Foretold: 14 Tales of Prophecy and Prediction Read online

  She hurried. If Matty was at the Blackgrace house, his phantom wouldn’t have far to go to get to hers, and she’d better not miss it if it did! But if he was in his own unfinished house, where he liked to go and work or just sit sometimes to dream, he’d have to send his phantom down Century Hill and that would give her a little time. She could get back home and fix her hair at least.…

  But Matty liked her hair all fairy-tangled, didn’t he?

  Pippin hesitated for only a second. She crouched and set down her dreamcake on a tree root, then unpinned her hair. It tumbled to her waist, as shadow-colored as her eyes were sky, and the wind zoomed in at once to get it. This breeze tugged a strand here, this one there, and it was a snatch-grab dance of wind and hair fit for a queen of fairies.

  Pippin closed her eyes. She loved the feeling—the stir of it, and the ache as her tame hair came wild-alive. Hairs got used to lying one way, so that it hurt the scalp to muss them up, but it was a good hurt—like the ache from too much laughing, or the tightness low in your belly when your eyes sparked together with someone special and lightning zinged all through you.

  And then, before Pippin could pick up her cake to rush home, she heard voices and froze stock-still.

  3. GENTLEMEN SEND PHANTOMS

  Now, magic was a true thing; a certainty. No one who had seen their nan turn creature could doubt it. They’d be wrinkled old biddies one minute, just about to gasp their last, and—blink!—they were gone, and owls or hawks were shaking off their nightgowns. Once in a while a cat or a fox, but it was flying they mostly wanted, and so they went with birds. It was a one-time, one-way change, and only women could make it, to the bitterness of the boys and men, who got up to the end of their lives just to die.

  There were other bits and bobs of magic too: cures and curses; fairies and treelings dashing stealthy at the edges of sight; sweet moon milk and shadow castings and such like that. Nothing like what the Ancestors had brought here with them on their carved ships, but some things still remained.

  As for phantoms on St. Faith’s Day, a lot of folks thought they weren’t real foretellings at all, but just the dreams girls had when they nodded off waiting and saw who they wished. And sure there was reason for doubt. Often enough it happened that two girls claimed the same phantom and argued over it till the red-faced boy in question had to speak his wishes plain, and maybe it was neither girl at all!

  Pippin didn’t know what to believe. She hoped, was all, but when those voices came clearer and she heard what they were saying, she got a sad insight into the nature of boys, and more than a spark of a doubt as to phantoms.

  “I’ll have Ava Gentry, all three of her,” said one with a lecherous laugh.

  “No, you won’t, little brother. If anyone will be seeing Ava Gentry with her corset undone it will be me. You can have the giantess for yours.”

  It was the Breed brothers—those two thick quarry boys, Thane and Colin, and they were out in the orchard dark laying naughty plans. Quiet as quiet, Pippin moved closer to see, and she spied them rubbing flour into their hair and faces.

  They grumbled more over Ava, but in the end it was settled, and trailing flour-dust, they went off, making ghostly noises and taking glugs of whiskey, to play at being phantoms.

  Pippin bit her lip. She would have to follow them, of course. Her friends’ fathers weren’t at home, their doors weren’t locked, and the Breed brothers were stupid, strong, and drunk—a woeful combination if ever there was one. But … if she didn’t get home now, she stood to miss Matty’s phantom if it called. Well, she thought, I’ll just be a minute, and any phantom too impatient to wait for me would make a poor enough husband!

  Leaving her cake where it was, she tiptoed after the Breeds.

  The boys parted in the darkness between the two cottages, and Colin went to Elsie’s door and Thane to Ava’s. As Thane reached out for the doorknob, Pippin took a deep breath and prepared herself to call out, feeling a thrum of fear to be interrupting the two big boys at their mischief.

  I’ll be breaking the spell if I speak, she realized, and she faltered, but she had only to think of her friends in their beds with their hopeful toes curled, and these two falling at them drooling. “If you two are phantoms then I’m a hat” is what she declared, stepping into sight.

  They both froze and swung to see her. Then, as one, they burst into gut laughter.

  “Pippin girl, out phantom hunting?” asked Colin.

