While they met at the stables, it was just a convenient place. They didn’t ride. “I’m not risking another incident on horseback,” said Olivia, “no matter what you can tell the horse in question, Charlotte.”
“Oh, I can’t tell them anything if they’re too scared,” Miss Woodwell said, shaking her head and rolling her eyes in a way that was almost equine itself. “They’re a great deal like people, you know. Have you ever had much luck telling a man not to be stupid if something’s frightening him?”
“I can’t say I’ve tried,” Olivia said.
“I have,” said Gareth, not letting himself dwell on that particular memory, “and you’re right. Shall we?”
Miss Woodwell grinned. “Absolutely. Except…will you be all right, Dr. St. John?”
Gareth lifted his walking stick. “I should be, with this. Quite possibly better than I would be riding.”
Olivia was carrying a stick too, but hers would never have done for walking. It was slim, polished, and about the length of her forearm. There were symbols carved along its length, letters that looked somehow Arabic and runic at the same time. Wand was the appropriate word, probably.
“I never saw you use that before,” said Gareth.
“I generally haven’t needed it. Or any other tools. Words and patterns have mostly sufficed for anything that’s come up here.”
They walked down the road toward the forest, with the wind plucking at their coats and hats and the sun bright in their eyes. Gareth turned his head a little, which also gave him an excuse to watch Olivia. He wasn’t sure if that was an advantage or not.
He’d tried not to think about her, not to remember the taste of her mouth, the way her body had felt against his, soft and firm, or the sounds she’d made at the height of her passion. Sometimes he succeeded. Mostly he failed, particularly at night and in the morning, when he surrendered to memory and the partial relief of his hand.
Now he looked across at her, her face flushed and shining above her brown cloak, and felt desire and, more dangerously, simple admiration. Particularly when she turned her head and smiled.
“I forgot how pleasant it could be,” she said, “wandering about in the autumn.”
“Oh, rather,” said Miss Woodwell and laughed. “My nurses never liked it as much. I used to sneak out. To tell the truth, I used to slip my leash any chance I could get, any season of the year. But I always liked autumn best.”
“It must have been different outside of England,” Olivia said.
“Autumn, yes. Me, no. I never really reformed, you understand, just outgrew the bonds after a while. Englefield’s pleasant enough to make me behave, though. I couldn’t ask for anything better, except maybe the sea.”
Olivia nodded. “You were born on the coast, you said.”
“Born and raised on some coast or another. Near Millbay, and Cairo, and then Ramsgate. Now Ramsgate, I suppose…This boarding business makes it deuced difficult to say where you do live, doesn’t it? But I’ve always been near the water till now. You too, I suppose.”
“Yes. Not the sea, but some sort of water.” Olivia turned toward Gareth a little, guarding her eyes from the sun. “And you?”
“Not growing up. My father always said God made the sea to try men’s courage. My mother said he meant his constitution.” Gareth smiled, remembering. “Her brother was in the navy. I’d imagine a woman could hate the sea on that account, but she always seemed rather fond of it. On holidays and such.”
“Was your father religious,” Miss Woodwell asked, “or just, um, poetic?”
“Both, I think,” said Gareth. “He was a vicar. Still is, I suppose. He’s getting ready to step down.”
That had caused another moment of dislocation when he’d gone home. Of course men did retire, even men of the cloth, and of course it had been some time. Gareth hadn’t expected the man to go on eternally, changelessly preaching on Sundays and frowning over his sermons on Saturday nights. It had just been…odd to have proof he wouldn’t. Odder than his own changes, in a way. He’d accepted he was no longer the young man he had been, but he’d been unprepared to find changes in his world as well.
“And you were in the army,” said Olivia, thoughtfully. “That’s three of us with some connection.”
“Common enough for younger sons, certainly,” said Gareth, “even in this day and age.”
Miss Woodwell cocked her head, sparrowlike, and peered at Gareth. “I’d no notion you’d served too, though I should’ve guessed. Somewhere rough, was it?”
“Egypt,” he said, “and then the Sudan. Trouble enough, even for a surgeon, and I saw the worst of it only secondhand.”
“Bad enough, I should think! Papa got reassigned before things got very bad, but we heard plenty of stories. How about you, Mrs. Brightmore? Foreign lands and interesting chaps trying to shoot you?”
Olivia shook her head. “I might have gone with my husband,” she said. Her voice was no longer cheerful but matter-of-fact and brisk. “But he never went himself. He fell ill shortly after we came to London.”
“Oh,” said Miss Woodwell, looking chagrined. “Should’ve put a bridle on my tongue, shouldn’t I?”
Again, Olivia shook her head, the fabric of her hood rippling around her face. “I brought it up, really. Besides, he’s been at rest for years now.” She smiled. “At my age, one is bound to have lost a few people. It’s neither a shock nor an affront when I find them connected to the conversation.”
“You’ve got about thirty years to go before you’re allowed to start saying ‘at my age,’” said Miss Woodwell.
Olivia laughed. “Spend enough time around Mr. Fairley and anyone will feel decrepit,” she said. “Not that the rest of your fellow pupils are much less disturbing on that account.”
“The lady speaks truth,” said Gareth. He didn’t intend his words to have a double meaning, but Olivia’s gaze was wary for a second when she looked at him. “As a gentleman and the oldest member of the party,” he added, “I suppose it’s my duty to grow a long white beard now and provide relative comfort to both of you.”
The women laughed at that. “I’d prefer you didn’t,” said Olivia. Gareth thought only he saw her relax a little. He was almost certainly the only one to feel relief when she did.
A few more steps on a narrower road, and the forest enclosed the three of them.
