“Off wi’ ye, then,” Mrs. Fallowfield said again. “Till mebbe zomeone cares to come for ye.”
She didn’t seem to make any gesture this time, and I didn’t hear her say anything else, but Judge Jeffreys was ready when the air turned him loose. He shot crazily backward like a toy balloon when you let go of the pinched end, growing so small so fast that it seemed as though we were racing in terror away from him. Maybe we were, in a way, Tamsin and Edric Davies and me. Not Mrs. Fallowfield.
She turned to the Wild Hunt, and she said one word. I heard it very clearly, and I’d forget it if I possibly could, but it’d be like forgetting my own name. He must have remembered it, too—however he learned it; he used it at least once, I’m sure of that. But I never, never, never will.
The Wild Hunt gave one great howl and went after Judge Jeffreys. They took off like helicopters, rising straight up into the night sky in a kind of windblown spiral; and in a weird way they made me think of children just let out of school, running and yelling for the pure unreasoning joy of making noise. But they weren’t children: They were the Wild Hunt, the pitiless harriers of the dead, and they roared and wailed and laughed their skirling laughter, and blew their horns and spurred their dragony horses on, chasing that spark of desperation that had been Edric Davies for three hundred years, and was Judge Jeffreys now. It didn’t matter to the Wild Hunt.
And it didn’t matter to me. It should have—I know that—and it should matter now, on nights when I hear them again, the terrible Huntsmen in the wind, eternally hounding a human spirit whose only crime was being just as cruel as they. There’ll never be a Tamsin Willoughby come to save Lord Chief Justice Jeffreys of Wem. Most times I go back to sleep.
Things get a little blurry here—not the things themselves, but the order they happened in. I can’t remember when I finally made it up on my feet—maybe I could still hear the horns of the Wild Hunt, maybe not—but I know it was while Tamsin and Edric Davies were still there. Because it was time to say good-bye, had to be, and I didn’t want to make a stupid scene. So I got up, all over mud and with my ankle giving me fits, and I limped toward them where they stood with Mrs. Fallowfield.
She was just Mrs. Fallowfield then: everything back in place, from the army boots to the cold, sharp blue eyes, to the little pink horror squirming in her coat pocket. No fur hat, though—that hair was still streaming away over her scraggy shoulders like the Milky Way. Her voice was strangely gentle when she spoke to me. She said, “Ye’ll forget this, girl. Ye’ll forget this all.”
“No,” I said. “No, don’t make me—I have to remember. Please, I have to.”
Mrs. Fallowfield shook her head. “And have ye meet me in the lane or the market tomorrow, and know? What I am—what we’ve seen this night, the two on us—”
“I don’t know who you are,” I practically yelled at her. “And I don’t care, either!” I pointed at Tamsin, where she stood beside Edric Davies, so beautiful I could hardly stand to look at her. I said, “I don’t want to forget her. I don’t care about a damn thing else, but I have to remember Tamsin. Please. Whoever you are.”
Mrs. Fallowfield smiled at me very slowly, showing her strong gray teeth; but when she spoke, it might have been to Tamsin, or maybe herself, but not me. “Aye, and here’s first ’un, here’s first on ’em. Aye, I knowed they’d be cooming along any day, the childern as wuddn’t know Lady of the Elder Tree. Zo, there ’tis. No harm.”
I remembered Tamsin saying—God, a hundred years ago— “Even the Pooka steps aside when she moves.” I started in on some kind of dumb apology, but Mrs. Fallowfield had turned away and Tamsin and Edric Davies were coming to me. It was awkward with Edric—there’s not a whole lot to say to someone who’s been through what he’d been through, and who’s now going away forever with the person who really did become your sister for a little while. I was happy she’d rescued him, and happy that her task was done, and that she wouldn’t be stuck haunting the Manor anymore… but at the same time I hated him worse than I’d ever hated Judge Jeffreys, and that’s the truth. There—I’ve got that down.
But he was all right. He said, “Tamsin has told me of all you did for us, and of what might have befallen her but for you. If I had the world to give you, we would never be quits.” He smiled in a crooked, crinkly way that Tamsin must have loved at first sight— no, that sounds mean; it was a very nice smile, really. Edric Davies said, “But I have nothing, Mistress Jenny Gluckstein. I cannot promise that we will come to you at need, nor even that we will ever remember your kindness, because I do not know what waits beyond for us. I can only bless you now, with all my human heart. Nothing more.”
And he was out of there. Just vanished, the way ghosts do.
Tamsin picked up Miss Sophia Brown. She came very close, and looking into my eyes, she said, “My Jenny,” and then she bent her head and kissed me—here, on the left-hand corner of my mouth. And nobody knows better than I that I couldn’t have felt anything, because Tamsin was a ghost—but nobody but me knows what I felt. And I’ll always know.
Then she stepped back and was gone, and it was just me and Mrs. Fallowfield in the dark of the Alpine Meadow that seemed so much darker now. Me and the Old Lady of the Elder Tree, as though I gave a damn. Mrs. Fallowfield cupped my cheek in her calloused hand, and she said softly, “Forget, ye brave child. Forget.”
And after that there’s nothing but night—but thinning now, turning blue and silver, and I’m being carried somewhere, like a baby. First I think it’s the Pooka come to get me, but it’s way too bumpy a ride for the Pooka, and I can smell rubber, which I hate. When I open my eyes, it’s Evan holding me, walking fast, with Sally on one side and Tony on the other, everybody shiny in rain slickers… or are we already in the old Jeep? If we’re in the Jeep, then I’m lying with my head in Evan’s lap while he drives us home, and my feet in Sally’s lap. Tony keeps talking about the beating the fields have taken from the storm—he’s really shocked, the way things have been battered down. Sally wants to hold me by herself, so Evan can drive more easily, but Evan says, “No, leave it, love, she’s asleep,” and I am.
Twenty-seven
But I didn’t forget. I haven’t forgotten a thing.
I think that was Tamsin’s doing, the reason she kissed me at the very last. I think she didn’t want me to forget her, even if she doesn’t remember me wherever she and Edric Davies have gone. How she did it, I won’t ever know, but I’m pretty sure Mrs. Fallowfield knows she did it. I don’t see much of Mrs. Fallowfield anymore; when we do meet, she’s the same skinny, ageless lady in the duffel coat and the Russian hat, and she looks at me with those cold blue eyes as though she almost recognizes me from somewhere. As though she were the one who forgot.
He wasn’t from Dorset, you see. Judge Jeffreys wasn’t from Dorset, he didn’t know about the Old Lady of the Elder Tree. Maybe things would have been different if he’d known. Maybe not.
Sally told me it was Evan who got anxious about me being out with weather coming on—he smelled it, and he was already cranking up the Jeep to start after me even before the storm hit. He wanted to go alone, because that clunker only has a canvas top, and it’ll shake your teeth loose on pavement, let alone a dirt path. But Sally insisted on coming—and so did Tony, which surprises me in some kind of way even now. I asked him if he was afraid of losing his dance dummy, and he said that was exactly it. That’s how you thank Tony.