But now I couldn’t sheep. I’d made that whole story up, like I said, just to occupy Julian, and told him it was true without turning a hair. But thinking about it I started wondering if it could be at all near the truth of what really happened with Tamsin and Edric Davies. What was she doing out on a night wild enough to cause her death? And who was Edric if he wasn’t her lover? And if the Other One wasn’t his rival for Tamsin… but I didn’t want to think about the Other One any more than I had to. He was all right in a story, but not out of it.
Sally and Evan weren’t back yet, and Tony was in his studio. I gave sleep half an hour, and then I got up and dressed again and went outside to hunt up the billy-blind.
We’d met him in the North Barn, but I didn’t imagine him living there like the boggart in our house. I figured he’d have a place of his own—a burrow or a den, or even a treehouse—somewhere near the Manor. I didn’t know how to find him—I hoped maybe I’d get lucky and have him come looking for me. Dogs like Albert don’t feel right if there isn’t at least one sheep around to herd somewhere. Maybe it was the same with billy-blinds and people.
It was a mild night, with an apple-smelling breeze making the new metal sheds squeak and grumble; but there was autumn way down under it, like a little cold current nibbling your ankles when you’re swimming. I didn’t go beyond the main buildings. I just wandered more or less aimlessly, trying to look like someone in huge need of advice, which wasn’t difficult. Dairy, nothing—North and South Barns, farmworkers’ parking lot, tractor shed, nothing—workshop, nothing—nameless shed where you stash the stuff that doesn’t belong in any other shed, nothing. Mister Cat kept me company for a while, pouncing at shadows like a kitten, but then he got bored and just never came back out of one shadow or another. I was watching out for the Pooka, and for whatever it was Mister Cat had gone a few rounds with the same night I met the billy-blind; but there didn’t seem to be anybody but me prowling around Stourhead Farm that night. Today that would tell me something.
He was the one who found me. I was trudging back to the South Barn, thinking that I hadn’t checked the loft, when he actually tugged on my pants leg. “You’ll be looking for me, no doubt,” he said, when I got back from wherever I’d jumped to. “Come, I’ve been expecting you.”
Waistcoat, fluffed-up cravat, and this time a long coat, like the kind gunfighters wear in Westerns. I have never found out where he lives, by the way, or who does his laundry. He led me, very importantly—your average billy-blind can strut sitting down—over to a stack of scrap lumber, hopped up onto it so he could look down at me, put his hands on his hips, and announced, “Well, I’ll tell you one thing, child, and that’s not two—nowt but porter and an egg will help that hair. Porter and a brown egg, there’s your ticket. I use it meself, and look at me, would you?”
He did have a great head of curly hair, about the color of stonewashed jeans. I said, really carefully, “I’ll try it, the billy-blind, I promise I will. But that’s not what I was wanting to ask you about.”
“Aye, well, it should have been,” the billy-blind growled, just like Robert Newton. “It’s as well you sought me out, mind, for I’ve meant and meant to speak sharply to you about your friend. The Willoughby.”
“Yes!” I said. “Yes, that’s it, that’s what I wanted to ask!” The billy-bhind grinned like a magician who’s just shown you the card that he couldn’t possibly have guessed you chose. I said, “There’s so much I want to know about her, and she won’t… I mean, like how she died, or why she keeps saying she’s supposed to be somewhere else—or where the Other One fits into all this. And Edric Davies.” I was talking so fast I ran out of breath, while the billyblind stood on that pile of wood, not moving, not saying a word. “And why did you tell her twice to sit still, and what place is it I should stay away from? You’re the billy-blind around here—you tell me.”
The billy-blind wasn’t smiling anymore. If you just looked at his face like anybody else’s, he could have been twenty-five, fifty, sixty. I’m terrible at guessing ages, anyway. But when you stared into those jewelled eyes—I couldn’t have told you what color they were, then or now—you had to realize that he was older than Tamsin, way older. He said, “I give advice, lass. I don’t explain. There’s different.”
“Oh,” I said. “Well, couldn’t you just once make an exception? I mean, she’s your friend, and it’s very important.”
Snort. “My friend, oh aye—yet she’ll not heed the billy-blind’s counsel, never, not she! Sit still? Don’t I see her traipsing the night with you, showing herself to any who’d wish her ill? Don’t I, then?”
Snort. Stamp. Billy-blinds don’t just hand out advice, it matters like mad to them if you take it or not. I said, “Who is it who wishes her ill? If I knew that, maybe I could do something, get her to stay out of sight the way you want. What would it hurt you to tell?”
I was starting to snort a little myself, and the billy-blind was looking almost amused. “Always so, always so. The ones I fancy, they never know how to behave with the billy-blind. Not her, not you, always so.” When he scratched his head with both hands, I still think I maybe saw a pair of bumpy horns, the same color as his hair, but maybe not. “Well, I’ll say this much to you, for that’s a good girl, Tamsin Willoughby, manners or no. But you’ve roused her, that’s your doing, and that shifts things, that makes things to move, d’ye see? And I can’t signify what’s to come of it, indeed I can’t, but there’s looking now, there’s waking and hunting besides hers, beyond hers. Do you see, girl?”
His eyes had hold of me the way the Pooka’s yellow eyes had done, except that these eyes were almost pleading, almost human for that moment. I said, “That’s the Other One.” The billy-blind didn’t answer me. “But he’s gone,” I said. “She told me—Tamsin told me. He’s gone, and he can’t come back.”
The billy-blind said, “You’ll remember to drink eight full glasses of water a day. Grand for the system, that is.”
“I could have gotten that off a damn cereal box!” I yelled at him. “What about the Other One?” But the billy-blind was looking past me, he was listening to something I hadn’t heard yet. When I did hear it, I first thought it was Evan and Sally driving in, and I went on telling myself it was them as long as I could, because I didn’t want it to be what I already knew it was. I’m going to come back and fix that sentence later.
Most times, like I’ve said, it had to be a really fierce night for you to hear the Wild Hunt in the sky. But this night was as calm as calm, even with that bit of a breeze, and that’s what made it so terrible. Because suddenly they were up there, right overhead, the horses and the dogs, the howling and the horns and the rattling hoofbeats, the screechy laughter that didn’t sound like wild geese for a damn minute—all of it, all of it. And I wasn’t safe in the house, behind walls and a window with Julian holding my hand too tight, but out on the open ground, where they could see me— and they saw me, I felt it—that was the storm, their awareness bursting over me. I stood where I was, not because I was brave, but because there wasn’t any room under the woodpile, with the billyblind already there. I just stood alone in the storm, like Tamsin, looking up.
Anyway, I was alone until Mister Cat landed on my shoulder. I hardly felt him, I was so paralyzed, until he dug in his claws and shoved in close to my neck and yowled like a banshee at the Wild Hunt. His fangs were bare to the gums, and his fur and tail were fluffed up so he looked twice his normal size; and if those Huntsmen had understood Siamese, they’d have turned and come for us in a flash. But Mister Cat didn’t care if they did—he was ready to take them all on, and the horses, too. Maybe he was just showing off for Miss Sophia Brown, but I’ve never been so proud of him.