Elvenbrood

Tanith Lee

How beautiful they are,

The lordly ones,

Who dwell in the hills,

In the hollow hills.

—“The Immortal Hour,” Fiona Macleod (William Sharp)

When they moved to Bridestone, Susie had tried to be very positive. That was the key word, apparently, Positive. What you hadto be. So Jack tried to back her up. She’d been through enough, they all had. Make the best of things.

He was seventeen and a half, and because of that, she said she preferredhim to call her Susie, though outside the house, at college, he referred to her, when he needed to, by her true title, which was Mum. Luce still had the unchallenged rights to call Susie Mum, but she didn’t either. Luce was fourteen, white-blonde, strange in the way girls suddenly got.

“Susie’s a person,” said Luce, seriously, bossily, “she has a right to her name, not just be our Mum.”

“She isour Mum,” Jack pointed out.

Then Susie had come in, all Positive, and they had to start Positively cleaning the new house up, and unpacking.

It was a new house in every way, as several sections of the sprawling village were, part of a block of houses, all joined up, with big flat glass windows and doors. They were all presumably the same inside, too. One largish downstairs room, kitchen, cloakroom, three small bedrooms upstairs, and a bathroom. The house, though, looked out on to fields and hedgerows, woods. It was all right, better than the flat they’d all been crammed into in outer London, when Dad—Michael—was fired.

The firing had been because Dad drank too much alcohol. Or no, it had been because Michaeldrank too much. Jack could remember a few years before, when Luce had been nine and sweet, and Susie had been, not Positive, just happy, and Dad had been Dad, and brilliant. Michael worked too hard, Susie explained as things ran downhill, he was trying to keep them all going, they must support him. Then he got fired anyway, and they lost the house in Chester Road where Jack and Luce had grown up. They went to live in the flat. Once there, Dad, now truly Michael full-time, went on drinking too much. He began to tell Susie, Luce and Jack that he was sick to death of them and the burden they were, and also he started to hit Susie. One night Jack smashed one of Michael’s bottles over Michael’s head, to stop him. Jack had been crying, just as Luce and Susie were. Michael sat there on the floor looking stunned. Then he just got up, with a trickle of blood from his forehead running down his nose, and walked out. He never came back.

That had been one year and six months ago. Now they were here.

Which was the really stupid part, Jack thought. Mum had had a win on the National Lottery. Oh, not millions, but enough for a decent down-payment on a small house, and some left over until, as Susie said (Positive enough she’d fooled the mortgage people) she found a job. Being Positive, they’d already found a local school for Luce, and Jack’s college only half an hour away on the train.

Jack couldn’t help thinking it was a shame they hadn’t won the Lottery before all hell broke loose in their lives. Susie said that wasn’t the way to look at it. It was wonderful luck. And of course it was.

Bridestone, though.

Jack had stared at the place uneasily, even as the train pulled in. Susie’s choice. It was one of those Kent-Sussex villages that had been picturesque, and still was in bits—ye olde smithy, ye olde pub—a church that was built just after the Norman Conquest of England—1066—even the ruins of a Roman fort and Norman castle nearby. But the village had also grown. It had put on weight since the ‘50’s, got too fat with new houses, and estates, and silly shops that, Jack thought, sold stuff no one in their right minds could afford, or would want to.

There was a Big Divide here too. There were the Rich, who lived in old timbered houses along the hilly narrow streets or in flash mansions just outside, with gardens like parks. The Rich had huge dogs, rode horses, talked like things yapping to each other. They looked way, way down on ‘That Common Lot’ who’d bought the new houses.

Susie had been an actress once. She’d been on TV and everything, only no one remembered. But she wasn’t common—she was uncommon.

“Look at the lovely view!” she sang as they saw it first, properly, from the upstairs landing window.

Well, it wasa good view, Jack had to admit. He was going to be studying photography next year, just on his foundation course now. He could take excellent pictures of the green-golden fields, the clouds of dark woods, the sweeps of open land beyond—

Why didn’t he like that view?

He tried, in a funny way, not even to look at it, not to look out of the windows. Nuts.

Luce lovedit. She loved the tiny garden too, with the blue, fake-wrought-iron chairs and table Susie bought, the untidy rose bushes and lilac tree. She’d be out there for hours in the evenings, when he and Susie watched TV, alone, singing to herself like she had when she was little. Maybe it was good for her. Over the end fence, the fields buzzed smokily with summer.

At night, the moon sailed white across that countryside, owls eerily cried, and Jack found himself going downstairs about 1 a.m., not for a drink of juice or piece off the cold chicken, but to check the locks, front and back.

