She could feel the presence of magic all around her—every blade of grass, every inch of the sod, had absorbed a prodigious quantity of enchantery over the years—but somehow she could not grasp it.
She took to pressing each of the familiars’ eggs, one by one, against the border itself. The light had a surprising solidity: when she pressed a stone against the border she felt a thrill go through the egg and along her arm, and then a surrender, as the wall of light gave way before the pressure. But after the first relaxation it went no further, and the eggs looked exactly as they had before.
Prunella was nearly out of patience when Zacharias arrived, and she was compelled hastily to return the stones to the pouch tied beneath her skirts.
“What are you doing here?” she said ungraciously.
“What am I—?” sputtered Zacharias. “Pray, what areyoudoing here? Have you any notion of the risk you run by coming here at this hour? You would not be the first unwary mortal to be picked up by a roc or kidnapped by a pooka while straying too close to Fairyland.”
“I shouldn’t have thought anything like a roc or a pooka had been in these parts for a hundred years,” said Prunella. “Why, there is nothing in your border! We were told all the magic in England flowed from this source, but there is hardly any magic here at all.”
“Did not you observe the cork?” said Zacharias.
It was a challenge to find it amid the glare of the border, but Zacharias located it, and guided Prunella’s hand to the cork lodged mid-air. She looked puzzled.
“What is it?” she said.
“A joke,” said Zacharias sourly. “The Fairy Court has blocked theflow of magic from its realm into ours, and it has had the goodness to leave this calling card. There is a remarkable buildup of magic on the other side, as no doubt you have sensed. I wonder how they manage!”
“Oh,” cried Prunella involuntarily. “So there is no magic to be had here at all?”
Zacharias stared.
“Miss Gentleman,” he said, “I beg you will tell me what brought you here—and I would counsel you to be honest, if you still desire me to take you to London.”
Prunella had no intention of telling Zacharias about the eggs. She would be powerless to oppose him if he decided to remove them from her, circumstanced as she was in a remote village, far from anyone who might take her part. But she could not think of any convincing falsehood to explain her actions—so the truth, or some of it, would have to do. Glad that the darkness of night concealed the colour in her cheeks, she said:
“It is Cawley, you see! Though you might not think it, she requires a vast amount of resource, and it is beyond me to sustain her for the duration of our journey. I had thought I might retire her once we were away from the school, but—”
She hesitated. Prunella might be a brazen hussy, as the school’s cross-grained Cook had told her many a time, but she was not quite so indelicate as to wish to inform a handsome young gentleman that she had been mistaken for his mistress. Since there seemed no alternative, however, she told him what had occurred at the inn, concluding:
“So I thought I ought to try extracting magic from the border. I beg you will not be too vexed with me! You must know how provoking it is to be checked by a lack of resource when one wishes to cast even the simplest enchantment.”
“I regret that you have been so insulted,” said Zacharias slowly. He felt, with a pang of guilt, that he had not given serious thought to ensuring Prunella was shielded from offence. The vulnerability of her position was as clear to him as it could be to Prunella. “You arecertainly right that we must resurrect your chaperone, and I shall see to it. I wish you had expressed your concerns to me, instead of racing off to the border at the middle of the night.”
He raised his hand when Prunella opened her mouth, and continued:
“I can quite see why you did not wish to confide in me, of all people! But if I am to be your instructor, and you my apprentice, there must be complete confidence between us. We shall meet with enough opposition from the world—if we are to make a success of your education, we must contrive to be allies, and trust one another. Come, can we agree on that?”
He held out his hand with a slight smile.
If Zacharias’s air of melancholy increased his appeal to susceptible young ladies, a relaxation in that melancholy scarcely injured it. His smile, and the warmth and gentleness of his manner, were all the more attractive for forming a contrast to his usual reserve. Prunella dropped her eyes, feeling foolish, but she shook his hand and murmured that she was very much obliged—would do her best.
“Thank you,” said Zacharias gravely. “May I see you back to the inn, Miss Gentleman? We have been fortunate to avoid any incident, but I cannot think it wise to linger at such an hour.”
Even as he spoke, a shadow appeared behind Prunella. It began as an inky splotch of darkness upon the light of the border, and it grew.
“Mr. Wythe?” said Prunella. At his fixed stare, she turned to look behind her, and gasped. “What is that?”
“A creature on the other side,” said Zacharias.
They called this the witching time: magical creatures were at their most unpredictable at this hour. Magicians had been known to vanish forever into the darkness when they were so foolhardy as to venture upon nighttime visits to the border.
Zacharias grasped Prunella’s arm and shoved her behind him, cursing himself inwardly. He had learnt the night before that he had enemies whose notions of justice would not stop at murder. At leastone of them knew his movements well enough to follow him from London to Hampshire, and had nearly managed to get past his defences. Who knew what other stratagems his enemies might have devised for his confusion?
“Who goes there?” he cried, but he was already bracing himself to attack when a voice spoke in tones of rumbling discontent:
“Mana pintu ni?”
