Phoenix and Ashes

But her mind wouldn't settle, and even the Salamanders that now always appeared whenever she was around an open fire and either alone or with Sarah, could not be calmed. Reflecting her restlessness, they wreathed around her like agitated ferrets, never pausing long, twining around wrists, arms and neck. They were a distraction, and she welcomed it.

Sarah was not in much better case. She couldn't keep her mind on business either. Finally, after the third attempt at scrying by flame, she threw up her hands.

"It's not going to happen," she said, with a snort of disgust. "Your mind isn't on it, and neither is mine. What's got you all of a pother, anyway?"

"Reggie," Eleanor said, wrinkling her nose, and described the quarrel. Even though they had made it up, she was still annoyed with him. It was difficult not to be.

I'll try to settle my mind so I don't go to sleep on it—but how could he have been so obtuse?

"Men!" Sarah said, with a dismissive contempt. "A dog's more protective, and a cat will catch mice, but a man causes more problems than he cures, I swear it. I'd have been angry too, in your place."

Reluctantly, Eleanor felt moved to defend him. "He did apologize," she admitted. "Eventually."

"And then he ran right back to his pack at the pub, where they are all maligning the female race even as we speak," said Sarah, with just a touch of a sneer. "I know; I heard his motorcar go by and stop at the Broom. By the time he motors home, he'll be feeling perfectly justified in speaking every word he said."

Eleanor felt her temper flare again, and throttled it down. "Well, then I hope he has a hangover for his pains," she replied. "Why are you so out-of-sorts?"

"Something nasty is out there tonight," Sarah said abruptly, and uneasily, casting a glance at the windows, where the curtains were drawn tight against the dark. "It can't pass the bounds I put on the village, but I can feel it pressing against them. Whatever it is—or they are, since I can't tell if it's one thing, or several—they're angry."

Eleanor felt her annoyance with Reggie melting away. "What is it?" she asked, urgently. "More of those Earth-goblins?"

But Sarah shook her head. "No. I'd recognize those. This is very different. More of this world than the goblins are. No, it's something else. If I didn't know better—and come to think of it, maybe I don't—I'd say it was spirits. Ghosts."

Eleanor blinked. "Ghosts?" Somehow it had never occurred to her that, along with Elemental Magic and everything else, ghosts might be real, too. "But why would ghosts be trying to get into the village?"

"Now, that's where you have me," Sarah admitted candidly. "I don't know. Ghosts usually don't leave the spot where they're rooted. Sometimes it's a place they loved, sometimes it's one where they had something terrible or wonderful happen to them, but mostly it's where they died or their bodies are buried. It takes a lot to uproot them, and a great deal more to set them to some new task of haunting. That's why I can't imagine why or how it could be spirits."

Eleanor shivered, and cast a glance towards the windows herself. "What else could it be?"

"I don't know," Sarah replied, and shook her head. "Whatever it is, it won't disturb anyone inside the bounds, and outside, well, you'd have to be able to see them, and most people can't." She pulled on her lower lip with her teeth for a moment. "I'm inclined to think at the moment that it's just a blow-up left over from May Eve. That's one of the four Great Holy Days when the boundaries between the spirit world and the real world are thinned. Witches—well, we tend those doorways on those days—let the ones that want just to look in on their loved-ones out, and keep the doors open so they can all go back at daybreak. You know the old song, where the lady's three sons come back to her? She called them on May Eve—'I wish the wind would never cease, nor flashes in the flood, till my three sons return to me in earthly flesh and blood.' "

"But—" Eleanor began.

Sarah shook her head. "Can't tell you more than that; it's witch's business. But like every other job, witches have been lost to the war, and if one of those doors wasn't tended—or if it was opened by someone inexperienced who let it slip closed too early—" She shrugged. "If that's all it is, then they might be angry because they know a witch is in this village, and they want me to let them through."

"Well, why don't you?" Eleanor asked, reasonably.

"Because I don't know what door it is." She sighed. "If things don't improve, I'll have to arrange something, but otherwise, we're probably better off leaving well enough alone. There's always the chance they'll find their own way over. There's help on the Other Side if they truly want back."