“Susie, do you think these locks are strong enough?”

“They’re what we’ve got, Jackie.”

“Yeah—but couldn’t I fix for someone to put on better ones?”

“What are you expecting to break in—” she chortled, “a lion?”

“Those bloody dogs are about lion-size. One of those’d be through that glass in two seconds.”

“I likedogs. Lucy and I might like to get one ourselves. But listen, Jack, thanks honestly, but we’re out of London here. It’s much safer, you know.”

Luce said primly, “Jack never worried about locks in London. Once he left the front door unlocked all night when he came in.”

This had been at Chester Road, so Susie changed the subject.

What wasit that bugged Jack about this place? A couple of Sundays they went for a walk around the lanes. Susie and Luce chatted about birds and wildflowers. Jack kept looking over his shoulder. Once he heard something following them behind the hedgerow—he got ready to thump it till two crows flew up.

But it wasn’t just the wildlife, or the view, or the people here—but—something—

Something … Perhaps he was just a city boy, or neurotic, like Susie and Luce were now, a bit. Just that.

The fourth week they were there, Luce ran in one afternoon from school, breathlessly excited to tell them “I met this weirdman in the High Street.”

Jack and Susie looked up, horrified.

“What do you mean, Lucy?” Susie asked, careful, gripping the edge of the kitchen table.

Jack, home early on what the awkward course tutor called An Assignment, waited.

Luce said, “I don’t mean that. He’s off his head, out of his skull—”

“On drugs, do you mean?” demanded Jack.

Luce burst out laughing. She still had this laugh, like silver bells … Michael had said that. No, Dadhad said it. “I just mean crazy. Not dangerous. He just came up and said, You be careful, little girl—as if I was a kid—careful how you go.”

“Did you speak to him? Lucy, I’ve told you—”

“No. Of coursenot. Why would I? I just walked on. Then he called after me: Just go careful with that hair. And then something about the Romans leaving the stone, and knights leaving the castle—but I was by the bread shop then, and I went in like you asked and bought this loaf—”

“Forget the loaf. What did he look like?”

“Thin, old. His hair was long. He looked like a woolly sheepdog. His clothes were old too. Sort of like Victorian for a fancy dress party—only worn and mucky—but people like that stink. They smell like dustbins and garbage—and he didn’t. He smelled—” Luce considered, “like grass.”

“Grass?”

“Off a lawn—that sort. And he had green eyes, like me.”

Susie and Jack exchanged a worried, brown-eyed glance.

“Tomorrow, Lucy,” said Susie firmly, “I will take you in to school. I will collect you in the afternoon.”

“Oh—Mum!” Luce wailed.

Jack went out after tea, which was their early dinner at 6 o’clock. He walked down the hill from the glassy estate, past the quaint gate where sometimes cows grazed, and which led to a cornfield. He walked through a couple of narrow streets and into the High Street.

There was a village green with a war memorial on it. The church was across from this, with its square Norman tower, and the other side, nestled among huge oak and beech trees, the pub. This pub had a strange name … Jack peered round the leaves and past the several posh drinkers gathered outside on rustic benches, with their wine and Real Ale.

The pub sign showed a green hill, and some people dancing together on it, under a curved crescent moon. The Lords and Ladiessaid the lettering.

One of the drinkers had noticed Jack and pulled a face. Ah, Jack could see the man thinking, That Common Lot have now produced a yob intent on underage boozing.

Jack turned his back and strolled on, over the green to the church.

He was looking for the man who had spoken to Luce. In such a stuck-up place as Bridestone, anyone like that, surely, would have been run out of town long ago. Unless—did they still keep a village idiot here? Just for the twee charm of it—

What had he meant Go careful with that hair? A warning—a threat? Jack badly wanted to see the man, ask him which, and why. And if a threat, tell him that Jack didn’t like old tramps threatening his sister, all right?

After a while, Jack left the church. He went on, up and down roads, and through the little between-house alleys. Someone was playing Mozart. Dogs barked, richly, in gardens with not one branch out of place.

Returning to the green, the sun was going, he saw. It was getting on for 8:30. An hour at most, and it would be full dark, and Susie getting anxious because he’d only said he was going for a walk.

The church, too, bothered Jack. The graveyard was packed by ancient leaning gravestones with dates like 1701 and 1590. Age so thick you could cut it in slices.

And what had the nutter meant when he said that about the Romans leaving the stone, and the Norman knights—Jack had never heard Romans—or Normans, for that matter, left at all. The air was cooling and a smell of flowers blew over on a breeze. It was getting dark quicker than he’d expected.

