Fiction River: Unnatural Worlds Page 5

  As I fretted over my impending chastisement, the balance of the kerfuffle within the library shifted abruptly when Miss Cubbins declared: “I beg of you, my ladies, do not entreat me to stay. The magnitude of my terror on discovering the horrid insect which your niece deliberately secreted amid my embroidery was such that I flung the entire basket so far that it cleared the hawthorn hedges. I heard a distinct splash, which leads me to believe it landed in—”

  “—the spring?” There was a marked transition in the tone of Aunt Domitilla’s voice. When she inquired, “Are you telling us, Miss Cubbins, that you pitched your miserable sewing basket into our spring?” it was like listening to an articulate scalpel.

  “Yes, and I fear my needlework must have been ruined beyond all—”

  In a breath, the library door swept open, knocking me sideways. I had barely time to scramble to my feet before I saw my governess fly across the hall, to crash into the wainscoting between a tapestry of Phaeton’s plunge into the sea and a portrait of Her Majesty, Queen Victoria. She slid down the wall in a heap, whimpering. Meanwhile, Aunt Domitilla presented herself in the doorway, her ice-white hair come all undone from its combs, her cheeks a scorching red, and a series of bulging veins turning her temples into an approximation of my hand-drawn map of the rivers of Belgium. Her blazing gray eyes seemed to shoot sparks capable of fricasseeing a full-grown vole.

  “You—you struck me!” Miss Cubbins cried.

  If there was one thing Aunt Domitilla hated, it was someone who insisted on wasting her time by stating the obvious. She strode from the library doorway to tower over my unfortunate governess.

  “And you tossed a basket into our spring,” she shot back. “Wretched creature, are you so base, so beyond all hope of human decency that you have forgotten the single dictum that my sister and I laid down for you at the onset of your employment here? Nothing is to come into contact with the waters of that source. Not one thing, not ever, and no exceptions!”

  Aunt Euphrosyne emerged from the library and laid a delicate hand on her elder sister’s arm. “Now, ‘Tilla, it was an accident,” she murmured. Her powdery pink-and-white face was composed into the picture of maidenly reserve she had so often urged upon me, to no avail. Her ersatz golden curls trembled ever so slightly as she bowed her head, interceding for Miss Cubbins. “You know as well as I that our darling Melantha’s governess would never have done such a thing deliberately.”

  “I know nothing of the sort!” Aunt Domitilla countered. “One person’s convenient ‘accident’ is another’s Trojan War. Or do you believe that Eris exclaimed ‘Oopsie-daisy! Silly butterfingers me,’ when she flung that golden apple among Thetis and Peleas’ wedding guests?”

  Miss Cubbins picked herself up and gathered the remnants of her dignity. “My ladies, I apologize for what truly was a mishap. I shall fetch the offending basket from the spring at once, following which I shall take prompt leave of your service. I hope you will find it in your hearts to give me a good character, and I wish you every bit of luck you may require in finding some unhappy—deserving young woman to replace me.” With this, she turned on her heel and headed for the front door, chin held high.

  She did so without awaiting Aunt Domitilla’s reply. She ought to have known better. My elder aunt was used to issuing directives and had an inborn aversion to receiving them. She pounced upon the governess, age-gnarled hands seizing Miss Cubbins’ shoulders and forcing the young woman to spin around and face her, nose-to-nose.

  “You will go nowhere without my leave,” she growled. “Nor shall you have any letters of recommendation, in aid of securing future employment, until first we view the effects of your trespass.” With that, she dug her fingers into the governess’ arm and hauled her away, leaving Aunt Euphosyne and me to follow as best we might.

  Aunt Domitilla had a ground-devouring stride that soon carried her and her hapless prey out of our musty manor house and down the patchily graveled drive. She ignored Miss Cubbins’ endless litany of complaint and protest. In vain too did Aunt Euphosyne beg her sister to slow the pace a trifle as she struggled to keep up. My youth afforded me no such difficulties, and I ran merrily alongside my elder aunt and her captive.

  “What are you smiling about, Melantha?” Aunt Domitilla demanded as we all swerved sharply to the right at the end of the hawthorn hedge and doubled back around it. “I am not ignoring your role in this disaster. Ungrateful child! Is this the thanks poor Euphrosyne and I merit for lavishing the benefits of a Classical education upon you?”

