Marina’s room was a veritable showplace of those skills. In fact, it was a showplace of all three of her guardians’ skills. Uncle Thomas had built and carved all of the furniture, from the little footstool to the enormous canopy bed. Aunt Margherita was responsible for the embroidered hangings of the bed, the curtains at the windows, the cushions in the window seat, all of them covered with fantastic vines and garlands and flowers. Uncle Sebastian had plastered the walls with his own hands, and decorated them with wonderful frescos.
He had nobly refrained from painting his beloved medieval tales—instead, he’d given her woods filled with gentle mythological creatures and Elementals. Undines frolicked in a waterfall, a Salamander coiled lazily in a campfire for a pair of young Fauns with mischievous eyes, a Unicorn rested its horn in the lap of a maiden that bore more than a passing resemblance to Marina herself. The room had grown as she had; from a cradle and a panel of vines to the wonder that it was now. The number of hours that had gone into its creation was mind-boggling, and even now that she was grown, she could come into the room to find that Uncle Sebastian had touched up fading colors, or Aunt Margherita had added a cushion. It was the visible and constant reminder of how much they cared for her.
No one could possibly love her as much as her aunt and uncles did, and never mind that the titles of Aunt and Uncle were mere courtesy. She had never questioned that; had never needed to. There was only one question that had never been properly answered, so far as she was concerned.
If my parents love me so much, why did they send me away—and why have they never tried to be with me again?
That there was a secret about all this she had known from the time she had begun to question the way things were. She had never directly questioned her parents, however—something about the tone of her mother’s letters suggested that her mother’s psyche was a fragile one, and a confrontation would lead to irreparable harm. The last thing she wanted to do was to upset a woman as sweet natured and gentle as those letters revealed her to be!
And somehow, I think that she is so very fragile emotionally because of the reason she had to send me away.
She sighed. If that was indeed the case, it was no use asking one of her beloved guardians. They wouldn’t even have to lie to her—Uncle Sebastian would give her a look that suggested that if she was clever, she would find out for herself. And as for the other two, well, the look of reproach that Aunt Margherita could (and would) bend upon her would make her feel about as low as a worm. And Uncle Thomas would become suddenly as deaf as one of his carved bedposts. It really wasn’t fair; the chief characteristic of a Water Master was supposed to be fluidity. She should have been able to insinuate her will past any of their defenses!
“And perhaps one day you will be able to—when you are a Master,” giggled a voice that bubbled with the chuckling of sweet water over stones.
She turned to glare at the Undine who tossed her river-weed-twined hair and with an insolent flip of her tail, stared right back at her.
“You shouldn’t be reading other people’s thoughts,” Marina told her. “It isn’t polite.”
“You shouldn’t be shouting them to the world at large,” the Undine retorted. “A tadpole has more shields than you”
Marina started, guiltily, when she realized that the Undine was right. Never mind that there wasn’t real need for shields; she knew very well that she was supposed to be keeping them up at all times. They had to be automatic—otherwise, when she really did need them, she might not be able to raise them in time. There were unfriendly Elementals—some downright hostile to humans. And there were unfriendly Masters as well.
“I beg your pardon,” she said with immediate contrition to the Undine, who laughed, flipped her tail again, and dove under the surface to vanish into the waters.
She spent several moments putting up those shields properly, and another vowing not to let them drop again. What had she been thinking? If Uncle Sebastian had caught her without her shields, he’d have verbally flayed her alive!
Well, he hadn’t. And what he didn’t know, wouldn’t hurt him.
And besides, it was time for tea.
Checking again to make sure those shields were intact, she picked up her basket, rose to her feet, and ran back up the path to the farmhouse, leaving behind insolent Undines and uncomfortable questions.
For now, at any rate.
Chapter Two
SEBASTIAN had paint in his hair, as usual; Margherita forbore to point it out to him. He’d see it himself the next time he glanced in a mirror, and her comments about his appearance only made him testy and led to growling complaints that she was fussing at him. Besides, he looked rather—endearing—with paint in his hair. It was one more reminder of the impetuous artist who had proposed to her with a brush behind one ear and paint all over his hands.
At least these days he generally got the paint off his hands before he ate!
Instead, she passed the plate of deviled ham sandwiches to him, and said, “Well, they’re off to Italy. They caught the boat across the Channel yesterday, if the letter was accurate.”
No need to say who, Alanna and Hugh Roeswood, unable to bear their empty house in the winter, had fled to Italy as soon as their harvest was over that first disastrous year, and had repeated the trip every year after. It was a habit now, Margherita suspected; Earth Masters tended to get into comfortable ruts. The Roeswoods always took the same Tuscan villa, and Alanna was able to pass the time in a garden that was living through the winter instead of stark and dormant. As an Earth Master herself, Margherita suspected that it helped her cope with her grief. By now, the earth there knew them as well as the earth of Oakhurst did.
Sebastian helped himself to sandwiches, and nodded. He seldom read Alanna’s letters; Margherita suspected they were too emotional for him. Like all Fire Masters, his emotions were volatile and easily aroused. And Alanna’s letters could arouse emotion in a stone.
As Margherita had suspected he would, he shifted the subject to one more comfortable. “I’ll be glad when winter truly comes for us. With all the harvesters moving in and out, it fair drives me mad trying to keep track of the strangers in the village.”
Strangers—the unspoken danger was always there, that Marina’s real aunt had finally found out where she was, that one of those strangers was her spy.
Never mind that Marina was known as “Marina Tarrant” and everyone thought she was Sebastian’s niece. Never mind that they managed to preserve that false identity to literally everyone in the world except her real parents and that handful of guests at the ill-fated gathering after the christening. Such a transparent ruse would never fool Arachne, if the woman had any idea where to look for the child. The single thing keeping Marina safe was that Thomas, Sebastian, and Margherita were the Roeswoods’ social inferiors, and it would probably never enter Arachne’s head to look for her brother’s child in the custody of middle-class bohemians. She had, in fact, looked right past them when she had made her dramatic entrance; perhaps she had thought they had been invited only because they were part of something like the great Magic Circle in London. Perhaps she had even thought they were mere entertainers, musicians for the gathering. It had been clear then that to her, they might as well not exist.