The Catswold Portal

Riding, clinging to him, she thought, Melissa…I am Melissa…Something of her true self had been given back to her, a tiny core of rightness. Perhaps now that she knew her real name—like knowing the key spell to potent magic—she could unravel her past.

The pony was climbing the last ridge when suddenly fire exploded in their path and a huge tree stood blocking their way where, a second before, there had been only bare stone. Its branches spread over them broad as a cottage. Its left side was consumed by flame, every branch burned, every leaf and limb was eaten by flame. But the right-hand side was green and alive, the leaves as fresh and tender as the first new shoots of spring.

She calmed the rearing pony and made him stand, though he shivered and trembled. This tree, that had burst suddenly into being before her, was the living symbol of the Netherworld: half of natural life, half of the shifting flame of enchantment. It held her powerfully. And it was the symbol of her own life, too: the half that lived with Mag in the cottage was natural and familiar. The other half was hidden within the flames of some inexplicable enchantment. And she knew that the tree, beneath its licking fires, was healthy and alive. Just as, beneath the secrecy of enchantment, her past was alive.

She did not leave the presence of the tree, the tree left her, vanishing as suddenly as it had appeared. She went on, filled with a strange anticipatory excitement. But then coming down the bank to the cottage she saw Mag’s horse rolling in his pen, and she began desperately to invent a lie.

She dared not tell Mag she had been to the Hell Pit or that she knew her name. She led the pony into the corral and unsaddled him and rubbed him dry, delaying, unable to think of any reasonable lie.

In the cottage she found Mag kneeling before the wood stove bedding down newborn piglets in a basket, and she was filled with guilt. The sow had farrowed. Against Mag’s instructions she had left the cannibalistic sow alone.

“I saved nine,” Mag said, scowling up at her. “Who knows how many she ate.”

“I—I was hunting mushrooms. I felt stifled in the cottage, I forgot the sow—I had to get out in the air.”

“And where are the mushrooms?”

“I lost the basket down a ravine—the pony bolted, I dropped the basket. Flying lizards were everywhere.”

Mag sat back on her heels. “Lizards don’t come for nothing. What were you doing, that they would watch you?”

“I told you, hunting mushrooms. I’m sorry about the pig. Truly, I forgot her.” Why had she mentioned the lizards?

Mag searched her face cannily. “Whatever you were doing, Sarah, it was to no good. And lizards promise no good. You’d best be wary, miss. You’d best stay in the cottage until the lizards tire of you.” Mag looked deeply at her. “You could be asking for more trouble than you imagine.”

She looked back at Mag innocently, but she was shaken. What did Mag know, or guess? Mag said nothing more until supper. She was, Melissa felt certain, angry about more than the sow. Could Mag know that she had gone to the Hell Pit? Or did the canny old woman know about the papers she had found beneath the linen chest?

Or was Mag’s distress about something else, some village crisis perhaps, or something to do with the secret rebellion? The rebels’ plans for war seemed so frail to Melissa. Yet the rebels were totally committed, and their ranks were growing. Selfishly she hoped Mag’s anger was centered around their problems, and not on herself.

She waited until supper, than asked innocently, “Did you not trade well for your beautiful cloth? The blue one alone should—”

“Traded fine,” Mag snapped, breaking the bread, her round, wrinkled face pulled into a scowl.

“Was—was there trouble for the rebels?”

“Yes, trouble!” Mag spread butter with an angry thrust. She had obviously been bursting to talk, and too upset to start the conversation herself. “Three leaders from Cressteane have been captured by the queen’s soldiers.”

“Oh, Mag. But how?” The rebels’ movements and identity were so carefully hidden. It was only with well thought out plans that she and Mag ever approached a rebel cottage. Even where a whole village was against the queen, the rebels were painfully discreet.

“Betrayed by one of our own,” Mag said. “And if those captured men are tortured into talking, our plans could be destroyed.”

“Where are the captives?” she asked casually. “In—in the dungeons of Affandar Palace?” And the Lamia’s voice filled her thoughts, The Toad sleeps—in the dungeons of Affandar Palace.

“Where else would they be but Siddonie’s dungeons?”

She stared at her plate. “Who was captured? Are they men I know?”

Mag looked hard at her. “You have never asked rebel secrets.”

“If they are captive, they are no longer secret.”

“The queen will not learn their names easily. What you don’t know, you can’t be forced to tell.”