  I tried to re-form my expression to one of sincere contrition but failed gloriously. “I am sorry for any inconvenience I may have caused you, dear aunt.”

  “Inconvenience?” Aunt Domitilla snorted and raised one grizzled eyebrow in a look of unbridled irony. “The Black Death was an ‘inconvenience’. This, my lass, has all the earmarks of being a fully realized catastrophe. I hope that you are proud of yourself.”

  “She tried to teach me fractions!”

  “Then it is a great pity she did not succeed, Melantha, for I have every expectation that you shall need the very skill you scorn when all Hades breaks loose and our mortal bodies are chopped into sixteenths at best.”

  “Oh, piffle.” I thrust out my underlip, a childish affectation part and parcel of my thirteen years. “If we meet some dreadful fate, what good will it do to be able to identify the fractions into which we’ve been divided?”

  My elder aunt stopped her tracks and dropped her grip on Miss Cubbins. “It will give us a sense of intellectual satisfaction,” she replied loftily. “A virtue about which you neither seem to know or care, might I add. Ah, I weep for your generation. No: I weep for mine and the foolish notion that one must take responsibility for the orphaned children of one’s kin.”

  “For the orphaned heiress of Dyrnewaed, you mean,” I said sotto voce.

  Aunt Domitilla’s thin lips grew thinner to the point of vanishing altogether. “What was that, Melantha?”

  “Only that it was poor Pappa’s kindness, as master of this estate, that allowed you and Aunt Euphrosyne to live with us and not the other way around,” I replied much too sweetly. “You have no claim to this property.”

  Such deliberate goading was likely to earn me a slap, but I deemed the game worth the candle. I conjectured that once my elder aunt struck me, she would regret it and thus commute the punishment for my original offense. Better a slap for sauciness than whatever penalty awaited me for assaulting a governess with insects.

  My plans came a cropper. Aunt Domitilla remained uninfuriated, her hands unraised against me. “So this is the thanks we get,” she said in a flat voice. “You fling in our faces the fact that Euphrosyne and I are beholden to your late father—and now to you—for our daily crust. Our constant service to this family since the day of our arrival is not worth a mention, nor a whisper of gratitude. So be it. Let this day mark the end of our dependence.”

  Aunt Euphrosyne gasped and laid one hand to her shallow chest. “’Tilla, what are you saying?”

  “I am saying that Miss Cubbins will not depart Dyrnewaed unaccompanied. We shall go with her. No doubt our niece is perfectly capable of managing things here without further help from us.”

  “But she’s a child, ‘Tilla!” Euphrosyne exclaimed. “The staff can help her handle the ordinary aspects of the estate, but what about the rest of it? We still have no idea which side of her mixed blood she favors, nor if she possesses a whit of her mother’s innate ability or her father’s talent. Worse, she has no idea of the family trust and duty! If we leave matters in her hands, horrors will ensue.”

  I did not care for my younger aunt’s hysterical reaction concerning my capabilities. “’Horrors’?” I echoed with disdain. “If you’re talking about what’s in the wine cellar, we are old friends. Or are you speaking of the entity sharing coffin-space with great-great-granduncle Leander? It behaves nicely when it’s not hungry and I have been punctilious about feeding it with all due caution. If you
’ve heard any complaints from the village, do not rush to judgment. Sheep and children go missing for all sorts of reasons. I know you are not referring to dear Scylla, down at the gatekeeper’s cottage. Poor thing, her mind wanders so badly these days that on my daily visits it is all I can do to remind her I am her former nursling and not her noontide refreshment.”

  I turned to Miss Cubbins, who had gone a peculiar tint of ashy grey. “Wha—wha—what are you saying, Miss Melantha?” she stammered, trembling.

  “Never mind her,” Aunt Domitilla said crisply. “She is thirteen and omniscient. But I repeat myself. Let us rather repair to the site of your transgression, Miss Cubbins, that you may behold the results of an ill-considered excess of emotion when confronted by a simple grasshopper. We shall then observe how well our niece deals with the results. I trust it will be most enlightening, at the proper distance.”

