Tamsin

Julian hadn’t ever met Mrs. Fallowfield. He came ru

She made it in five minutes, though. I’d swear to that, because by the time we arrived, she had those scones and muffins hot from the oven—no microwave, no toaster—and set out on her kitchen table, along with half a dozen kinds of jam and tea with clotted cream. Her farmhouse was a fu

Mrs. Fallowfield watched us eat, but didn’t say much. I didn’t see her pink dog-thing around anywhere. When Julian asked her if she’d always lived here, she answered him, “That I have, boy. Always.” When he asked if anyone lived with her, to help her take care of the farm, she gave him a major Look and didn’t answer—just stuck out an arm and indicated for him to try and bend it. Julian told me later that he could have swung on it, walked on it, done handstands; that arm wasn’t going anywhere. “I’ll bet she pumps iron,” he said. “I’ll bet she’s got a weight room back there somewhere.” I said he ought to ask her, but he never got the chance.

A storm hit while Julian and I were getting ready to leave, with me not a bit wiser about why she’d asked us there in the first place. It blew up with no warning, the way it happens in Dorset, and all we could do was wait it out. Mrs. Fallowfield gave Julian a crumbly picture book that looked as though King Arthur had teethed on it—Julian loves anything old—and she had me sit with her at that one kitchen window to watch the storm. The rain was coming in practically sideways, and the wind was shaking the house so hard that it groaned in the ground like trees do. Mrs. Fallowfield leaned forward, so I could hear her, and said, “Nothing to be feared of. She’s got deep roots, this house.”

Actually, what she said was “thikky hoose,” like the boggart, but I had the feeling she’d done it on purpose—just as she’d spoken in Tamil to Meena—and not slipped back into Old Dorset talk. The more I saw of her, the less I could make her out; all I couhd tell was that she knew it, and she enjoyed it. “Put up wi’ worse, house has,” she said now. Then she added something I couldn’t catch, because of the wind, except for the last words: “… and worse yet coming.”

“What?” I said. “What worse?” Mrs. Fallowfield only gri

I heard them before I saw them; or maybe it was that I couldn’t take in what I was seeing right away. They weren’t in the clouds, but just below them, so that the lightning flared over the faces of the Huntsmen and made their spears and harness twinkle, for God’s sake—green and red and blue, like decorations spi

“Look, ”she ordered me, and I looked. Some of the Huntsmen were men, some women, some neither, some never. Some wore armor and helmets; some were stark naked, carrying no weapons at all, stretched along their mounts’ necks like spiders. I couldn’t make out any faces, not until Mrs. Fallowfield pointed with her free arm, and then I could see them all. I still see them, on bad nights.

Julian dropped his books and came ru

It didn’t last very long, considering how many of them there were, arching from one horizon halfway to the other, like the opposite of a rainbow. The storm dribbled and piddled off toward Dorchester, and the Wild Hunt faded with it, though the Huntsmen’s howling still flickered around the sky after they were gone. Julian came up close beside me, and Mrs. Fallowfield patted his head clumsily. “There, boy,” she said. “There, boy.” But she looked at me for a long time before she spoke to me. Before she finally said, “You saw.”

I didn’t say anything. I just nodded.

Because I’d seen too much and not enough, both. I’d seen the tattered human figure flying before the Wild Hunt, and heard that desperate, hopeless scream once again, even through their clamor. I couldn’t talk—I could barely breathe—and I couldn’t look away. Once, in some science experiment back at Gaynor, when I touched a piece of dry ice, it stuck to my fingers, and the cold actually burned them. Mrs. Fallowfield’s blue eyes were like that: They hurt my eyes, they hurt my chest and my mind to meet, but I had to, until she let go. At last she nodded herself, and said again, “You saw. Go home now.”

I don’t remember leaving her house. I don’t remember a thing about walking home with Julian, except that suddenly we were in front of the Manor, and he was still holding my hand tightly and saying, “I don’t think I like that old woman, Je

“Who cares if I like her or not?” I said. “It doesn’t matter if we like her.” And I pulled loose from him and took off, ru

I was perfectly charming at di

Sally had her Yeovil choir that evening, but I didn’t go with her. I went up to the third floor, to Tamsin’s room—with Mister Cat following me every step of the way—and I let myself in with my bent paper clip, like always. Tamsin wasn’t there. I sat down in her chair and watched Mister Cat sniffing out every corner of the room for Miss Sophia Brown, as though she had her own smell for him, ghost or no, the way Tamsin smelled of vanilla to me. Finally, reluctantly, he came over and climbed into my lap, looking weary. I’ve never seen Mister Cat look just like that. Lazy, yes; pissed off, sure—but not tired and sad. I stroked his throat, and under his chin, but he didn’t purr.