“There’s a reason,” I said. “There has to be. Something’s happening, and maybe it’s a good thing. Maybe it means you’re breaking loose, about to get out of here at last. To go wherever you’re supposed to be.” But I said it pretty lamely, because I was afraid it was true, and it’s hard to sound encouraging about something you hope isn’t going to happen. Even if you’re ashamed of yourself.
Tamsin shook her head. “I would know if that were so. This is far other, this is a rending such as I have not known, and each time there’s less of me comes back able to say where I have been.” It was turning chilly: A little wind blew through her, and I smelled her vanilla and the musty scent of the green corn together. Tamsin said, “Jenny, I am afraid.”
“I’ll help you,” I said. “I will. We’ll stay together, I’ll watch you every minute, some way, so any time it starts coming over you, I’ll be there, I’ll remind you.” But it was crazy, and we both knew it. Tamsin didn’t say anything. I said, “It’s my turn to make dinner,” and we started back toward the Manor, but she vanished before we were out of the cornfield. I called her name, and I thought she answered me in the wind, but if she did, I never caught a word.
The cornfield was pretty near the Manor—I could see the lights and both chimneys from where I stood—but with Tamsin gone the house seemed as far away as New York, and with a deeper, colder sea between me and it. I wasn’t scared, but I was afraid that I was going to be, so I walked fast—not running—and I kept telling myself that I’d be home in a minute, in a warm kitchen with people all around me and Sally pissed because I was late. And I was practically on top of the Black Dog before I saw him.
I can feel him now, most of the time, the way Tamsin could. It’s a little like smelling rain a whole day away, or like knowing the phone’s going to ring. But then he was just there in front of me, where he hadn’t been a second before: big as a Harley-Davidson, and so black there has to be another word for it; people just call him the Black Dog because they don’t know the real word. Nothing—not a cave, a mine, not the bottom of the ocean, not even deep space—is the color of the Black Dog.
“Get away,” I said. “No hard feelings, but the last thing I need right now is one more bad omen. Excuse me, okay?”
He moved aside to let me by, but when I started on, he walked along with me, pacing me exactly as he’d done at the Hundred-Acre Wood. I was really losing patience fast with mythical creatures, and I told him that as he padded beside me. “What the hell use are you, for God’s sake? Go around predicting all kinds of trouble and danger without ever telling people what to look out for—what good’s that? I’d rather not know, you know that? You wouldn’t be any damn help if trouble showed up right now, anyway.” The Black Dog watched me out of his red eyes as I bitched at him, and he seemed to be listening, but he never made a sound.
He stayed with me past the front gate, past Evan’s swing and Sally’s garden. That did shut me up in time, because whatever he was supposed to be warning me against, it had to be near. When he stopped, I mumbled, “Sorry about the Oakmen,” and he gave me one last fiery stare before he stepped away into the shadow of a shed. Mister Cat shot out of it in a hurry, turned, and hissed at him, then stalked over to me to complain about the company I was keeping these days. I picked him up and started toward the house.
I was close enough to hear dishes clattering and Julian singing “I’m ’Ennery the Eighth, I am, I am”—which is my fault, because I taught it to him—when somebody said my name, and I turned.
He was standing almost exactly where the Black Dog had vanished. He wore the same robes and wig that he had on in his portrait, the one upstairs from the Restaurant. I could see his face clearly in the light from the kitchen—pale and handsome and young—and he was smiling at me. His voice was dry and whispery, just the way Tamsin had said—it sounded like tissue paper burning. I shouldn’t have been able to hear it from that distance, but I could. He said, “I am here. Tell her.” Then he bowed to me and snapped off—you could practically hear the switch click—and Sally called for me, and I went on into the house and did the best I could to help get dinner together.
I didn’t sleep at all that night. Sometime between moonset and dawn, Mister Cat woke up on my bed, stretched, growled, went to the window, made his prepare-to-meet-your-Maker-however-you-conceive-him noise, and launched himself. I said a word I’d learned from Tamsin and threw on my bathrobe.
It was a good thing I was awake, because what Mister Cat had backed up against the right front tire of Evan’s car was Mrs. Fallowfield’s repulsive little pink dog-thing. It was whimpering and showing its fishy teeth, while Mister Cat lashed his tail, deciding whether he wanted steaks or filets. I grabbed him up, tossed him in the house, grabbed Mrs. Fallowfield’s dog, slapped its nose when it tried to bite me, and sat down on the front step to wait for Mrs. Fallowfield. I figured she’d be along any time now.
Twenty-three
Actually, she showed up just around dawn, when I was about to throw her pink beast into one of the sheds for safekeeping and try to salvage a couple of hours’ sleep. But I heard those army boots on the gravel before I even saw her, and I got up and went to meet her. The dog squirmed so much in my arms as she got nearer that I had to let go, and the thing hurled itself through the air—a lot farther than it should have been able to—to plop into the pocket of her duffel coat like a slam dunk. Mrs. Fallowfield bent her neck and said something sharp to him, but I didn’t catch the words.
“I can’t figure why he comes over here,” I said. “I mean, he doesn’t know anybody.” The moment it was out I realized how dumb it sounded, but Mrs. Fallowfield made that funny, painful looking almost-smile again.
“Happen he might,” she grunted. “A chicken, mebbe, a sheep. Nivver know with that one—he’s got some strange friends, he has.” She was looking at me when she said that, and you could have cut yourself on those blue eyes. She said, “Second time you’ve delivered him.”
It seemed a strange word to use. I hadn’t told her about snatching her pet practically out of Mister Cat’s claws, but I was too tired to wonder how she knew. Probably happened all the time with that creature. I mumbled, “No trouble,” and started back toward the Manor. Mrs. Fallowfield walked along beside me.
“Evan’s up, if you want to see him,” I said. “I heard him moving around a while back.” She hardly ever said a word to Sally, but she seemed to like talking to Evan about drainage and manure. Mrs. Fallowfield shook her head. She didn’t say anything more until we reached the door and I said good-bye and started to go in.
Abruptly she said, “Coom over to my house sometime. Scones.” She didn’t wait for me to answer—just turned around and tramped off. I watched her all the way out of sight. She never looked back, but that dog stuck its head out of her coat pocket and snarled at me.
I didn’t tell Tamsin that I’d seen Judge Jeffreys. I didn’t have to. She felt him, the way Mister Cat had sensed the pink dog’s presence on his premises. But where Mister Cat’s natural feline response was to remove every trace of the intruder from the planet, Tamsin fled. She was less and less to be found in her secret room, less and less in the house at all. When we first met, she’d told me that she could go anywhere within the boundaries of Stourhead Farm; now she caromed around the place like a pinball, or like a hamster on a very big wheel. Some days I tracked her down, and most of the time she knew me when I did, but not always. The black holes didn’t come back, or anyway I never saw them. Generally, she looked like the Tamsin she remembered, only a bit more… tentative. I can’t think of another word.