by At Home in Yorkshire (or Derbyshire, one is never so impolitic as to specify), spring is, at last, springing, and deliciously. I don’t know whether House is celebrating something, but there are early roses everywhere, and most of them are pink. The air smells like heaven; I’ve taken to leaving my bedroom window open all the time, though it’s only April. It’s warm enough.
Over the course of the winter, two possibilities have emerged:
Either the voices behind the wallpaper are holding an interminable greengrocer’s market, or—
I am, at last, going quite mad.
If I sit, as I often do, on the floor in some out-of-the-way corner of the House, with my face pressed inelegantly to the wall and my eyes closed, I can hear….something. Rhubarb rhubarb rhubarb, says somebody. Several somebodies.
I mentioned this to Jay, once or twice (which was brave, wasn’t it? If anyone is going to imagine me stark raving bonkers I’d rather, above all, that it wasn’t Jay). He didn’t seem appalled so much as… tired. ‘Oh?’ said he, mildly enough. ‘Is this to be the beginning of another whirlwind magickal adventure?’
I don’t know that he was ecstatic at the prospect, which is fair enough. It isn’t so long since I contrived to drag him into a dance-off with a horde of the unquiet undead, and a man doesn’t get over a thing like that in a hurry. ‘I don’t know,’ I answered, honestly enough. ‘They really do seem to be talking about comestibles.’
‘Comestibles,’ Jay echoed. ‘There are voices in the walls and they’re talking about provender.’
He said this with a certain flatness in his tone, and a hint of the wary side-eye. Bad signs. ‘Rhubarb, mostly,’ I hastened to assure him. ‘Nothing particularly bizarre.’
‘Very reassuring,’ agreed Jay. ‘No one has ever launched a bloody rebellion over fruits and vegetables, but confectionery, now. That would be a different matter entirely.’
I nodded enthusiastically. ‘Who among us hasn’t at least thought about it, occasionally? Let’s overthrow the government and install the Pastry Queen.’
‘Armies of ladyfingers and eclairs,’ Jay concurred. ‘Brutally efficient, and really rather sweet about it.’
‘No, but really,’ I persevered. ‘That is what it sounds like.’
Jay attempted no further remonstrance. I suppose, given everything that has occurred of late, the notion that there are voices chatting behind the wallpaper and they’re partial to summer fruits isn’t particularly strange. ‘Let me know if there’s any mention of cucumbers,’ he said, wandering off. ‘Then we should definitely be concerned.’
There hasn’t been, that I’ve been able to discern. Just the rhubarb.
The thing is that I’ve learned how to listen, and I mean really listen. It’s part of being the new Merlin. Even rocks have something to say for themselves, if you can catch the trick of their language. Houses, now: houses have a lot going on.
And our beloved House is a positive hive of industry and conversation, if only I could catch the trick of that language. I can’t, quite, and I’m convinced House is doing it on purpose.
I began this morning in fruitless (so to speak) communion with the ladies and gentleman behind the wallpaper, as I too often do; parked, this time, in the first-floor common room, cross-legged upon the floor by the window and with my face pressed to the wainscot.
Rhubarb rhubarb, whispered someone.
The fine folk of the Society have ceased to question me on this behaviour, which can only mean I am developing a reputation for such eccentricity there is no further use in even trying to understand me. I can’t say that I mind. Where’s the fun in being the living embodiment of Albion’s most ancient magick if you can’t be battier than a belfry at Halloween?
Today’s adventures progressed, shall we say. The process of deep-listening to the land (as Ophelia, previous caretaker of Merlin’s magick, would have it), is delightfully mindful: I sit and breathe and listen and absorb until I am one with the world around me. Not quite literally, although sometimes very literally, and in this case—
Rhubarb rhubarb, the voices uttered, tantalisingly just beyond the range of clear hearing, and I pressed my face closer to the wall with eyes closed and mind very much on another plane of reality; listened to our beloved House in its every feature: the gentle creak of its timbers, the wordless steadiness of its stones; the warm, spring breeze wafting through its open windows; the rattle and clatter of its occupants, busily engaged with the nothings and somethings of the day. I felt myself sinking, by slow degrees, melding my consciousness with that of the House until I could almost have been one of those voices behind the wallpaper; I could almost reach them, almost distinguish real, whole verbiage—there were words in the midst of the garble—I had only to stretch a fraction farther and I’d have it—
A sense of sudden pressure assailed me, fracturing my concentration. A weight, resting heavily upon me, stopping my breath: I twitched, and then heaved.
The pressure lifted; somebody uttered a surprised syllable.
Then I heard my name.
‘Ves!’ said the somebody, and as my consciousness separated from the House and drifted slowly back into its rightful spot I realised that it was Jay. ‘Ves, is that you? What the—’
I stretched, or tried to. My limbs did not cooperate; seemed, in fact, to be warped into some unfamiliar configuration; I shook myself mightily.
Jay thumped my head, or what had taken the place of my head: it came to me, dimly, that I had developed upholstery.
‘Ves,’ Jay said again, impatient now. ‘This is ridiculous, even for you.’ Rather irritable, for Jay: I detected in the irascible words a strong note of concern.
‘To be fair,’ I uttered, manifesting vocal chords from somewhere, ‘this isn’t as bad as it could have been.’ I referred, of course, to a prior escapade, in which I had turned myself (inadvertently, I hasten to add) into a large rock; a Fairy Stone, to be precise; an object so impervious to human interference that I might, were I unlucky, have remained in said shape eternally.
‘Come out of that,’ Jay said severely. ‘Or I’ll be forced to sit on you again.’