When Jack got to the front door, Susie was flinging it wide. “Jack—Jack, thank God—”

“What is it? What, Mum?”

“Lucy’s gone!”

Jack stood there, with all his blood turning to sand. It felt like the flat again, those times when Michael—the raised drunken voice rising in the other room, accusing Susie of caring nothing for her family, only for the career she’d given up—and then the sound of a blow.

“Are you sure, Susie?”

“Of course I’m bloody sure, you stupid moron!”

Unlike Michael, she was seldom rude. She must be at her wits’ end. He read the signal and said, “Yes, okay. You’ve checked. When did you realize?”

“She was up in her room playing her CDs, quite loud—one of those thump-thump people you both like so much—”

“U2.”

“And it just kept on playing the same track, so I went up to say could she turn it down a little—Oh God, Jack, she wasn’t there. The window was wide open, that was all—she couldn’t have climbed out of the window, could she? I mean, why would she do that? I mean, she wasn’t in the bathroom, and she didn’t come downstairs—I was ironing and I had the radio on—but I’d have seen her go by the main room door—”

“Did you check the other rooms? Yes. The garden?”

“I looked everywhere. I even—I even looked in the blasted washing-machine for God’s sake—” Susie cackled weakly. “Am I being daft? It’s all right, isn’t it? She’s probably somehow up there all the time—” Susie turned abruptly, raced along the hall and up the stairs like a slim stampeding elephant. Jack followed. Upstairs, there was no sign of Luce.

They craned from the open bedroom window, gazing down at the small patio below. It wasn’t such a long drop.

The air smelled wonderful now, scented, flowers and hay and clean growing, living things—and night.

“Mum—look! I think—”

“Oh—oh there she is—oh my God what’s she doing out there? Lucy! Luce!”

Across a couple of fields of ripening corn or wheat, or whatever it was, among the tall stalks, a short slender figure stood quite still, showing up with an almost luminous whiteness that must be because of lights shining out from the house-backs. Luce, with her pale blonde hair—

Go careful with that hair—

Susie was already running downstairs again, throwing open the back door. He caught up in the garden. By then she was standing by the back fence, nearly crying, like a scared child.

“She vanished.”

“The stalks would hide her from down here.”

“No. When I got here I could still see her out in the field. And then—she just wasn’t.”

The night felt chilly, or cold. It was moonless, too.

“I’ll go and look for her.” Jack sprang at the fence and over.

“Be careful—”

Jack grunted, and pelted forward into the stinging coarse slap of the wheat or corn. He hated it, smashing it aside with his hands—he’d probably never eat bread or cereal again.

He heard Susie calling when he thought he’d travelled about a quarter mile. By then the dark shadow of the woods was looming through the stalks, sinister in some electric way.

Jack stood, bewildered.

Behind him floated the voice of his mother, vital again with relief: “Jack! It’s all right—she’s here—” And then Luce’s voice, “Jackieee!”

While in front of him, against the backdrop of woods, motionless as the unshaken grain, a white-skinned, white-blonde creature was, looking back at him, smiling—quiet, and amused, with slanting cat-green eyes. Only a second, this. Then—it melted away. Into shadow, into night—into the ground?

Jack shook himself. Nothing had been there—adrenalin and an optical illusion. He turned and ran back for the house.

“She says she was everywhere I’d just looked, doing something, not realizing I was looking for her. We just kept missingeach other.”

Jack scowled. “That’s dumb. We looked everywhere. You can’t misssomeone anyway in a house this tiny.”

“It’s what she says. She got bolshy and then tearful when I kept saying it couldn’t have been like that. She said she’s not a liar. But she is. I took the flashlight. There’re scuff-marks on the table in the patio. She must have got out on the window-sill, swungon to the shed roof—I can hardly bear to think of it. What if she’d jumped all wrong?”

“Yeah. Do you want me to speak to her?”

“In the morning. We’ve had enough for now.”

He thought, anyway, how had Luce got back in? She must have sneaked in again when he was out in the fields and Susie at the fence—crazy.

Crazy like the green-eyed man.

In bed Jack dreamed he was still running. Something was chasing him—a dog, he thought, a white dog. He woke up sweating, because he’d left his window shut.

He thought, was that other thing—that white figure they’d thought they’d seen—Luce’s decoy, so she could get back unnoticed?

The woman behind the library desk was pretty tasty, but she was also pretty nasty. “The computer’s crashed. I’m sorry.” You could see she wasn’t.

He told her he needed to research Bridestone. She raised an eyebrow. “You must have heard of it,” he said, “one stop up the line.”