  “Sure the only way you’ll see one is if you catch it on its way someplace else!” added Thane, all grinning spite, and that pierced Pippin not a little, because she already feared it was true. “Maybe you should wait a year or three and see if you don’t grow a chest on you.”

  “I hear there’s a tonic for that,” said Colin. “You got to rub it on every night.”

  “I guess Ava’s been using it a while, then,” added Thane, and the boys got off laughing again.

  “I’ll tell,” Pippin said, keeping herself strong. “You go in there and I’ll fetch their fathers.”

  “Run and fetch, then. By the time you get back we’ll be done and gone, won’t we, like the phantoms we are. Oo-oooooo!”

  “Then I’ll have to ring the fire bell, I guess.”

  Maybe that sobered them a little, and maybe it didn’t. They were still laughing, but Colin glanced to where it was—the tall post with its bell and rope, part of the signal system used throughout the orchards for warnings. Two short pulls meant come quick. They all knew how to do it from the time they could toddle.

  “Pip …” Thane sauntered toward her. “You want a kiss, is that it? Just ask, darlin’.”

  “I guess we can spare a minute or two for you,” Colin contributed, following his brother. “The night is young and the bottle’s empty.”

  Pippin took one quick step away and that was all there was time for. Behind her, from back the way she’d come, spoke a voice.

  “Leave her be,” it said, oh the beautiful, beautiful sound of it!

  “Blackgrace?” asked Thane, squinting past Pippin.

  For Matty it was. He came to her side and never was there a sweeter sight—though just now he didn’t look sweet so much as furious.

  “What are you doing here? Are you supposed to be a phantom?” asked Thane.

  Pippin’s heart lurched. Not Matty too. Was it a game all the boys played, to chase girls to their beds? No. Never Matty.

  “If you are, you’re a poor one, Blackgrace,” said Colin. “Here, have some flour.” And he chucked the sack at Matty, hard, but Matty sidestepped it so it hit the bell post and burst in a white cloud.

  Thane added, “Anyway you’re too late. We got here first.”

  “Why aren’t you at the Landing?” Colin asked. “It’s no secret Scylla Grey has a candle out for you tonight. Lucky dog.”

  Scylla Grey? If it had lurched before, now Pippin’s heart clenched tight as a fist. Scylla Grey was a ship captain’s daughter down at Mosey Landing. She was the prettiest girl Pippin had ever seen, with the whitest skin and the nicest frocks. Her father brought her fantastical things from all over the seas, like fans made of dragon fins, and a lace mantle knit of sea foam. She carried herself like a princess, and led a blinking Manx cat with her everywhere on a pink velvet leash. She wasn’t even horrible, which was the worst thing about her. Scylla always had a nice word ready, and sometimes bought cakes for the tots—the good kind, even, with icing.

  Did she want Matty too? Pippin felt her hopes slipping away. What chance could an apple seed have next to Scylla Grey? Or next to Ava, for that matter, or even Elsie. They didn’t look like tots playing dress-up, and none of them needed chest tonic, that was sure.

  Matty was glowering. “What are you waiting for?” Colin asked him. “Go get your own girl and leave us be.”

  Matty said, “That’s not the way it works. You don’t barge into a girl’s house with your sweaty hands. Anyone who tried that on my sisters would get a gun barrel tucked in his ear.”

&nb
sp; “Well, Ava Gentry’s not your sister, so arse off,” said Thane. “Take Pippin. We didn’t really want her anyway.”

  Matty glanced at Pippin, and she couldn’t read his face, but sure he wasn’t jumping at the chance. “No one’s having me,” she cut in quick, before he had time to say no thanks. “Or Ava or Elsie either.” And she marched over to the bell and gripped the rope. “You better go on, all of you, or I’ll pull.”

  When she said all of you, Matty looked that surprised, and wounded too.

  Like how it feels? she thought with a pinch of satisfaction. “Good night, lads,” she said, all low and final, with that glimmer Nasty Mary had taught her that made her eyes go silver as a night cat’s. The Breeds got spooked but tried not to show it. They cursed plenty, going off, but Matty lingered.

