pubs or something. Maybe that was what she meant when she said she'd be there "if she could."
What was it about her that made him desert his mother's carefully gathered bouquet of well-bred beauties and come down here to sit on a log for an hour on the chance that she might appear?
She can talk, for one thing. She knows how to listen, for another. And when she talks, she doesn't talk nonsense.
That was half of the reason why he hated those afternoon teas, the inane chatter. What was wrong with those girls, anyway? Half of them acted as if the war didn't exist, and the other half as if it existed only to inconvenience them!
She didn't talk about the war—but it wasn't because she was trying to play as if it wasn't going on. It was as if she was avoiding the subject so as not to trouble me.
It occurred to him that if she was working, working hard somewhere now—well, she wasn't going to be all that sheltered anymore. Maybe he could talk to her, about some of the things you just didn't talk about among men. All right to be bitter, angry, depressed; all right even to admit to being white-knuckle terrified in the night, and ready to do a bunk. All right even to admitting to want to take your faithful old Wembley and stick the barrel in your mouth and—
But you didn't talk to another man about losing your sense of wonder and beauty. You didn't tell him how your ideals were lying dead beside your comrades. Oh, maybe you could with the rare fellow like one or two of his former Oxford chums, the ones that had written damn good poetry, for instance. Not Steven Stewart, for instance— someone who'd call you "Reg" and talk about how he was going to start an air mail service when it was all over. Not Walter Boyes, either; plain as toast and solid as a rock, but who was reading history, and liked facts, plain and simple. Maybe William Howe—he was sensitive enough, just think about the stuff he pulled up for the regimental band to play, not just marches and bombast but Bach and Handel. But Howe was still at the Front.