“I’m from London,” she proclaimed loftily.

The promised data hadn’t been much anyhow. Just dates on the castle, a plan of the Roman remains, with some altar to a pagan goddess.

As Jack was stalking through the door, a man’s voice spoke behind him.

“Were you asking about Bridestone?”

Jack looked around. A young-middle-aged man stood there, frowning at him, as if it was forbidden for people like Jack to ask questions. Jack didn’t like men of this age anyway. Michael had been one.

“Yes,” said Jack shortly.

“Any special reason?”

“I live there. If that’s okay.”

Jack saw suddenly the man’s frown was because he was squinting out into the sun.

“You might try an old guy called Soldyay,” said the man. “That’s spelled Soldier, by the way. He’s dotty, but quite harmless. I’ve known him years, and he knows Bridestone village, the history and so on.”

“Soldier? What do you mean, ‘dotty’? You mean off his head?”

“Somewhat. But as I say, no danger. Gentle as a lamb. Really, I wouldn’t recommend seeing him otherwise. I’m his dentist. He appears before me once a year to show off his truly wonderful teeth. They really arewonderful. Like a young tiger’s. Not a single cavity.”

“Has he got green eyes?”

“That’s another thing. His eyes are as clear as a child’s. Green? Yes, I think so. Also his clothes are horrible but somehow he’s always fresh as a daisy. Anyway, if you want to know about the village, he’s your man. Bridstane it used to be. It’s in the Doomsday Book and all that. Seen the ruins?”

“Not yet.”

“Nothing much left. A few crumbling walls. The Roman fort is even less, plus it’s up a mountain of a hill. I don’trecommend that.”

“Was it abandoned—the fort—or the castle?”

“Sometimes Soldier seems to say so. But then he has times when he just talks in riddles. He’s supposed to have a peculiar history himself. My mother used to remember him first turning up. Old then, she said. I don’t know his age. He lies and says sixty to my receptionist, but he’s well past that. Catch him on a good day, and you’ll get some sense.”

“When’s a good day?”

“New Moon. That’s today, in fact. You can call at his house, he won’t let you in. You’ll have to talk to him in the street. Number 7, Smith’s Land, behind the old—”

“Smithy,” said Jack. “Thanks, Mr.…?”

“Tooth,” sighed the dentist. “Please don’tsay it.”

On the train going back, Jack thought how he hadn’t gone in to college to check. He had considered it—the computers there might work. But then a foundation student had practically to walk over blazing coals to get access to them. He hadn’t spoken to Luce, either. She’d slipped off early to school that morning eluding Susie’s escort, so Susie felt she had to phone the place to make sure Luce had safely arrived. She had. Then the phone had rung again, someone wanting Susie for an interview that day, some job she’d applied for—she hadn’t said doing what. “Jack, I’ll have to go out. Would you please pick Lucy up this afternoon from school? She’ll like it better anyway, her handsome elder brother, not her Mum.”

Before meeting Luce, he had plenty of time to run Mr. Soldier to earth. But first, lunch was on the agenda. Or it was meant to be. As he opened the fridge door, a multi-colored explosion happened.

Jack yelled, staggered back against the kitchen table, soaked and gawping as a double pack of colas, two cartons of orange juice and one of cranberry, and a bottle of fizzy white wine, erupted the rest of their contents all over the room, and himself.

He hadn’t the heart to leave the mess for Susie when she got back. His note about the ruined food would be bad enough. Most of the stocks in the fridge were now spoiled—unless you really fancied soggy bread, wet butter, cold sausages in an orange and cola sauce. The fruit and salad might make it, if washed. Could you wash baconthough?

Jack was glaring into the fridge again when the milk carton, somehow slower than the rest, also decided to blow its top, right in his face.

Eyes full of milk, Jack swore. Spilled milk stank, too. So, not only cleaning the kitchen now, but another shower and a change of clothes.

He got out of the house again about three o’clock, and ran up the village to Smith’s Lane.

The street was cobbled. The houses, drab, old, narrow oblongs, slotted together like a kind of jigsaw. Most looked uncared for, but Number seven won the prize for worst. The door-paint peeled in strips, the windows were nearly black with dirt behind yellowed filthy net curtains. No bell. Jack went at the door-knocker as if needing to hammer something in.

He thought no one would answer.

Then, silent as the fall of a leaf, the door opened, and Mr. Soldier stepped out to meet him in the street.