***
Nothing about the forest felt different to Olivia. The shade made it even chillier than the road had been, a chill balanced somewhat by the fact that the trees shielded them from the wind, but that was all. She couldn’t see anything that would have been out of place in any other forest, certainly neither lightning nor strange animals, nor could she hear anything strange, though they walked in silence for a quarter hour.
Then, when Olivia could barely make out the path behind them, she stopped to dig out the map Mr. Grenville had given them. She glanced quickly at Gareth and Charlotte, but their faces held only the same blank look she suspected was on hers. Olivia shrugged, half responding to them and half to herself.
“After all,” she said quietly, “if strange things happened here all the time, the place would have much more of a reputation. All the same, Charlotte, perhaps you should start making inquiries?”
“Glad to, as soon as I see something that looks talkative.”
Olivia nodded and frowned down at the map. She could see the path they were on. It would fork soon unless the map was out of date. Paths got overgrown in places like this, didn’t they? She wished briefly she’d spent any time in the wilderness.
“Here,” said Gareth. He reached out a hand but didn’t snatch the map as a younger man might have. When Olivia looked up at him, he lifted an eyebrow. “I can read a map,” he said, “and the two of you have other duties, as I understand it. Speaking of which…”
“After the first turn, I was thinking.” Olivia surrendered the map and began to walk again. “Far enough to be really inside but still some way away from the center.”
“And what exactly do you plan to do? No, not exactly, I don’t think I want to know details.”
“I can simply draw energy, if I need to. Usually one puts power into something, a ward or a weapon or a good-luck charm, or disperses it back into the ground, as I did with Miss Donnell. But I believe it’s possible to hold it and then release it.”
“And you know how much is typical? How much”—Gareth waved his free hand around, map and all—“effort for how much power, and that sort of thing?”
“For here, or for London, yes. I’ve done enough work to have some idea. I generally get some sense of my environment at the same time, magically speaking. Furthermore, given what happened before, I’d imagine any change will be…dramatic.” Olivia grimaced.
“We’ll be on the watch for fireworks, then,” said Charlotte. “You’ve already taken one bad spill. Any more, and you might decide we’re more trouble than we’re worth.”
Remembered pain flickered through Olivia’s mind, but only for a moment. The memory of pleasure afterward was far more vivid and far less willing to retreat. She hoped the gloom would hide her sudden flush.
“Right,” said Gareth. Was his voice a little thicker than it might otherwise have been? Olivia couldn’t tell.
“Wait!”
Charlotte, frozen in her tracks, hissed a whisper toward them. She gestured with one hand toward the edge of the path, then spoke again, at normal volume but not in her normal voice. Her words had the same not-quite echo Olivia had heard before. “I see you there, but you don’t have to run. We’d like to talk. I promise we won’t harm you.” She knelt down, heedless of her dress hem falling into the dirt.
Something moved in the shadow of the trees, slow and close to the ground. Olivia spotted a dark muzzle, then shiny black eyes, and then a small, round body covered in prickles.
The hedgehog took a few more steps out, peered at Charlotte, and snuffled a few times. Rather large for a hedgehog, Olivia thought.
Charlotte blinked. “Charlotte Woodwell,” she said. “I’m a…student…over at Englefield. These are my teachers.” The hedgehog made a few more noises. “Yes. I don’t see why not.” She glanced back over her shoulder. “She wants to come back with us.”
“Ah.” Olivia turned to stare at Gareth, who just stared back. Finding no help there, she turned to Charlotte again. “She likes you?”
“She doesn’t know me,” said Charlotte, clearly finding the question absurd. “She wants to live around people, better food and less chance of being eaten. Says she’s done it before.”
“I…yes, for my part.” Olivia said. “I don’t know what the Grenvilles will say when they get home.”
“Oh, they won’t mind,” Charlotte said, waving one hand airily. She turned back to the hedgehog. “You can come with us, but we’re staying out here for a bit yet. The more you can tell us, the sooner we’ll leave.”
“I see” said Gareth in the tone of a man who wasn’t at all sure any of this was really happening. “If she’s coming with you, perhaps you could chat while we walk?” He glanced around the forest. “Best to keep moving, I think, before it gets darker.”
“Might as well,” said Charlotte and then glanced back to the hedgehog and held out her hands. “Will you?”
The hedgehog trundled obligingly forward and let Charlotte, rather gingerly, pick her up. She didn’t make much noise as they walked along, or not much that Olivia could hear: a few grunts, squeaks, or snuffles. Charlotte seemed to be listening intently, though. From time to time, she’d ask questions in a quiet voice or nod. Mostly, she just looked curious.
“To put it briefly,” she said, looking over at Olivia after a little while, “you’re right about the place being strange. A couple times she’s seen the colored lightning you mentioned, and the white birds, though she hides from the bigger ones. There’s a white deer somewhere around here too, or was a few years ago.”
Olivia blinked and peered at the small creature in Charlotte’s arms. “A few years? Must have been half her life.”
“That’s another thing. The beasts here are normal for the most part, but every so often a few of them are born different. Bigger, smarter, longer lives.” Charlotte shrugged. “She says she’s seen ten years, she thinks, and she doesn’t feel old. She also says she went wandering for a bit when she was young and lived with a boy for a while.”
“Does she know why creatures are different here?” Gareth asked.
Charlotte snorted and shook her head. “Doesn’t know or care. She’s still a hedgehog, after all.”
“Right,” said Gareth and sighed as he looked ahead. Olivia followed his gaze and saw the path forking, the branches trailing off farther into the forest. “I suppose we’ll go ahead with the rest of this outing, then.”