  “Do I have to go too, Cathy?” he asked. He was the only one who called her that.

  “That depends. What are you doing here?”

  “I could ask you the same.” He came closer, studying her breeze-spun hair, and she got a pang, worrying suddenly that it made her look not like a fairy but only a girl too young for marrying. Why hadn’t she thought of that before?

  He asked, “Shouldn’t you be at home waiting for your phantom?”

  Should I? she wondered, still stung by the Breeds’ words, the only way she’d see a phantom was if she caught it on its way someplace else. Well, she didn’t want any stupid boy who didn’t want her, not even Matty. Sidestepping his question, she said, “I saw the Breeds and I didn’t know what they were going to do.”

  “Louts,” said Matty with a frown. “Sure they’re not the only ones. I wouldn’t be surprised to hear a fair few of our mams met not phantoms on St. Faith’s Day but our fathers out for a prowl.”

  “Do you think it isn’t true, then? About phantoms?”

  His eyes were deep in shadow, so Pippin couldn’t see the green she knew was there, nor even the usual sparkle. “Oh, I know it’s true,” he said.

  “You do?”

  “Sure, for haven’t I sent my own phantom down to the house I want it to go to?”

  Pippin’s heart missed a beat. “You … you have?”

  “I have. Not that I wouldn’t rather go myself like those two, and see my girl with my own eyes, but that isn’t how it works. Gentlemen send phantoms.”

  Down, he’d said. Down to the Landing. To Scylla. Pippin stared off into the dark, imagining Scylla lovely in the candlelight—and sure her hair would be smooth as a waterfall, not wild as a bird’s nest!—while Matty’s phantom floated in the window. She thought her heart might fall into two pieces like split kindling. She didn’t say a word, too afraid of bursting into sobs.

  “Of course,” Matty said, and he chewed his cheek and gave a stone a little kick, “maybe she won’t want to see it. Maybe she’ll send it away.”

  Was he joking, or was he really worried? He had to know that any girl would be glad of his phantom! He might not be the handsomest of all the boys, but he was better than handsome. He was electric—clever and able and full of life. He was the one everyone wanted to sit beside, and who they counted on to fix whatever troubles, and whose singing could spread a sudden hush and make folks close their eyes and smile. Tots and animals followed him around, and girls too, no more subtle than the big-pawed pups. And of course there was the little house he was building—all the girls were mad for it, already decorating it in their dreams.

  Pippin thought she might as well yank down those gingham curtains she’d strung up in her own foolish fancies. She was never marrying Matty Blackgrace. “Sure she’ll be glad to see you, Matty,” she told him, choking on the words.

  “You really think so?” He sounded so relieved, and Pippin nodded, mute. Matty was looking at her funny, so she dredged up a smile, and it felt like a dead thing from the bottom of the river, but it must have fooled him well enough, because he smiled back, sweet as anything.

  “Shouldn’t you be getting home, Cathy? Can I walk you?”

  “But didn’t you just come from back there?”

  “Doesn’t matter. I’m only wandering.”

  Wandering, thought Pippin, glum. Keeping his mind off his worries over Scylla is what. She thought of her dreamcake lying where she’d left it, her initials sad and lonely in its golden crust, and she thought of her house, sad and lonely too, and none of it mattered anyway because she’d broken the spell by talking. She wasn’t seeing any phantoms tonight, least of all the one she wanted.

  She took a big breath and tried to sound breezy. “I’m not going home. I’ve got other plans.”

  4. ONE TRUE PERSON

  “What plans?” Matty asked.

  What seized her then? Pippin had no plans, of course, only this wrenching realization that there was no end of lonesomeness coming for her, not soon and maybe not ever. Right now Matty’s phantom might be with Scylla, but … he was here—the real him. For the moment, anyway.

  She put out her chin and, feeling as wild as her unpinned hair, said, “Come with me and I guess you’ll see.”

  “Okay,” agreed Matty, easy as that, and when Pippin started walking—she didn’t even know where to—he fell into step beside her.

  The orchard was quiet, and they could hear the music from down at the landing, faint and foreign, those twanging weird instruments from over the Bigwater.