His eyes weregreen. They didn’t slant, though. And, as Tooth the dentist had said, they were incredibly clear, the whites like enamel. The rest of him—he was old and crinkled up, like scrunched paper. His grey hair poured over his shoulders, over his face. His clothing looked more 1970’s, Jack thought, than Victorian, but also as if he slept in it, slept too in a refuse sack.

“You spoke to my sister.”

“Did I?” He had a good voice, not over-educated and yappy like the Bridestone Rich, more like an actor. So—was he acting now?

“Yeah, you did. Blonde girl, yesterday.”

“Ah.” Mr. Soldier smiled. His teeth were just as the dentist has said. “That was your sister, then.”

“Why did you try to scare her?”

“Did I scare her?”

“No. But—”

“I did mean to, in a way. I meant she should be careful. Sometimes,” Mr. Soldier hesitated. He seemed apologetic, “sometimes I’m not very coherent.”

“You get drunk?”

Mr. Soldier looked surprised at the rage in Jack’s tone. “No, not often. I can’t afford to. I simply mean I’m not always myself.”

“Do the police know about you? Do you have to attend at a hospital for treatment?”

“Not at all. I seldom cause any bother.”

“You bothered my sister.”

Mr. Soldier said, “I think it isn’t Ithat bother her. Perhaps it’s already too late. Maybe not.”

Jack snarled. His fists rose.

Mr. Soldier did not react. He said, quietly, “Something wants her. Something is interestedin her.”

“Who? How do you know?”

“I was the same. Once they were interested in me.”

“Who are they?”

Mr. Soldier knelt down unexpectedly on the ground. He licked his finger and wrote in his own spit on a large cobble, one word.

Jack stared at it. ELVNBROD.

“Elven—”

“Don’t.” Mr. Soldier rose. He sounded, oddly, proud as he said, “Don’t name them. They can be called the Lords and Ladies, or the Royalty. In Ireland, you know, they call them the Gentle Folk, or the Little People. Or the Lordly Ones.”

Jack goggled. “—Faeries—?”

“Oh, thatname. Well. Of a kind, maybe. In the faery tales and legends, it’s true, faeries do steal human children. And that is what these ones do, the ones we have here.”

Jack stood back. “You are out of your tree.”

“They stole me. Yes. Though, believe me, I wanted to go with them. They make you want to go, more than you can bear. They’re old as the hills, fair as the morning. They look young as children, or adolescents, that’s why they like the mortalyoung. In their country, you stay young too, and immortal. They live under the hills. It’s like Paradise, there.”

“So what’s Paradise like, then?” Jack demanded.

“Like the best and most wonderful place you can imagine, then better.”

The sun beat on Jack’s head. The word Elvnbrodhad faded from the cobble. He felt dizzy. Did he want to shake the old man—or—was he starting to believe him? Don’t be a fool.

“So, then,” Jack said, adult and cool, “These thingswant to take Luce away with them, like they wanted you when you were a kid. Only you didn’t go.”

“Oh, but I did.”

“You—you what?”

“Listen. Something gives them the right to take a child. Myself, then. Your sister now. There is a stone in the old Roman fort. The Romans put it there, back in the time of Caesars. It was dedicated to the goddess of light, Brid. They left it here too, when the empire ended. This area has always been a center for Them. But the Stone keeps the village safe. Unless—”

Jack swallowed noisily.

The old man softly said, “There was a Norman warlord in the castle. He sold his youngest daughter and son to the Lordly Ones, in return for riches and luck for himself. He got what he asked, but later his knights learned of it, and gave him to the church. He was burned as a witch. The castle was abandoned as cursed. Even the best luck can run out.”

“Luck …” said Jack, dully. “Money—”

“After a long while, one of the warlord’s children was returned. The Lordly Ones had to let him go, because the luck had failed. They didn’t want to, nor did the boy want to come back. The moment he breathed the air of this world, he became old as the hills himself. Yet he lived on. The power of immortality preserved him, but not his youth. He lives still. Perhaps he always must.”

The man’s face was like a carved stone. Jack took a step away.

Just then, the church clock struck four. It didn’t always strike—but now it did and the chimes filled him with a terror without cause. Then he knew why. Luce. He reeled away up the Lane, and sprinted for the school.

She was gone. The teacher he found in the tree-planted yard told him she’d seen Luce running off. One of her friends had tried to interest Luce in seeing a new foal someone had, but Luce said today she had to be home.

Jack bolted back towards the house.

As he ran, the thoughts drummed in his skull. Normans—Romans—Brid’s protective altar stone that gave its name to the village—Luce so mad to reach the fields she jumped out of a window—singing out there all those evenings in the dusk—to herself? Or to what? The figure among the grain, amused, patient—greedy. And Susie winning the Lottery, such good luck.