  With that she renewed her hold upon my erstwhile governess’ arm and plowed onward.

  There was not much farther to plow before our small group reached the grassy banks of that spring whose continued purity was of such moment to my aunts. I knew the place very well. My earliest memories were of summer afternoons spent lolling on the greensward while Pappa stood with arms outstretched over the waters, chanting words I neither knew nor had any interest in knowing. The glimmering mist that arose from the center of the pool on those occasions was a lovely shade of bronze, interspersed with flickers of crimson. After Pappa concluded the formalities, we would share a feast of treacle tart and tea, taking every precaution that not one crumb touched the water, though again I was ignorant of the reason and disinterested in learning it. Sometimes he would cut a few of the reeds that bordered the eternally flowing source in order to amuse me by creating a shepherd’s pipe upon which he played many a jocund tune. (Dear heavens, what awful, awful music!)

  I remembered the spring and the pool. I remembered the verdant banks and the nodding reeds.

  I did not remember the willow trees that grew so tall they veiled the sun from sight, nor the fluffy-bolled cotton plants choking the edges of the water, nor—most clearly of all—the naked man. I am quite certain of that. My aunts might call me a scatterbrained hoyden when so disposed, but even so, the presence of a completely bare-bodied stranger has a tendency to stick in one’s memory.

  “Hello?” he ventured. Miss Cubbins took one look, shrieked, and keeled over insensible. “What’s wrong with her?” the nude gentleman asked. He stood knee-deep in the water, strands of long, black hair clinging to his finely shaped head and lean, muscular chest and shoulders. His eyes were a delectable shade of green, reminiscent of the verdant carapace of—of—

  My inability to pinpoint the answer tormented me until Aunt Domitilla inquired primly, “Sir, are you now or have you ever been a grasshopper?” and I was much relieved in my mind.

  The handsome youth frowned. “Who are you, woman?” He turned his head left and right. “Where am I, anyway? This doesn’t look like the mansions of Olympos or the plain of Ilion.”

  “I should hope not,” I interjected. “It is England’s green and, so we are frequently assured, pleasant land.” This answer only succeeded in deepening the wrinkles of perplexity marring the smooth perfection of his brow. I endeavored to amend his puzzlement by adding: “You are in Albion, not Ilion, dear sir, an isle in the northwestern ocean well beyond the Pillars of Hercules. It would be my pleasure to provide details, but first, would you care for tea or some trousers?”

  He scratched his head. “Never heard of either, but I’m willing to eat anything once.”

  Aunt Domitilla glared. “Wicked child, is this how you confront incipient disaster? By offering it tea?”

  “Tea and trousers,” I pointed out. “He clearly stands in need of both. But pray, what disaster is this? You cannot mean it is beyond your capability to thwart! Dear aunt, I have seen you hold off entire gaggles of gargoyles with a single knitting needle. Imps and cacodemons doff their caps in your presence. One word from you caused the succubus troubling our butler’s son to leave off her vile nocturnal activities and obtain employment at the local workhouse. By the way, you have yet to explain the details of those rather boisterous night-time tomfooleries of hers to me, and you promised.”

  “Do not confuse matters of family religion with matters of family trust, Melantha,” Aunt Domitilla said stiffly. “I assure you that the person presently dripping before us embodies a great threat to the latter.”

  “But how?” I insisted. “It is plain that the poor fellow can not possibly be carrying any concealed weaponry.”

  My elder aunt rolled her eyes. Turning to our newly arrived guest, she asked, “Young man, as you were recently a grasshopper, have I now the pleasure of addressing one Prince Tithonus, son of King Laomedon of Troy?”

  “That’s me, all right.”

  “Further, were you previously the paramour of Eos, goddess of the dawn?”

  A lascivious grin spread slowly across Tithonus’ finely chiseled features. “I’ll say. And if she’d been as on top of things in the brain department as she was in the bedroom, I’d still be the first thing up in the morning.”

  “Mister Tithonus! Language!” Aunt Euphrosyne left off chafing Miss Cubbins’ wrists in a vain attempt at returning the governess to consciousness and jerked her head up, scandalized. “I will thank you to note that there is a child present.”

  “Who, her?” He winked at me. “Pretty little poppet. Give us a kiss.”

