Sarah and Nan should have been in bed, of course. They should not have even considered setting a single toe on the floor now that the rest of the household was asleep.
But Nan had long ago discovered what—though they did not know it—generations of young maids who had been assigned to the room they were now in had discovered. There was a simple way to leave the house when they wanted to meet their swains in the moonlight. The window gave out onto a piece of roof that was nearly flat. That, in turn, led to a series of bits of ornamental stonework as easy to descend as a ladder, and from there to the top of a wall one could walk along until that, in turn, led to the roof of a shed that sloped down to within a mere four feet of the ground. Any girl sufficiently sturdy and willing to tuck up her skirts could get out. Again—although they did not know this—the housekeeper was well aware of this means of egress, and this was why there were no young maids ever given that room. But she had not considered that two little girls, strangers to the manor and mere children after all, might also discover and use this means of egress.
In fact, Nan had worked it out within days of their arrival. She just didn’t bother to use it all that often. There was no real reason to; they hadn’t transgressed so far in mischief as to have been confined to their room, and they were usually so tired at the end of the day that even when they tried to stay awake, they couldn’t. But Nan had lived her entire life in rat-infested tenements that often had fires, and she had early learned to find an escape route in case the normal one was cut off. She had shown this one to Sarah, then both of them had mostly forgotten about it.
But not tonight.
There was something about the air tonight that had made both of them restless. Long after the lights had been put out, Nan had been lying in her bed, staring at the ceiling and listening to the bat make his rounds, and knowing from the sound of her breathing that Sarah was doing the same. And she felt, more and more strongly, that something wanted her to be awake, wanted her to come outside. She could practically hear it calling her name. Finally she threw off the covers, and got out of bed.
“I’m goin’ outside,” she whispered.
“Me, too,” Sarah said immediately, doing the same. “Do you feel it, too? Someone wants us.”
“Somethin’ like,” Nan agreed.
The two of them groped for their clothing and fumbled it on in the dark, helping each other with fastenings neither could see. Then Nan eased herself over the window ledge and out onto that bit of roof, and from there it was easy to feel her way down with her toes on the stonework. The wall top was broad and Nan felt no fear in walking it; moonlight shining on the stone made it as clear as any path. Sarah followed, and they both dropped down to the turf side-by-side.
Nan looked around, squinting, as if that would make any difference in seeing better in the darkness. She missed Neville, who was asleep, and hadn’t stirred even with all of their moving around; he could see things she couldn’t with no difficulty whatsoever. But Sarah acted as if she had the eyes of a cat, taking Nan’s hand and tugging at it.
“The Round Meadow,” she said, which wasn’t round at all, only an approximation of round, but it wasn’t that far from the manor, just a little ways into the “wilderness,” which was a poetical way of saying that the only things mowed or trimmed in there were the paths for horseback riding. It wasn’t very big either; more of a pocket-sized meadow, in which sweet grasses grew waist-high and flowers bloomed all the time. Sarah and Nan liked to play there, because you could trample down a little “room” in the grass and be quite private but still get to bask in the sun and watch the clouds go by overhead.
That was where they had spent most of the afternoon today, in fact. It had been a very lazy, sleepy sort of day, and no one had wanted to do much of anything. Mem’sab had let them all be somewhat lazy, and not do any lessons. Sarah and Nan had gone to Round Meadow with rugs and books and a picnic basket of tea things. Sarah had made daisy chains and crowns, then they’d both made flower fairies and set them up around their little grass- walled room, creating a village in miniature, with houses, a fairy pub with acorn cups and bowls, and a shop selling new flower frocks and hats. All very silly, of course, but then they had gathered up their “fairies” and divided them into “audience” and “players,” and put on
Nan could not help but think about that, and about how the first planned performance of the play had somehow called Robin Goodfellow. Was that why the two of them felt so restless tonight? Had the play once again worked its magic?
But when they got to Round Meadow, it was not Puck that they found.
There was something four-legged and white standing in the middle of the meadow where their grass-room had been. At first, all they could see was its back and part of its legs and its neck, all gleaming silvery in the moonlight, head down and grazing. They could both hear the sound of the grass being torn up and strong jaws munching it. For one moment, Nan thought it must be a small horse, perhaps gotten loose from that Great House on the other side of the door in the hedge. But then it raised its head and looked at them.
It was a deer. A doe, actually, as luminous as moonlight itself, watching them with gleaming silver eyes. Now, Nan knew how to tell a boy beast from a girl well enough, and this one was definitely a doe, and yet, crowning its graceful, great-eyed head were silver antlers.
“I thought only stags had horns,” Sarah whispered to Nan, who only shrugged. That’s what she had thought, too.
“Ah, but that is no common deer, daughter of Eve,” said Puck, who had materialized out of nowhere beside them, wearing his outre fairy garb again and looking perfectly natural in it. “That is a Sidhe-deer.”
“I c’n tell it’s a she-deer,” Nan responded.
Puck laughed. “ ‘Tis spelled s-i-d-h-e, sparrow, and ‘tis an old, old word for the Good Neighbors.”
The “Good Neighbors,” as they both knew, were another name for the fairy folk. So this must be some sort of animal out of those strange lands where the fairies still walked.
“ ‘Tis said,” Puck continued, rubbing the side of his nose with one finger thoughtfully, “That they can become maidens when they choose. I’ve never seen it, but—‘tis said.”
They watched the deer in silence as she lowered her head to the grass again. “Why is she here?” Sarah whispered at last.
Puck shrugged. “Ask the wind why it blows where it will,” was his enigmatic reply. “She is here because she chooses to be, and she will go because she has decided to. Perhaps your making your games in a round place, and your playing of the play made the spot into a fairy ring. And perhaps it is that you should be wary of the hard man who rode through the hedge the other day.”
Neither of them had any doubt who he was talking about, nor did Puck’s abrupt change of subject give either of them a moment’s pause. The incident was still fresh in Nan’s mind. And besides, there hadn’t exactly been a lot of men riding through the doors in the hedges around the girls.
“I don’t like ‘im,” Nan said flatly. “There’s summat cold about him.”
“And there you put your finger on it, my pretty London sparrow,” Puck responded, with a nod. “Cold. Cold he is, cold out of season, cold at the heart, and there’s an end to it. A man that cannot feel, be he mortal or fey, is a man who may do anything.”
The Sidhe-deer raised its head again and looked at them. Was it nodding?
“But what if he could change and feel again?” Sarah asked quickly. “I feel sorry for him. I think he is very lonely. What if he could thaw?”
Puck shrugged. “I warn about what is, not maunder about what could be. I do not meddle in the affairs of mortals, except as the affairs of mortals affect what I have charge over. May be he can, and may be he can’t and it matters not at all. But his cold, his ice—now that matters, and cold and ice are death and I will not have death in the season of life.” He nodded at the deer. “It may be she is here because of it. The Sidhe-deer will not abide death out of season either.”
Sarah set her chin in the expression that Mem’sab called “mulish.”
“I think there is good in him,” she said.
Puck shrugged again. “ ‘Tis not mine to say nor mine to do anything about,” he replied. “That’s the affairs of mortals.”
Sarah said nothing aloud, but Nan could almost hear her thoughts—
She sighed, but not loudly. If Sarah had made up her mind to do something, then it would be up to Nan to
