The Hollow Kingdom Read online

  Inside the ring, the broad crown of the hill was almost flat. They could not see beyond the trees either to the distant hills or to the woods outside. They were in a huge room walled by living plants. Above them, past the tangled branches of the oaks, stretched a perfect circle of darkening twilight sky about seventy feet across. The lush turf formed a dense, soft carpet underneath, and small white field lilies sprang above it on long, thin stalks, like tiny stars scattered across a dark green sky.

  Speechless, Kate and Emily stood and looked around. This was a silent place. No birds sang in the branches of the great trees, and Emily found no bugs crawling in the grass beneath. Slowly they wandered to the very middle of the twilit circle and dropped down onto the inviting turf.

  “Do you think the druids built this place?” asked Emily.

  “No.” Kate knew that this was no ruined monument to a dead religion. The circle was alive and aware. It exerted a magical force that welcomed and comforted her, as if good people had arranged a place for her security and care.

  “But if the druids didn’t make it, who did?”

  “I don’t know, Em,” Kate said thoughtfully. “Perhaps our ancestors did. I feel so much more at home here than I do up at the Hall. And just imagine how the stars must look from here! Let’s stay a little while longer and watch them come out.”

  As night fell on the tree circle, the stars shone in the round ceiling of sky over their heads. Kate gazed, enchanted, at the brilliant lights hanging above her. She had always had a deep love of the stars. She sometimes felt that if it hadn’t been for them, she never could have stood the loss of her parents. As long as she had the stars, she would never be alone. Even when she wasn’t looking at them, she could feel their gentle radiance in her mind. They had never seemed as beautiful as they did tonight. One by one they emerged until the ebony sky was full, and the glittering net shimmered over their heads.

  “We’d better go back,” warned Emily, thinking about what her worried aunts would say. They crossed to the enormous trees, now black in their own deep shadows, and slipped between them to find the forest path again. It took some time before they hit upon it in the meager, dappled starlight. As they walked slowly homeward in the darkness, Kate tried to remember the beauty of the stars, but a vague presence intruded on her thoughts. She began to peer into the shadows. She couldn’t hear or see anyone, but she was sure someone was there. Kate rambled in the late twilight as often as she was allowed, and she had never been afraid before, but now she held her sister’s hand tightly.

  “What’s wrong with you?” demanded Emily. “You’re pinching me. We’re not lost, you know. I can find the way home.”

  Kate stared desperately back into the forest. “Em, something’s watching us!” she whispered.

  “Oh?” asked Emily, very interested. “What? Where?” She turned around and peered unsuccessfully into the deep gloom.

  “I don’t know,” murmured her sister. “It followed us down the path. I can’t see it, but it can see us. Can’t you feel it?”

  “No,” replied Emily with a shrug. “It’s probably just a fox. Come on, Kate, we’ll get in trouble.” And she towed her preoccupied sister across the Lodge lawn. At the door, Kate stopped and looked back. The heavy shadows under every tree seemed full of menace. Once she was in the house, the feeling left her, but it came back a little later as they talked in the parlor. The great-aunts never drew the heavy curtains. Kate stared suspiciously at one gauze-covered window after another. She even rose and looked out into the dark night, but there was nothing there that her eyes could see. After a few minutes of this restlessness, her great-aunts began to watch her in some surprise. Embarrassed, she excused herself and went up to bed.

  Nighttime became an ordeal for Kate after this. Sometimes she would be free of the feeling until bedtime, when she would begin to pace and fret under the conviction that something was watching her. She, who had always loved the stars, began to avoid looking out the windows after dark. Even in her bedroom on the second floor, she would wake in the night, uneasy. She would lie as still as she could under the covers, peering around the room at the darkness, and she began to have exhausting nightmares. When Kate tried to explain her feeling to her great-aunts, they laughed at first and then looked puzzled. Hallow Hill was so remote that no one ever came or went across its grounds. The aunts never even locked the doors.

  Prim watched Kate with concern and decided that both girls needed more to do. They had been through a great deal, and they had too much time to dwell on it. She had already talked to the girls about the sorts of lessons they had learned and had found Kate to be shockingly overeducated. Kate’s father, seeing in his daughter a real intellectual enthusiasm, had taught most of her lessons himself. Both father and daughter were fired with a love of literature, and they had spent hours reading and discussing books together. Aunt Prim was appalled.

  “I think it’s sweet that she spent so much time with her father,” said Celia.

  “Well, that’s where her case of nerves has come from,” declared Prim. “All that book reading, all that flowery poetry. It’s enough to make any girl flighty and high-strung. Why, she’s old enough to have a family of her own by now, and she’s never been out in society. If you ask me, Celia, these girls have been neglected. No man knows how to raise proper ladies.”