‘You wouldn’t!’
‘You’re an exquisitely comfortable armchair.’
I felt obscurely pleased by this tribute. ‘Exquisitely! No, am I really?’
‘The living replica of my own, very favourite chair, except for the general purpleness of you. A discrepancy I might have noticed sooner, were I not very absorbed in this treatise on Yllanfalen architecture.’
Ooh. ‘I want to read that,’ I said, instantly.
‘It’s just arrived. Your mother sent it over.’ Jay, curse him, was smug.
My mother—being the current queen of an ancient Yllanfalen kingdom (don’t ask)—has access to all sorts of delicious intellectual goodies, though I usually have to twist her arm rather hard before she’ll share them.
Of course, if I wanted to read anything ever again, I’d have to stop being a chair first.
‘Jay,’ I said in a small voice.
‘Yes.’
‘I think I’m stuck.’
‘Do you want me to fetch Zareen?’
I never did learn exactly what Zar had done to me, on the occasion of the Fairy Stone debacle. I only knew that it had hurt, even when I was a slab of rock. ‘No,’ I said hastily. ‘I can do this.’
Jay waited. He did a creditable job of appearing coolly unconcerned by my plight, like a man whose confidence in my capacity to get myself out of the absurd fixes I get myself into can only be described as “boundless”. But I can detect an aura of supreme, if suppressed, tension from a hundred paces, even as a chair.
‘I’ll be all right,’ I told him.
‘I’d be glad if you could demonstrate that in more tangible fashion. Fairly soon.’
‘Is that Jay-speak for “I’d like to hug you so tight you can’t breathe?”’
‘I might crack a rib. Possibly two.’
An enticing prospect. Hm.
If I’d thought myself into an involuntary oneness with the House, surely I could think myself into a voluntary restoration of Self. I could start with that purpleness Jay had mentioned, my favourite colour; the moment I was Ves again I’d switch my hair to something vivaciously violet. I thought about cuddling Goodie, the unipup; the soft, velvet feel of Adeline’s gorgeously equine nose; my best dress, and – of course – the relatively new, but perfectly delightful sensation of being wrapped in the arms of Jay.
And when that didn’t work, I went on to hot chocolate – the kind Milady served in silver pots, if she was pleased with me; to stacks of pancakes with ice cream; to laughing with Jay over some trifling joke, and the thunderous expression on Val’s face if she thought I might have dog-eared a page in one of her precious tomes (and I would never).
‘Jay,’ I said, in an even smaller voice. ‘I really am stuck.’
‘Okay,’ he said, with forced calm. ‘Wait one moment, I’ll get help—’
I didn’t have time to prevent him from dashing away (don’t leave me, the small, frightened part of my soul pleaded). I was kicked; not physically but psychically, somehow; as though some obliging, never to be enough revered personage had delivered a swift clout to the insides of my brain; and there, I had eyeballs again, and hands, and limbs with which to cling (a little shamefully) to Jay.
‘What happened,’ said he against my hair.
I attempted a breath, and achieved a slight one; he hadn’t been joking about the cracked ribs, quite. ‘I think—I think House helped me,’ I managed; and at the back of my mind, as though uttered from a great distance away, came the immortal words: Rhubarb, rhubarb.
Thank you, I responded, and added, for good measure: strawberry, strawberry.
‘This Merlin thing,’ said Jay, without in the slightest degree loosening his grip on me. ‘Are you sure you’re getting it right? I mean, legend says he was capable of shape-shifting, but he tended to choose useful things, like birds. Never heard anything about chairs.’
A fair question.
All the inherited wealth that is Merlin’s ancestral magick was now mine entirely (until I chose to retire, and pass it on). Ophelia had deemed me ready a month or so prior—or perhaps she had simply grown weary of carrying it all around herself; it is no inconsiderable burden.
I wasn’t ready, of course. We’d both known that. But no one’s ever ready, not really; not for the thorny, meaty, complex challenges of life. One merely throws oneself in, and manages, somehow—or hovers on the bank for eternity, never quite mustering up the nerve to step off.
I was managing, sort of. And I still had Tuesdays with Ophelia; I’d ask her about the Chair Debacle next time—
My train of thought ended there, for Jay had gone tense again—was positively rigid with it, it was like cuddling an ironing board—‘What’s the matter?’ I prompted.
‘There’s a—’ He stopped.
I poked him in the ribs: no response.
I tried, then, to withdraw myself from the circle of his arms, but that proving ineffectual, I turned us both about, so I was facing the window, and he had his back to it.
A familiar, placid scene met my searching gaze: the prismatic green lawn that is House’s pride and joy stretching away to a horizon clustered with old oaks, one or two of my esteemed Society colleagues strolling about upon it; those roses, roses everywhere, in a thousand shades of pink and peach; the vast, fathomless expanse of the sky soaring above, lightly streaked with wafts of drifting cloud—
And a shape there, a shadow, a distant winged form coming closer—
Jay released me and spun, visibly shaking himself. ‘Sorry,’ he said. ‘It’s odd, but for a minute there I thought I saw—’
‘Griffin,’ I croaked.
‘Yes, I thought I saw a griffin, but that can’t possibly be…’
We fell into a mutual silence, for the dark little silhouette bombed over our beloved old oaks and shot towards the lawns: and there could be no mistaking it, as the seconds passed, no mistaking it at all. We had seen these before, these glorious, majestic beings, the kings and queens of mythical creatures, in undisputed possession of lost Farringale; had declined absolutely to tangle with them, unless obliged; and now here—here came one of them, at speed.
