Tamsin by Peter Beagle

Author:Peter Beagle [Beagle, Peter]
Language: eng
Format: epub
Tags: sf_fantasy
Published: 1999-10-10T20:00:00+00:00

I wish I remembered all of it. I still go around singing the bits I remember to myself, because sometimes the rest of a song will come back if you do that. Maybe if I could call back the whole song, Tamsin would come with it, the way she was then, shivering so brightly in the sunset. It’s not right to wish that, but I do.

When we were almost at the Manor, I said, keeping my voice as light as I could, “So many weird things running around on just this one farm. Pookas, Black Dogs, boggarts, billy-blinds—”

“Oakmen,” Tamsin interrupted. “Remember, Jenny. And the Old Lady of the Elder Tree—though you’ll not see her, surely, and more’s the pity of it. Even the Pooka steps aside for her when she moves.”

“Oakmen, right,” I said. “Oak groves and Oakmen. And the little whatevers I heard in the bathroom, and probably whatever Mister Cat was fighting with the other night. I don’t want to know anything about mean old ladies—I just want to know, are there a whole lot more? I mean, is this normal for England, or is it just Dorset?”

Tamsin laughed that spring-rain laugh of hers. “Alas, my poor Jenny—awash in hobgoblins, besieged by bogles. Truly, there are no such creatures in your New York?”

“Only in junior high school,” I said. “Never mind. Just introduce me as they come along.”

Julian ran out of the house, yelling, “Jenny! Jenny, dinner!” I expected Tamsin to vanish like a shot, the way she always did when there was the least chance of anyone else seeing her. But this time she stepped back until the shadows hid everything except her eyes and the swing of her hair. Her voice was really quiet. She said, “My Jenny, I will never see your own land, yet well I know night’s as dark there as in Dorset. And night is not ours, and never will be, not till all is night. I tell you it will not, Jenny—never any more ours than the sea, for all we plough and harrow up that darkness. What yet swims in the deepest deep, I’m sure none can say—and not even the Pooka knows all that may move beyond the light. But you have friends there now—do but remember that, and you’ll come to no harm. You have friends in the night, dear Jenny.”

About then Julian caught sight of me, and started waving his arms and bellowing, “Jenny, Jenny, come on, it’s cock-a-leekie!” He knows that’s my favorite soup, ever since Evan’s sister Charlie taught Sally how to make it. He came running and threw his arms around me, and started dragging me toward the house, telling me about some experiment he’d been doing with sliced cucumbers, sugar, and three snails. I’d gotten so I could usually feel it when Tamsin left me, but I never felt it this time. I think she stood there in the shadows and watched us go.

After dinner, Tony and I washed up, and then I

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