  Prim began teaching the girls practical skills, such as how to plan meals, keep household accounts, and manage servants. Over time, she and Celia observed with satisfaction that Kate was settling down. It is true that Kate slept more soundly at night because she was busier during the day, but she continued to be haunted by the powerful feeling that something was watching her. She couldn’t avoid it or ignore it, so she just kept her worry a secret from her aunts. She could tell that it did nothing but upset them.

  As high summer came, Aunt Prim took Kate to pay a call on her guardian. The call, she discovered, concerned her deeply. Prim wanted Hugh Roberts to take Kate into town for the winter season. It was time, she said, for the girl to be out in society. So much had to be arranged first. Kate’s guardian would have to fulfill his responsibilities.

  Hugh Roberts didn’t take the call at all well. He had no patience with fashions and parties. He didn’t see any good reason why the important pursuits of the mature should be set aside to allow the young a chance to make fools of themselves. He paced up and down the room as he and Prim argued. At one point he turned angrily on Kate herself.

  “Are you tired of country life already?” he demanded. “You can’t wait to go off skipping and gossiping with a whole bevy of brainless belles?” Kate wasn’t in the least tired of country life, though she did find the thought of society parties a bit thrilling. She didn’t say this to her angry guardian, but maybe he saw it in her face. If so, it did nothing to improve his temper.

  After the unpleasant interview, Aunt Prim hurried off to speak to Mrs. Bigelow, the housekeeper, leaving Kate to wander the Hall alone. This activity never failed to fill Kate with uneasiness. The Hall might belong to her, but it never seemed to want her. She was nothing but an intruder here.

  Kate did what she often did when she was at the Hall and had time to herself. She went to the huge fireplace in the upstairs parlor to study the picture that hung above it. Two girls, both around thirteen years old, stood hand in hand before a forest landscape and looked out at her. One, black-haired and green-eyed, had a red rose tucked into the waist of her old-fashioned dress. She met Kate’s gaze as if she were about to tell a funny secret, and she looked as if she were trying not to giggle. The other, pale and blond, gazed down at Kate with solemn dark blue eyes. She did not smile. Perhaps she had learned already those lessons in life that make smiling difficult. Kate stared back at the blond girl thoughtfully. She felt, as she always did, that there was something familiar about her.

  “She looks very like you, don’t you think?”

  Hugh Roberts stood a few feet behind Kate. He met her surprised glance a little sheepishly, but he
walked up beside her to study the picture, hands behind his back. “I mean the one on the left, the blond girl, Elizabeth. The resemblance is quite startling. I’ve thought so ever since you came here.”

  He paused, but Kate said nothing. She was staring at the picture. Of course! How had she not seen it before?

  “Adele is the girl on the right, Dentwood Roberts’s child. Her father and my great-grandfather were brothers. I am the last of an old and proud family, Miss Winslow.”

  Kate turned to him, thoroughly puzzled. He caught her confused look and nodded.

  “Oh, yes, Elizabeth on the left is indeed your great-grandmother, but Elizabeth is related to no one in the family. For all we know, she might have fallen from the moon.

  “The story goes that one spring night old Roberts went walking with his daughter. Adele was about three then. Her mother had died soon after she was born, and old Roberts doted on his only child. They paused at the druids’ circle. Have you been there? A lovely spot at twilight. There Roberts sat while his little daughter ran about picking flowers. He listened to her happy prattle. He fell to dreaming and thinking of his dead wife for a few minutes. And when he rose to call his daughter to him—what do you think he saw, Miss Winslow? Not just his Adele. Now there were two little girls playing in the moonlight.”

  Kate felt her hair prickle and goose bumps rise on her arms. She couldn’t say a word.

  “And that’s where Elizabeth came from,” said Hugh Roberts with a shrug. “No one knows who she really was. No one even knew her name. She appeared just like a fairy child in the old tales, like the changeling that she was.” Bitterness crept into his voice. “Because the two girls did not both survive, Miss Winslow. When they were about sixteen, Adele died suddenly. No one knows how. But old Roberts took Elizabeth and left Hallow Hill that very night, and neither of them ever came back.

  “Dentwood Roberts had adopted Elizabeth. Now she was all he had. When she died in childbirth, he took her son to raise. He left everything he had to that son when he died: Hallow Hill and all it contained. It went to a man who had never seen it, who could never appreciate it—who never even visited it once. My family, Dentwood Roberts’s brother’s family, has leased the house ever since. Elizabeth’s son was your grandfather, and Hallow Hill now belongs to you. Oh, we call each other cousins, Miss Winslow,” he said blandly. “But you’re no relation, really.

