She shivered, groped farther, found emptiness, and slipped under a pointed arch, crawling through the leaves, breathing hard.
Then she stood up, in a shower of drops.
The interior was a damp green space, gloomy with filtered light. Her breath smoked, she glanced around and then up into the cavernous hollow of the roof, where a pigeon fluttered.
“Where are you?”
He didn’t answer, but she could hear his breathing.
She took out the flashlight, switched it on, and flashed it around.
Gideon was a dark shape under the hanging ivy that infested the ancient stone chimney. He crouched, sullen in the ruined hearth, and as she stepped closer, he looked up. She gasped.
His face was streaked with blood, his eyes red-rimmed.
The sleeves of his green coat were in rags.
And his fingers were raw.
“What the hell happened to you?” she whispered.
He glared at her as if he hated her. “I was the wren,” he said. “They hunted me.”
14
When he came forth from the Wood, Oisin Venn was changed. He dressed in fine clothes, laughed a cold laugh. Horses filled his stables, his sheep flocks increased, jewels studded his fingers. At diverse strange hours his house was lit with lights and music and the sound of revelry and merriment rang across the moor.
But the village folk locked their doors and brooded over their fires. For to have congress with unearthly spirits leads only to damnation and the gates of Hell. And they feared for their souls.
Chronicle of Wintercombe
THE SEVEN CATS slept and snoozed along the upstairs corridor.
The one on the window seat was the first to wake. It raised its head and opened its eyes, slits of green in the black fur. Around its neck on a silver collar, a small disc read Primo.
Dusk was falling; beyond the gloomy wood the sky was fading. Already the corridor had shadows moving down the walls, rain-patterns on the ornamental coving, the cobwebbed picture rail.
The cat listened.
A raindrop plopped into a bucket.
The cat’s fur bristled. It sat up, alert, and at the same time the other six woke too, and each turned a dark head to stare down the corridor toward the stairs at the end.
Footsteps.
They were as soft as a ghost’s; they walked up the wooden treads with barely a creak of the boards.
The cat jumped down; it sat with the others on the floor, a row of wide watching eyes, twitching tails.
The footsteps reached the top of the stairs; they paused, and then began to approach down the corridor, soft as dust falling in a disused chimney.
The cats spat.
In sudden panic they scattered, some behind the curtain, one flattened under the bookcase, another skidding to the dusty alcove behind a table.
The footsteps passed them, bare feet tiptoeing down the hessian matting, past the rows of bedroom doors to the locked room at the end.
Without pausing, they passed through the wall.
The seven replicant cats slid out and stared at one another. One turned and ran fast toward the kitchen. The others, very softly, tails held high, paced in a solemn line down the corridor and sat outside the door in a row.
As if whoever had gotten in should be kept there.
Venn was lying, fully dressed, on the bed.
It was an old four-poster, the curtains removed years ago. His eyes were closed, but he knew exactly when she came through the walls of the room.
He sat up slowly.
Summer was sitting at the dressing table.
The mirror had been removed, but he could still see her reflected, as in some magic looking glass. She smiled at him. “Tired, Venn?”
“Why are you here?”
“I can enter the house now, remember? I thought it would be nice to . . . visit.”
“I don’t want you here.” His voice was a low anxiety. “The Wood is your place. The Summerland. Not here.”
She ignored him. Reaching out, she took up the black-and-silver brush, and began to brush her shiny dark hair. “These things are Leah’s, aren’t they. She had lovely taste.”
“Get your filthy hands off them.”
“Oh. Not nice, Venn.” She put the brush down and opened a drawer. Taking out a jewelry box, she flipped it open. Her fingers danced over brooches and rings.
He came over quickly and shut it. “Get out.”
“You’ve kept her room exactly as it was. How quaint that is! You know, we sometimes wonder about mortals. We laugh and puzzle about them. How it must be to know . . . know all your life, that one day you’ll die.” She smiled up at him. “The strange thing is, most mortals seem to accept it. Except you, Venn. You won’t.”
He stepped back. “You know nothing about death. Or love.”
“True, but I know about you. And you can’t fool me with your talk of love, Venn. You don’t want Leah back because you love her. You want her because you will not be denied. You won’t be beaten. Not by death, not by time. You won’t give in. You’ve never learned how to lose. You think wanting her back makes you more human. In fact, it proves you are Shee.”
She stood close to him.
“That’s the choice you face, Oberon. The Wood, or the World. To be human, and die. Or to be with us and free of it all. Yet, you know, you’ll never be quite at home in either place. How difficult that must be!”
She raised her hand to his face. He stepped back. “You have no idea how I feel.”
“Yes I do. Once you were mine. I know everything about you.”
She stepped closer. His eyes moved away from her, obsessively, as if by long habit, to the painting where it hung on the wall, Leah’s face dark and intent, her eyes watching him as if she saw.
“There she is!” Summer twirled, glanced up. “My enemy.” Then her eyes widened, as if with a sudden brilliant idea. “Do you want me to be her, Venn? Is that it?”
Her hair grew longer, lustrous. Suddenly she was taller, her lips paler. The bones of her skull shifted. Her eyes darkened. “Is this better, Venn?”
“Stop it.”
“I can be her. Exactly the same. You need never know the difference.”
“Stop!” He backed off, then paused, fascinated. Because, before his eyes, Summer was transforming, and glance by glance, gesture by gesture, the turn of the head, the laughter in her eyes became Leah’s, and despite himself his heart gave a great leap of fear and joy.
“Is this better, Venn?” she said.
Even her voice was perfect.
He couldn’t speak. He couldn’t think. She came and took his head, and her fingers were soft on his skin. Leah’s fingers. Leah’s lips lifted to his. Touched.
An explosion of knocking rattled the door.
“Excellency! Is anything wrong?”
Venn blinked. He stepped back.
“Excellency! There’s an intruder in the house! Are you safe, sir?”
With a convulsive movement Venn pushed the creature away and stalked to the window, dragging both hands up over his face and through his tangled hair. Then he turned, with a howl of fury. The room was empty.
Only a soft perfume and a softer laugh hung in the air.
“Excellency?” The door was flung open; Piers stood there with all the cats behind him like a row of guards.
His small sharp eyes darted around the room. “Is everything okay?”
Venn glanced up to the painting. For a moment he was silent with misery, but when he spoke, his voice was as cold as ever. “Nothing’s changed, Piers. Nothing is okay.”
Diary of Alicia Harcourt Symmes.
Of course, making the motion film had been such a thrill, I thought of very little else for days after!