Under the Green Hill by Laura L. Sullivan

Author:Laura L. Sullivan
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: Henry Holt and Co. (BYR)
Published: 2010-08-26T04:00:00+00:00

Slings and Arrows and Swords

Finn came late to lunch with soggy trousers, and Dickie never showed up at all. Finn waited expectantly for the others to ask him why he was wet—he had a brilliant excuse prepared—but they never did. He had searched all morning, and finally found a smooth oval stone with a hole in its center. He’d tried it straightaway, but when he held it up to his right eye he saw nothing more than the predictable beauties of southern England in the weeks before full summer.

But just because no fairies lounged in the shade and no pixies danced on the banks, this didn’t mean that his seeing stone was a dud. It only meant that there didn’t happen to be any fairies in the immediate vicinity, and he determined to continue his quest after lunch. The one thing that marred his pleasure at the prospect of the afternoon’s discoveries was the Morgans’ singular lack of interest. What fun is keeping secrets if those you’re keeping them from display no curiosity? Well, just wait till he had something really worthwhile! He’d make sure they knew he had a secret, one more massive than any they sought to keep from him. And he’d just laugh in his lonely knowledge, and look down on them, and make them wish they’d been more open themselves in the first place.

Finn, as you can see, had a rather inflated idea of his own importance, and he might have been disillusioned had he realized that the Morgans almost forgot about his existence on a regular basis. Rowan and Silly had expected to despise him actively, but as each hour wore on, they found him fading further and further from their thoughts. At breakfast the Morgans and Finn remembered to say nasty things to each other, but for the rest of the day they were apart, and except for Meg, the Morgans never thought about him.

Finn, on the contrary, devoted a good deal of his time to contemplating the Morgans, and each discovery he made seemed that much sweeter for the knowledge that the Morgans weren’t sharing it. It was perhaps a nasty, bitter, lonely sort of pursuit, but it gave him immense satisfaction nonetheless.

He slipped off to search the forbidden woods for fairy spoor, and the Morgans gathered in the far reaches of the garden, safe from prying eyes. Almost at once they were met by the Seelie prince—in the form of Gul Ghillie. It was quite an effort for them to remember that the merry, scampering brown boy was in fact one of the grandest men they had ever beheld. On that afternoon, his carefree gait was somewhat curtailed by the burdens he carried. Across his shoulder was a tall, strung bow, and at his back a quiver full of arrows fletched in shimmering golden pheasant feathers. From a belt girded tight around his narrow hips hung two light swords, one long and fine, the other more like a knife, with a tine on either side of the blade.

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