  Aunt Domitilla pursed her lips. “I believe I liked you better as a grasshopper.”

  “You never met me as a grasshopper.”

  “Nonetheless.”

  It was at this juncture that Aunt Euprhosyne’s attentions succeeded in reviving Miss Cubbins. My former governess sat up and looked around groggily. “The naked gentleman is still among us,” she observed. “I believe I shall swoon again, on that account.”

  “You will swoon when and if I require it of you” Aunt Domitilla snapped. “In any case, you will not do so until you have acknowledged the effects of your hysterical reaction to what was a formerly harmless insect.” She indicated Tithonus.

  Miss Cubbins blinked. “You call that an insect?”

  “Hello, darling,” Tithonus said cheerfully. “Don’t tell me you’re a child, too?”

  Before Miss Cubbins could give a suitably indignant answer, Aunt Euphrosyne spoke up: “You mustn’t mind Prince Tithonus, Miss Cubbins. We had no idea he was upon the manor grounds or we would have forewarned Melantha against using any vermin matching his description as part of her pranks.”

  “Who are you calling vermin?” Tithonus cried. “I didn’t ask to become a grasshopper. I wanted immortality. Is it my fault that silly bitch—?”

  “Mister Tithonus! Must you?”

  “—that silly biddy Eos forgot to beg me the gift of eternal youth as well as eternal life? Do you know how awful it is to live on and on and on, trapped in a body that can’t die but keeps on aging?”

  “I can almost imagine it,” Aunt Domitilla said dryly.

  “Well, it stinks!” Tithonus stamped his foot, sending a splash of water flying out of the spring. My aunts gave a small backward jump, no doubt to preserve their raiment from haphazard dampening. “You wrinkle and you weaken and you tell the same boring stories over and over and you start to smell funny and then you get so dried up and shrunken and tiny that someone gets the bright idea to turn you into a grasshopper because you’re nine-sevenths of the way there already!”

  “I beg your pardon, but nine-sevenths is an improper fraction,” Miss Cubbins pointed out in her punctilious fashion.

  “There are improper fractions?” My ears perked up. Perhaps I had been too hasty in objecting to the subject.

  “Melantha, there is a time for mathematics and a time for moral improvement,” Aunt Domitilla decreed. “Learn to distinguish between them.”

  “And after all that—” Tithonus went on. “—after so much suffering and humiliation, what do
you think Eos does? She drops me! Acts like I never existed! Tosses me out of her celestial mansion and onto this godsforsaken dab of dirt. You’d think the trollop would at least shelve me somewhere with a decent climate, but this place—?” He made a rude noise.

  “Perhaps you will find England’s weather less objectionable once you have spent time here in your restored form,” Aunt Euphrosyne offered. Ever the conciliator, she added: “We will happily offer you the hospitality of Dyrnewaed until you have become acclimatized to your renewed humanity.”

  “Are you not forgetting something, Euphrosyne?” Aunt Domitilla asked with a lift of one eyebrow. “The doors of Dyrnewaed are not ours to open, as Melantha has so kindly pointed out.”

  “Dearest auntie, please don’t be such a sourpuss.” I slipped my arm through hers and gazed into her face in a most beguiling manner. “I didn’t mean any of those naughty words. You must stay on. I would be lost without your guidance.”

  “We shall all be lost, soon enough,” Aunt Domitilla replied in dark, foreboding tones. “Look around, girl! Use what portion of your brain was our late sister’s bequest to you! Do you notice nothing besides the unclothed prince before us?”

  “Of course I notice more than that!” I replied crisply. “I see those trees and those cotton plants. I would have to be blind to ignore them.”

  “And is that your limit? Have you only thought, ‘Ah, trees and plants have sprung up unbidden and at full maturity. What a merry lark!’ and never once asked yourself ‘How did that happen?’”

  “My basket. . .” Miss Cubbins stared at the willows. “My basket was woven of osier wands, and my embroidery—it was pure cotton in both cloth and floss. When it landed in this pool, do you mean to say that it and all contained therein became—?”

  “As once they were, yes,” Aunt Euphrosyne said gently. “This spring encompasses the power of restoration for those living things which were transformed against their desires. A touch of its waters returns them to what they were and what they long to be again.”