  If it had been daytime, they’d have been able to see the Bigwater from here: a faint blue edge to the south where the sky climbed down. Sometimes it was just all one hazy blue and you couldn’t make sky from sea, but other days the water was dark as ink. “Think you’ll ever cross the sea?” Pippin asked.

  “The sea?” Matty seemed surprised. “No. I never even thought of it before.”

  “I will.” Pippin heard her voice say it, though it came as news to her own self.

  “You will?” Matty sounded skeptical. “How will you?”

  “I’ll fly.”

  “Oh. You mean after you turn? You better pick a strong bird, then. It’s a long way for a small creature.”

  “Small! I’m not going to be small anymore. I’m going to be a dragon, with wings like lacquer fans and jets of fire breath for roasting up goose suppers midair!” Pippin spread out her arms, imagining them wings. Why not? she asked herself. At least she had flying to look forward to, whatever else happened—or didn’t.

  Didn’t. Didn’t. Didn’t. What an awful word, and an awful fate: a whole long life of nothing ever happening! How would she bear it?

  “There are no more dragons,” Matty pointed out.

  “Well, there will be. There will be one, and it will be me.”

  “That sounds lonesome, to be the only one of something.”

  “I’m the only Pippin, aren’t I? I’ll just be lonesome in the sky instead of lonesome on the ground.”

  “Maybe you don’t have to be lonesome at all, Cathy,” he said gently.

  “Like you know about it,” she said. She tried to laugh, but it came out sounding bitter.

  “As it happens, I do.”

  “You? How could you know?”

  “What do you mean, me? Don’t you think everybody’s lonesome until they’re with their one true person, settled and sure, for life?”

  Yes, thought Pippin, wanting to shout it and cry it. Imagining Scylla falling asleep with a glad smile, she said, “Well then, after tomorrow, no more worries for you.”

  “I’m starting to wonder,” he said.

  Pippin hissed a sigh. “Oh hush, Matthew Blackgrace. You’re in no danger of lonesomeness. Everybody loves you.”

  “Don’t you think people love you too, Cath?”

  He was very earnest. She thought he must be feeling sorry for her. She didn’t want his pity. Her wildness was growing. It felt like a trapped cat trying to scrabble out. “What do dragons care for love?” she asked, then put back her head and ran ahead leaping, pretending to fly.

  Matty came after, running too. Pippin twirled and whirled, wilding up her hair even worse. What did it
matter now? When she finally stopped and faced him, her chest was heaving with exertion. He was standing very still, his hands shoved in his pockets, watching her. “Do you remember playing fairy ring?” he asked.

  Did he think she could have forgotten? It was a game they’d played as children, when they’d pretend to have strayed into a fairy ring where they had to dance until they fell down dead, and the last one still dancing was the winner.

  “Of course,” she said. “I always won.”

  “I always let you.”

  “You never!”

  “I did. But just so I could watch you dance.”

  Pippin blushed. What did he mean, teasing her? She turned away.

  “Why don’t you want to get married?” he blurted. The question was out of nowhere, and it was like a little punch in the heart. Pippin stiffened, her back still to him. “I mean,” he added, “you not going home and all.”

  “Well, it’s hardly fair, is it? Girls just have to wait and see who comes, while boys get to pick?”

  “That’s not how it is. Asking’s just the hard part. It’s the girl who decides.”

  Pippin looked back. “And what if the girl wants to do the asking for a change?”

  “Do you?” He stood full in the moonlight now, and she still couldn’t make out the green of his eyes. He looked different tonight, she thought. New in some way she couldn’t name. Was it because he was a man now, come to his St. Faith’s Day?

  And herself, then—was she a woman? Had they left boy and girl behind, to be facing each other as man and woman? Did it happen just like that?

  “Do I what?” she asked, flustered to all of a sudden be thinking grown-up thoughts like she’d opened a door to them. And … wasn’t he looking at her like he was too? She imagined tangling up with him, but not like kittens, and she remembered his broad pale chest, when she’d come around the side of the Blackgrace house in the summer and caught sight of him without his shirt, sluicing a bucket of well water over his head. Smooth it still was, but no boy’s chest, to be sure, and those were no boy’s lips either.