When he burst into the house, Susie was sitting there with her shoes off, drinking water from a bottle.

“Jack! I didn’t get the job—but there’s much better news—I met Ken Angel in town—you know, that TV thing I did. He’s down here looking for locations. He said—now waitfor it—he’d like me aboard on this production. Oh, just two or three lines—but … well don’t look so astounded. I can still act, you know.”

“Is Lucy here?” said Jack.

Susie’s flushed face went white. She dropped the water bottle and he watched the water uncoil along the carpet. “What do you mean? Of course she’s not here—you just met her from school—didn’tyou?”

Jack explained Luce had been gone to a mother whose face was now blank with fear.

He thought, even if any of this were possible—it couldn’t be Susie’s fault. She hadn’t—met something—made a bargain—

She was at the phone, rattling it about. “Damn—no line, now of all times—where’s my mobile—” the contents of her bag tipped out on the water on the floor. She stabbed at buttons.

“You’re calling the police.”

“No, a pizza delivery—what do you think?”

Something slid into Jack’s mind—he thought of foxes in London, on the streets in the early morning, sleeping in gardens—man had taken over so much of the open country, now the foxes had come to live where the people were.

Were Theylike that? Did they in fact like to be close, maybe just in that wood up there—watching their chance, intrigued by cricket on the green, the pub with their name, the trains. Waiting. In case something might become available—

All this was madness.

Jack stood fighting with himself. Then he realized Susie wasn’t talking into her mobile. She said, flatly, “I can’t get a signal.” Then she said, “Where are you going?”

What could he tell her? Nothing.

He ran into the kitchen, opened the back door, ran again. Behind him he could hear her shouting in panic and anger. He couldn’t let that slow him down.

He was practiced now getting over the back fence. He heard her bare feet beating on the path. The fields were like a wall of dry white fire, into which, like a moth, he flew.

They were there.

Yes, he could feel them all around, unseen but present. Some primitive sixth sense had kicked into play inside him—though really, hadn’t it done that from the very start?

Jack stopped running. He pushed forward through the grain. There seemed to be eyes behind every group of stalks. Greeneyes, and hair that blended with the color of the fields. Yet when they letyou see them, they were luminous.

It was no good now thinking he was mental. He knew this was real.

Above the fields, the woods, dark green, with green-gold glitters of sun.

He strode through them, fast, looking everywhere. Birds shrilled warnings, squirrels darted overhead. They were like the heartless servants of what truly lurked here.

The hot, static air seemed full of mocking laughter. Sometimes he called out his sister’s name. It had a hollow sound.

This was useless, but somehow it had to be done. A sick weight was gathering in his stomach. He refused to think about Susie. Even though this was no use, yet he must go on. He wondered vaguely how many times, since people first lived here, someone or other just like Jack, had trudged across this hilly landscape, calling someone’s name, knowing it was no use at all.

The sun westered. He would have killed for one of those exploded colas—of course, Theyhad done that too—and messed up the phones? Some sort of electric psi stuff, like a poltergeist.

Jack came to a halt. Suddenly he’d stepped over dark tree roots, mosses, ferns, and come out on quite a wide road going sunlit through the woods.

The sense of being watched and laughed at lessened. Then he saw there was an ordinary man standing under a tree.

“Thank God, there you are.”

“Mr. Tooth the dentist,” said Jack, confused.

“Thanks for the inevitable joke. Try Alan, if you wouldn’t mind.”

“A. Tooth,” said Jack idiotically. He burst into childish giggling, appalling himself. Then he leaned over and threw up.

When he’d finished, Alan Tooth handed him an unopened bottle of water. Jack gulped, the water helped. He said, “How the hell did you happen to be waiting?”

“It seems everyone comes this route. They used to call it Lordly Way—there’s an old track under the fields and trees. You can still find traces if you know where to look. I’m into amateur archeology. That’s how I first met Soldier. As for you—well after we spoke, I worked it out—abruptly, during my tea break. I cancelled a couple of non-emergencies and called on Soldier myself, this evening. Then I knew.”

“Do you know … Does it happen?”

“Yes. I think so. Not often. This is the first for about half a century. The police scoured the place that time. They said it was child abduction, the usual filthy human thing. It wasn’t, though, I don’t think so. My mother told me about it. A boy that time, twelve years old. Very fair hair. Theylike the ones that look the most like they do, you see.”

“He—Soldier—said it had to be a bargain.”

