Home > Drowned Country(2)

Drowned Country(2)
Author: Emily Tesh

Her left hand rested on a cane. Silver had watched her walk up the well-paved drive with it, the strong stride he remembered replaced with a firm step, a halt, a decisive tap, and a second, more careful step. The cane itself was dark, elegant wood—not native, Silver noticed automatically, as he often did now—and tipped with silver. Silver wrenched his gaze away from it and back to Mrs Silver’s eyes.

His mother’s pale gaze had unnerved him all his life and this occasion was no exception. Almost at once he had to refocus on her forehead (newly careworn), her nose (unchanged; a familiar hatchet), her mouth (a straight unreadable line).

“Are you quite finished?” Mrs Silver said.

“Mother,” Silver said faintly.

“Perhaps,” she said, “you would like to offer a crippled old lady somewhere to sit.”

Silver’s mouth opened.

“And some breakfast,” Mrs Silver added. “I have been travelling through the night.”

Silver took a deep breath. “Of course. And—”

“I did not bring any travelling companions, before you ask. Mr Finch remains in Rothport.”

“In Rothport?” said Silver. It was a seaside town a hundred and twenty miles to the northeast. His mind conjured, almost without his wishing it, a picture of Tobias Finch at the seaside; Tobias Finch emerging demurely from a bathing-machine, perhaps in striped flannel, or perhaps not—dear God. He wrenched his thoughts away from this entirely unprofitable train of thought. Tobias Finch was nothing to him.

“Henry,” said Mrs Silver, thankfully distracting in her disapproval, “I am extremely tired. You will be good enough to see to my requests at once. Somewhere to sit down, and something to eat.” She looked up at the battered frontage of Greenhollow, almost entirely hidden by a solid wall of creeping ivy. Her glance raked it up and down exactly the same way she had looked at Silver himself. Then she sniffed. “I assume that tea is beyond you.”

* * *

Silver, defiantly, served his mother with small beer from the cellar and a plateful of sour apples, which he set very precisely down in the middle of the library table between them. Mrs Silver looked at the plate, looked at the shabby state of Silver’s library, and drank a fastidious sip of the beer. She had not said a word as she picked her way across the fungus-crowded ruin of the great hall. “Well,” was all she said now.

The silence lengthened. Silver knew this tactic intimately but crumpled anyway. “Well, what?” he said.

“Your father also liked to sulk,” said Mrs Silver.

“I am not sulking,” said Silver.

“I cannot think what else to call it,” Mrs Silver said, “when a healthy young person insists on building himself a thorn-girt fortress and sitting in it consuming nothing but sour fruit and small beer for months on end. I blame myself. I should not have permitted you to read so many fairy tales as a boy.”

“Mother.”

“If you are picturing yourself as a sort of Sleeping Beauty, Henry, I regret to inform you that you have failed,” Mrs Silver said. “You do not appear to be asleep, and you most certainly are not beautiful. Perhaps you would like me to cut your hair.”

“No!” Silver said. He summoned up a glare. “I do not expect you to understand, madam, the effects of the Hallow Wood on a gentleman’s constitution—”

“Mr Finch’s constitution by that argument should have been considerably more affected than yours over the years,” Mrs Silver said, “and yet I recall that he managed to keep himself—and his dwelling—presentable.” She took another sip of the beer and added, without mercy, “And clean.”

“Mother.”

“I have had various causes to be ashamed of you in the past, my son,” she went on calmly, “but your appearance has never been one of them before.”

“You can’t cut my hair. I’m not a child.”

“Oh, are you not?” Mrs Silver picked up a crab apple, took a bite, made a face at the taste, and took another. She chewed and swallowed. “My mistake.”

“Why are you here?” Silver said. “What do you want?”

“Your assistance,” she said.

“My what?”

“With a case.” As if that hadn’t been obvious. “A rather curious case, and one that is causing us a good deal of difficulty. You shall have to accompany me back to Rothport.”

“I can’t go to Rothport,” said Silver at once. “I can’t leave the wood.”

“Don’t lie to me, Henry,” said Mrs Silver. “I know perfectly well that you can go wherever you please, provided your wood has been there at some point in the last ten thousand years.”

“I—”

Mrs Silver clicked her tongue.

Silver subsided. He probably could go to Rothport. They both knew it, just as they both knew perfectly well the real reason Silver was hesitating. “I can’t imagine what use I could be to you,” he said, a last attempt. He heard the tone of his own voice—reluctant, not sulky, thank you—and was irritated; he was playing into her hands. He made himself sit up straight and meet her familiar eyes. He even pasted on an easy smile. “Between your expertise and T—and Mr Finch—surely there is nothing missing from the practical folklorist’s arsenal.”

“You possess certain qualities that both of us lack,” said Mrs Silver calmly. “This creature is cunning, ancient, and strong. I have no doubt that Mr Finch and I could deal with the problem ourselves, in time, but I fear we do not have time.” She took another sip of the beer. She had said all this as neutrally as if she were commenting on the weather. She remained just as neutral as she added, “A young woman’s life is at stake.”

“Good God,” said Silver, “how heartless you sound.”

“Would histrionics on my part incline you to be less selfish?” Mrs Silver said. “If so, I am willing to oblige. The young lady’s name is Maud Lindhurst. She is twenty-one years old. She disappeared a week ago, and Tobias and I have been there five days. He believes we are dealing with a vampire. A very old, very clever vampire. Even he has seen only a few of the type. They tend to avoid the domains of”—her voice went, if anything, even drier—“their natural rivals.”

Neither of them said anything else for a moment. Silver glanced around as if the woodland’s former master might step any moment from the shadows, grey-cloaked and glimmering and utterly cruel. Fabian Rafela had not, of course, been a vampire. He had been something much worse.

The table between them put out a few comforting green tendrils, wrapping them around Silver’s fingers. Silver rubbed his index finger and thumb together across them. The library might be a wreck now but he had seen to the furnishings when he first purchased Greenhollow; the table was imported dark mahogany, rather beautiful. He could feel, distantly, the heat it wanted, the light. “You won’t be happy rooted here,” he murmured.

When he looked up, his mother’s pale eyes were fixed on his face and her expression was strange.

Without letting himself think too much about it—Tobias, in Rothport, on the trail of something old and cunning and cruel and strong, strong enough that Silver’s mother had actually asked for help—Silver sat back in his chair and spread his hands.

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