Julian hadn’t ever met Mrs. Fallowfield. He came running up to watch her leaving, and when I told him who she was, he wanted to know if there was a Mr. Fallowfield. I said I didn’t think so, and Julian said, “I’ll bet she ate him. I’ll bet that’s what happened.” But he’s crazy about scones, so he hauled me to my feet and hustled me after her. We didn’t get there in five minutes—you can’t possibly, from the downs—but it wasn’t Julian’s fault.
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 funny little place, wedged into a grove of white-flowering elder trees. Mrs. Fallowfield said it was about a hundred years younger than the Manor, but it felt older, maybe because it hadn’t ever been remodeled, or had anything added to it, so it was all one thing: dim and damp smelling, not much bigger than a three-car garage, with ceilings so low that even Julian could touch them if he stood on tiptoe. I remember a few dried flowers shoved into a medicine bottle on the window, and candleholders everywhere, although she must have had electricity. Everything was built around the oven, which was huge enough to heat the entire farmhouse, and probably half her orchards as well. It wasn’t any witchy lair, nothing like that—only musty and close and worn out. The scones were the best I ever had, though.
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 grinned at me with her long gray teeth and turned away to look out the window. I repeated it—“ What worse?”—but she didn’t answer. Instead she suddenly reached back, grabbed my arm and pointed it where she was staring, into the roiling violet heart of the storm. She still didn’t say anything. She didn’t have to.
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 spinning on some horrible Christmas tree. There were dogs racing ahead of them, but they weren’t any more like real dogs than the beasts they rode had anything to do with horses. Too many legs, some of them—like Mister Cat’s midnight playmates—too many laughing red tongues, too many faces that were nothing but bone and teeth and fire-filled eyesockets. I pulled back from the window, but Mrs. Fallowfield wouldn’t let go of my arm.
“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 running to be with me, but Mrs. Fallowfield said, “Back you, boy,” and he stopped where he was. But I could feel him being scared and lonely, even though he couldn’t see the riders, so I put my hand back for him to hold. He grabbed onto it, and the three of us stayed like that, while the storm pounded down on Mrs. Fallowfield’s old, old house and the Wild Hunt bayed and screamed overhead.
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, Jenny. Do you like her?”
“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, running past Sally—who’d been frantic about us being caught out in the storm—upstairs to my room. I didn’t just lie down on my bed, I crawled into it, clothes and shoes and all, and I pulled the blankets up as high as I could, and I lay there not thinking, not thinking, until Evan came and got me for dinner. He asked me if I was all right, didn’t believe a word of what I told him, but didn’t say anything. Evan’s good that way.
I was perfectly charming at dinner. I talked a lot, and I made jokes, and I took turns with Julian talking about Mrs. Fallowfield’s scones and her weird house.Julian did mention that we’d thought we’d heard the Wild Hunt, but I didn’t back him up on that one, and nobody else paid much attention. Sorry; Julian.
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.