“Yes,” I said. “That’s what Evan thinks.”
Mr. Guthrie grinned. “But you don’t. And what do I think?” He wouldn’t say anything more until the tea was ready—he makes tea the way Evan rumples his hair and Mr. Chari plays with cigars he doesn’t light half the time. At last he said, “Well, if I thought much about such things, I suppose I’d think that more folk everywhere die in the cold months, as the year dies, and perhaps the Wild Hunt have their best pick of poor souls to hound through the sky then. Perhaps they seek them on the other side of the world, come springtime. There’s not a great deal known about the Wild Hunt, I’m afraid.”
I asked him, “Do they… are they on their own, or does someone, somebody—”
“Direct them? Ah now, I can’t tell you that for certain either, nor how they choose their quarry. Some say the Devil’s their master— in Cornwall they’re called the Devil’s Dandy Dogs—and that you can find refuge from them in churches, in prayer. Others will have it that there’s no sanctuary once they’re on your track. Living or dead, saint or sinner—no sanctuary.” He took off his glasses and leaned forward, one hand scratching behind Clem’s ears, but his old blue eyes as intent on me as Cornet Simmons’s had been. “Why do you need to know, Jenny?”
I think I told him I was working on a folklore project for school. I’m not only a bad liar, I’m an over-elaborate one. I don’t think he bought it for a second; but just before I heft, he said, “There’s one other belief about the Hunt. I’ve only come across it a few times, and only here in Dorset. Supposedly they can be summoned— called down and actually set to run a victim to his death—by someone who knows the proper spell, and has the required force of personality to achieve it. But it’s a risky thing to attempt, as you might imagine, and in any case the pursuit only lasts for one night. So there’d be a bit of a chance of escape that way. I don’t know if you’ll want to bother with that one for your project, though.”
Between that and what the Pooka had said about the Wild Hunt, I started finding myself looking out for them, listening for them, almost in the way that I looked for Tamsin all the time, and with just the same result. The only thing assuring me that she and Miss Sophia Brown hadn’t vanished for good was that Judge Jeffreys hadn’t. I saw him most often in the morning and early twilight, never far from the Manor: solid-looking enough that you might take him for an ordinary person on first sight, but casting no shadow, motionless, waiting for Tamsin the way nothing human ever waited. He didn’t speak to me anymore, but sometimes our eyes met from a distance, and the patient, patient hatred in him would slam into me right below my ribs. He might be dead as roadkill, but that hatred was every bit as alive as I was.
One day in mid-August, when Dorset’s as hot as it ever gets, and the poor sheep lie down in each other’s shade, Julian and I were out on the downs, him trying to teach Albert to fetch (Albert does not do dog stuff), and me flat on my back, same as always, eyes almost closed, trying not to think about anything but a couple of blue butterflies about to settle on my forehead. Then they were gone, and I was staring straight up at Mrs. Fallowfield. Practically nobody looks good from that angle, especially a bony old woman in a big fur cap, with no hips. She said nothing but, “Scones. Five minutes. Bring the boy.” And she tramped off, the way she always did, as though she were breaking a trail through the snow for people to follow.
Julian hadn’t ever met Mrs. Fallowfield. He came running up to watch her leaving, and when I told him who she was, he wanted to know if there was a Mr. Fallowfield. I said I didn’t think so, and Julian said, “I’ll bet she ate him. I’ll bet that’s what happened.” But he’s crazy about scones, so he hauled me to my feet and hustled me after her. We didn’t get there in five minutes—you can’t possibly, from the downs—but it wasn’t Julian’s fault.
She made it in five minutes, though. I’d swear to that, because by the time we arrived, she had those scones and muffins hot from the oven—no microwave, no toaster—and set out on her kitchen table, along with half a dozen kinds of jam and tea with clotted cream. Her farmhouse was a funny little place, wedged into a grove of white-flowering elder trees. Mrs. Fallowfield said it was about a hundred years younger than the Manor, but it felt older, maybe because it hadn’t ever been remodeled, or had anything added to it, so it was all one thing: dim and damp smelling, not much bigger than a three-car garage, with ceilings so low that even Julian could touch them if he stood on tiptoe. I remember a few dried flowers shoved into a medicine bottle on the window, and candleholders everywhere, although she must have had electricity. Everything was built around the oven, which was huge enough to heat the entire farmhouse, and probably half her orchards as well. It wasn’t any witchy lair, nothing like that—only musty and close and worn out. The scones were the best I ever had, though.
Mrs. Fallowfield watched us eat, but didn’t say much. I didn’t see her pink dog-thing around anywhere. When Julian asked her if she’d always lived here, she answered him, “That I have, boy. Always.” When he asked if anyone lived with her, to help her take care of the farm, she gave him a major Look and didn’t answer—just stuck out an arm and indicated for him to try and bend it. Julian told me later that he could have swung on it, walked on it, done handstands; that arm wasn’t going anywhere. “I’ll bet she pumps iron,” he said. “I’ll bet she’s got a weight room back there somewhere.” I said he ought to ask her, but he never got the chance.
A storm hit while Julian and I were getting ready to leave, with me not a bit wiser about why she’d asked us there in the first place. It blew up with no warning, the way it happens in Dorset, and all we could do was wait it out. Mrs. Fallowfield gave Julian a crumbly picture book that looked as though King Arthur had teethed on it—Julian loves anything old—and she had me sit with her at that one kitchen window to watch the storm. The rain was coming in practically sideways, and the wind was shaking the house so hard that it groaned in the ground like trees do. Mrs. Fallowfield leaned forward, so I could hear her, and said, “Nothing to be feared of. She’s got deep roots, this house.”
Actually, what she said was “thikky hoose,” like the boggart, but I had the feeling she’d done it on purpose—just as she’d spoken in Tamil to Meena—and not slipped back into Old Dorset talk. The more I saw of her, the less I could make her out; all I couhd tell was that she knew it, and she enjoyed it. “Put up wi’ worse, house has,” she said now. Then she added something I couldn’t catch, because of the wind, except for the last words: “… and worse yet coming.”
“What?” I said. “What worse?” Mrs. Fallowfield only grinned at me with her long gray teeth and turned away to look out the window. I repeated it—“ What worse?”—but she didn’t answer. Instead she suddenly reached back, grabbed my arm and pointed it where she was staring, into the roiling violet heart of the storm. She still didn’t say anything. She didn’t have to.
I heard them before I saw them; or maybe it was that I couldn’t take in what I was seeing right away. They weren’t in the clouds, but just below them, so that the lightning flared over the faces of the Huntsmen and made their spears and harness twinkle, for God’s sake—green and red and blue, like decorations spinning on some horrible Christmas tree. There were dogs racing ahead of them, but they weren’t any more like real dogs than the beasts they rode had anything to do with horses. Too many legs, some of them—like Mister Cat’s midnight playmates—too many laughing red tongues, too many faces that were nothing but bone and teeth and fire-filled eyesockets. I pulled back from the window, but Mrs. Fallowfield wouldn’t let go of my arm.