“I suppose,” Maud said.
“So, if no inhabitants appear,” Silver said, “would you be opposed to returning home, resupplying with a more substantial expedition in view, and trying again at a later date?”
“You don’t understand,” Maud said quietly. “They will take my books. They won’t let me out of their sight. They think it’s foolishness—or that I’m mad—like he thinks I’m mad.” Tobias did not react. He was occupied in repacking Maud’s supplies according to some logic of his own. Maybe he hadn’t heard. “And I suppose you think I’m mad too, really.”
“A few years ago,” Silver said, “I found something magical. Something extraordinary, in fact. And I simply knew that I had to understand everything about it, that I had to embrace it and call it my own. Someone much older and wiser than I was warned me to be careful.”
“Were you?”
“No,” Silver said. Tobias had expected the Lord of Summer to consume him, had warned Silver to stay away; and instead he had handed himself over to be consumed. He hadn’t known what he was getting into. It was sheer luck he had survived; luck, and Tobias, and his mother.
“Do you regret it?”
“No,” Silver said. “And I don’t think you’re mad. On the contrary. I think we are two of a kind.”
“I won’t go home,” Maud said.
“Perhaps you’d like to visit Greenhollow Hall,” Silver said. “I can introduce you to the dryads.”
“Really?”
She was of an age to be his sister, and she was bright and determined and curious to the point of folly, and Bramble would probably like her more than she liked Silver—certainly she could not like her less. “Of course,” Silver said. “Why not?”
Maud looked at him carefully and then said, “Very well. We hunt for the inhabitants a little longer. And if we find nothing, we turn back, and try again another time.”
“Agreed,” Silver said, and did not ask Tobias for his opinion. He did not even look over towards him. He was proud of himself for that.
Two years ago
August. Long muggy days broken by thunderstorms. Tobias had not left yet. They went for long walks in the afternoon, under the cooling canopy of the trees, and came back late to eat bread and cheese for supper and keep one another company in whatever way seemed best to them.
Tobias could not read, but he liked to be read to. The subject matter did not matter much; he listened with equal satisfaction to news sheets and novels, the dry prose of academics and the sublime poetry of the great playwrights. Silver had picked out the plays thinking that maybe Tobias would know some of them; they were more or less of his time, after all. But Tobias shook his head, though once he corrected Silver’s pronunciation of a line spoken by one of the clown characters, turning it into a pun that Silver had missed entirely.
Mostly, though, he listened in silence. Sometimes he closed his eyes. “My dear, I don’t believe you’re taking in a word I’m saying,” Silver said one night.
Tobias shook his head. After a moment he confessed, “It’s not the words, so much.”
“Oh?”
“I like to hear you talk,” Tobias said. “Your voice. Always did.”
“Should I recite my multiplication tables?” Silver said, delighted. “There’s a dictionary about here somewhere—I could read you that—”
Tobias snorted. But after a moment he said, a little carefully, as if he thought he might be saying something wrong, “Saw you had a letter.”
“Oh—yes,” Silver said. It had arrived that morning, from his mother. She had dealt with a “substantial haunting” since her last communication. As usual, she’d left out every detail Silver might have found interesting—what manner of ghost? When was it seen, and by whom? Had she managed to speak with it? Had it seemed an intelligent being, as traditional accounts held, or was it more like an echo, as some Continental theorists presently supposed?
Adela Silver, to all these and more: A great deal of fuss over a benign manifestation that might as well have been left alone, & a rather dirty affair in the end owing to gravedigging &c. Some tiresome difficulties over payment also.
“Not very interesting reading material, I’m afraid,” he said. “My mother has never been the most sparkling correspondent.”
“She’s well, though,” Tobias said.
“Oh, in the pink, I assure you. Working: nothing makes her happier.”
“She mention—”
“Your name? No, not this time; you needn’t hurry away yet. I hope you’re not in a rush to abandon me.”
“No,” Tobias said. “Only—”
“Yes?”
“It’s a funny thing,” Tobias said. “Seems like I always had plenty to do, those days.” Living as a hermit in the woods, he meant. “Now . . .”
The silence stood between them for a moment. “Tobias,” Silver managed, rushing to fill it, “you can do anything you like; surely you know that.” He stood up; he held out his hands. “And perhaps you would like—”
Tobias took him up on the invitation with a clear, shy pleasure, as he always did. They retired to the ground-floor bedroom. It was an unlikely lovers’ bower, even with honeysuckle round the windows, but Silver did his best to thoroughly distract them both.
He burned his mother’s letter the next morning, feeding it carefully to the fireplace in the library. The sight of Mrs Silver’s stern handwriting crumbling to ash gave him a dreadful feeling of relief.
I am now bound to the fens on a case regarding a bridge troll, if my correspondent is to be believed. Let Mr Finch know that I would be very grateful for the resumption of his assistance as soon as practicable, both in matters requiring a shovel and in those delicate affairs where his substantial presence inspires promptitude and honest dealing in those to whom it does not come naturally. Your loving MOTHER—
But she didn’t need Tobias. Silver needed him. He did. How old was the man—thirty, thirty-five? It was hard to know, and Tobias himself was vague about it.
But in any case Silver had fifty years if he was lucky. He did not intend to waste them.
Now
Since they had halted for the time being anyway, Silver went to inspect one of the black monoliths. He took one of Maud’s blank notebooks with him and attempted a sketch of some strange markings he found near the base. It was not his best work. He considered calling Tobias over to assist, thinking of those sketches he’d done of Rothport’s vampire. But then they would have been trapped in conversation at close quarters, when Silver had been doing his absolute best for hours now to keep Maud as a buffer between them.
He did the best he could; he was better than his mother at this sort of thing, at least. Then for good measure he turned the notebook sideways and doodled the flat land, the wide horizon, the monoliths. He lacked the tools to attempt a map, but something in him was slowly sparking to life at the possibility. Imagine—a map of Fairyland!
When they came back, of course. They would have to come back. He was reaching for a future of sorts. Maud was young; she would live a good long while. Fairyland was a project that might absorb him for years—decades. You cannot adopt an angry young lady like a stray cat, a voice rather like his mother’s said in his head. Silver suspected it of being his conscience. He shoved it to one side.