“No. A certain kind of wishingseems to do it. The mother of the boy that time, she’d made a thing of telling everyone she wished she’d never had him, was sick to death of him, wanted a better life instead. And the funny thing is, after this child went missing, the police never had her under suspicion. Then she met a man with a load of dosh and married him.”

Jack put his hand on the nearest tree to steady the rocking world.

Now he knew who had made the bargain that involved Luce—or formed the wishthat wrecked the protective magic for her of Brid’s Stone. It was Michael. Susie had never everwished her family gone. She had been happy. But Michael invented a new personality for Susie—a woman who hated her kids and only wanted her old life back—and this was the Susie he slapped and punched. And all that time Michael told them all how sick of them hewas. Sick enough to get up and leave for ever. And with that thought he must have changed his loser’s luck—and they too received the edge of it. And also they had been dragged towards the nearest place where the payment for Michael’s luck must be made. Jack remembered the three of them looking at the estate agents stuff. Susie, and Luce, had fixed on Bridestone the moment they saw it.

“Come on,” said Alan Tooth. “We’d better get you home. Your mother’ll need you.”

“Then it’s hopeless—searching?”

Alan’s face fell. He no longer looked particularly grown-up himself. “Let’s hope not. But better leave it to the police.”

“You said—”

“I know. But going on the records, no one ever got them back. Not even—a body.”

“Unless they came back themselves centuries after—like Soldier.”

Someone spoke out of the wood. Both Jack and Alan jumped violently. “It’s New Moon,” said the voice of Soldier. “Go we up that highest hill. Go careful.”

He came out of the wood, his face holy as that of a knight carved on a tomb. His speech was altered by time and memory, and hewas altered—strong, perhaps irresistible.

The climb up the hill was hard work. Stony outcrops, beech and elder trees, interrupted the path. The hill was coated in tangled grass. Far behind, the golden sun was sinking into the land, taking away the light.

“See,” said Soldier, “she is risen.”

The crescent moon was up the hill, still faint in the sunset.

The remains of the fort above seemed all one with the jumble of the hill.

“This is where the entrance lie, to their domain,” said Soldier.

Alan added, “Yes, it’s supposed to be under this hill. That’s why the Romans had trouble here, and brought in the druids—most unusual. They weren’t normally friends. The druids suggested the Stone of Brid. Roman soldiers tended to prefer worshipping Mithras. Not here.”

Alan was seeming more scholarly, and Soldier more insane. Defensive? Jack had no defense. He didn’t even know why they had come up here—but again, the compulsionwas intense.

Maybe Theyliked somebody to see what they could do, how beautiful they were, how clever—

The last sun was squashed out just as they made the final stretch. Both Jack and Alan were dripping sweat. Soldier wasn’t, though he looked three times Alan’s age. The darkening light now became actual darkness. Shadow sprawled from rocks, trees, down from the sky itself. The moon, though, brightened, a white rip in the dusk.

The jagged Roman walls were in front of them. Ruin and nightfall robbed them of any shape or logic. A portion of archway stood ahead, and beyond it a kind of grassy court that looked as if sheep had grazed it recently. Down a topple of slope, Jack saw a formless stone.

“There,” panted Alan. “There it is. The altar.”

“They will always come here,” said Soldier softly, “when they have gotten, to show their triumph to the Stone. God wills. They are already here.”

Jack stared, hair rising on arms and neck.

Through liquid shadow, something pale, that shone—

He could see them. The Lordly Ones, the—

Elvenbrood.

He didn’t try to count, but he thought there were fourteen—one for every year of his sister’s life. Yes, they were beautiful all right. Their skins were pearl, hair moonlit clouds. Some were male, others female, but their clothes were the same, misty, clinging on slender bodies, but also flowing … there were jewels on them like nothing he’d ever seen or imagined, with great tears of light inside. They had daggers too, and swords, of some silvery metal that couldn’t be steel. And as he gazed at them, hypnotized, Jack saw Luce, there in the middle of them. Like them she had flowers in her hair.

He wanted to shout to her. Theywere smiling and laughing, and so was she. Laughter like silver bells and silver daggers—

His mind yelled in the prison of his paralyzed body—but he couldn’t move, and neither it seemed could Alan.

The Lordly Ones danced their stately dance along the hill, with Luce dancing with them, and coming to the altar, they bowed, and their bowing was full of the most exquisite scorn.

Alan croaked something. “D’you see?”

Another thing had formed, beyond the altar, right there. It was a hole into emptiness, but down the tunnel of it was a pulsing, gorgeous glow—

“It’s the gate, the—way into the underhill—”

Trying to move, heart roaring, pinned to the spot—

Jack’s struggle seemed to dislodge something outside himself.

Soldier.

“Here I am. Here, your child that you loved, who loved you hundred on hundred years. The one you sent into exile, lost in this world that, to your heaven-country, is hell—” Soldier moved among them, with extraordinary grace. He moved—as Theydid. Not like an old man in clothes from the garbage in a dustbin. He spoke in some language Jack had never heard—almost a twisted sort of Germanic French—Jack somehow understood every word.

“Don’t take that other child,” said Soldier to the Lordly Ones, royally scornful as they were. “Do you really want her? Ignorant and unformed and knowing nothing of your glory. No, take me again, out of this bitter world. I love you so. And I have learned all there is to know here. I am like a book you will be able to read for a thousand years.”

The beings on the hill had ceased to move about. They looked stilly at Soldier.

Luce, petulant suddenly, cried, “It’s only that stupid mad old man—”

One of the beings struck her lightly, across the face. He did not speak, but turning to Soldier, he reached up and breathed into the old man’s mouth. Although there were no words, Jack knew what the being had said: Let us then remind ourselves of how you were. Let us compare and judge.

You could make no excuses. It happened—in front of Jack’s eyes. Age and decay fell from Soldier like a discarded shell. He stood there, straight as a spear, a boy of maybe thirteen, golden skinned, unmarked, sun-gold hair to his waist.

Yes, said the voice that hadno voice, he is better.

Laughing, Soldier looked green-eyed over his shoulder at Jack and Alan stuck there to the ground. “Farewell, men of mud. Farewell, world of dust. Know for always you could not have kept her, had They not loved me better than she.”

A dazzle hit the hillside. Tree-tops and walls flared like neon, faded.

They were gone, the beings from the hill, the old man who had become a boy. Only one last pale shape remained, lying on the grass.

Paralysis left Jack. “Luce!”

When he touched her, she opened her eyes, and looked at him, annoyed. “Why did you wake me up, Jack? What time is it?” And then, surprised but not alarmed, “Why am I up here?”

Jack couldn’t speak. It was Alan who had to spin her some yarn that she’d come up here on a dare. Oddly, as she listened she seemed to believe him, to rememberthe dare—and nothing else unusual at all.

Alan and Jack talked later. It was a secret they had to keep always from Susie, and from Luce, too. “It wasn’t just they loved Soldier more than Lucy, Jack. It was because you and Susie love her so much. That other woman who hated her boy—Soldier could never have made a swap with him, I doubt if he even tried. I think he only warned Lucy too, to make her more likely to do it—you know how girls can be. Or maybe when he was saner he did try to stop those things. Would she have been happier—there? Well, yes. But that’s not it. We’re supposed to live out here.”

Jack and Alan often had talks now, since Susie had moved the family to the town, and Susie and Alan became an Item. Susie was rehearsing for her part in Ken Angel’s TV drama—it had nothing to do with faeries.

It was a year later that police in Gloucester found the burnt out Cherokee Jeep with Michael’s body in it. It had gone off a country road into some trees. They said Michael would have been killed at once, the fire had happened afterwards. It seemed from bits of evidence, Michael had become rich, after leaving Susie. No one could find any trace of how, or where. It was a real mystery.

But Jack knew, he and Alan, though thisthey did not discuss: how Michael had come by his sudden money luck, the edge of which had rubbed off on Susie. Knew too how Michael would not have been dead when his vehicle caught fire. Like Soldier’s father, the Norman warlord ten centuries before, Michael had been burned alive.

Tanith Leewas born in 1947 in London, England. She began to write at the age of nine. In 1970-71 three of Lee’s children’s books were published. In 1975 DAW Books published her novel The Birthgrave, and thereafter twenty-six of her books, enabling her to become a full-time writer. To date she has written sixty-two novels and nine collections of novellas and short stories (she has published over two hundred short stories and novellas). Four of her radio plays have been broadcast by the BBC in the UK and she has written two episodes of the BBC Cult TV series Blake’s Seven.

Lee has twice won the World Fantasy Award for short fiction, and was awarded the August Derleth Award in 1980 for her novel Death’s Master.

In 1992 Lee married the writer John Kaiine, her partner since 1987. They live in South East England with one black and white and one Siamese cat.

Her Web site address is www.tanithlee.com.

Author’s Note

I first had the idea for this story when I was seventeen. It seemed to me that all the wild land in England was being taken over by Man. And so, just like foxes, frogs, and owls the Fairy Kind might end up living very close—even in our fields and gardens…. The Elvenbrood themselves appeared mentally before me, and have stayed in my mind, therefore, for almost forty years.