  “I wonder how the founders of this house would feel if they could learn about this strange turn of events,” he mused, “that their own flesh and blood would have to pay rent just to live in their own home. Pay rent to strangers, who didn’t even care about the land. Yes,” he added smugly, rubbing his hands, “I’m the last of a proud line.”

  I’m unwanted, thought Kate in a rush of despair. Unwanted, with no family left. And my land belongs to me almost through fraud. It’s worse than having nothing at all. She couldn’t say a word. She turned and left the room as quickly as she could, hurrying down the stairs. Hugh Roberts watched her disorganized retreat, and his smile widened. Then he walked back to his study, whistling cheerfully.

  Chapter Two

  The change in Kate was obvious to all, but no one understood it. Prim and Celia were sure Kate’s restless unhappiness was due to disappointment. Prim assured her that Hugh would give in to their arguments and take her into town, but Kate no longer wanted to go. In the aftermath of her guardian’s horrible disclosure, society parties had gone quite out of her head.

  Kate couldn’t bear for her little sister to find out that they weren’t really family, so she said nothing about what she had learned, and she tried to keep up a cheerful appearance. But keeping a secret from loved ones is a heavy burden, and now she was keeping two secrets. Her nightmares were wearing her out, and her worried sister’s constant questions were upsetting her. Prim noticed the pale cheeks and the dark shadows under her niece’s eyes. Lips tight, she called the doctor, but neither he nor Prim could find anything wrong. Between them, they dosed Kate with a variety of strong and well-meaning remedies that did no good at all.

  The weather changed with the approaching end of summer, and clouds gathered over the Hill. One breathless afternoon nothing could bring relief to spirit or body. A gray haze hung in the air, too diffuse to be called clouds, but too thick to be called anything else. The sun shone through it as a brilliant white spot, and not a whisper of wind stirred. As evening came, no thunder rumbled in the hills, and no breeze sprang up to fan their clammy cheeks. The sun was leaving without a blaze of color. The thick haze just seemed to swallow it.

  “Please, Aunt Prim, let us walk up in the hills and see if we can’t find some cool wind somewhere,” Kate begged. “I promise we’ll come back before it gets dark.” Her aunt knew better than to let her go. Storms were sure to follow a day like this, even if they were taking their time building. But at last she gave consent, with all the conditions that approaching storms and nightfall demanded. They were to stay out of the woods, watch the sky, and come back at the first sign of bad weather.

  The girls headed down through the orchard, intent on the rocky meadows beyond. Kate was sure that if they climbed to the top of one of those grassy hills, they were bound to find a breeze, but at the top of their meadow, they found no breath stirring. The twilight was blending with the strange, close sky to form a dark brown haze, and the grass at their feet shone with a blond shimmer, as if the few rays of light left could not rise above the surface of the ground. Landmarks even a few yards away were melting into the brown gloom. Purple lightning bloomed across the dark sky before them.

  “We’d better go back,” sighed Kate.

  They waded through the grass back down the hillside. Ahead of them in the thick dusk stood the stone wall of the meadow, but no gate appeared as they followed the meadow’s edge.

  “Wait, Em, we must have gotten turned around. The gate’s over there.”

  As their fence formed a corner with another stone fence, the gate appeared a few feet from them, white boards gleaming in the dim light. They hurried over to it as another shining purple curtain shook across the sky, and swinging the gate shut, they sped up the little road before them.

  A couple of minutes later, they stopped short in bewilderment. Another stone fence blocked their path. But how was this possible? They should be at the orchard by now. The two girls climbed a slight rise and looked around in all directions, trying to make out the shapes of trees that marked the orchard. Some faint light still remained. They could see each other’s faces, pale in the deep dusk, but now they couldn’t distinguish the black horizon from the black cloud banks. The lightning, undulating over the swollen masses of the clouds, was distant and too weak to see by. It gleamed silently, first in front and then behind them.

  “This makes no sense,” Kate said firmly, thinking over the way they had come. “All we had to do was walk back down the hill, through the gate, and up the orchard path. We’ve missed the gate somehow. There must be two in that meadow, and we hit on the other one. We’ll follow the road back and look for the other gate out of that field, the one that takes us to the orchard.”

  With that plan in mind, they started off confidently, but now their light was gone. They found the little road again more by feel than by sight, but it didn’t lead them to a gate. It turned and skirted along another stone wall, went through a tumbled-down gap, and lost itself altogether in a narrow draw.

  Again and again, Kate tried desperately to find the right path in the darkness, making them retrace their steps, but each time they did, they lost their old landmarks. Everything seemed to shift in the darkness around them. They had no idea which direction they faced or where home was. They could only tell that they were moving farther and farther from the shelter of the woodlands. The fields were flattening out, and stone fences were becoming rare.

  There followed a time that was the worst in their lives. Method was gone, and landmarks were forgotten. They blundered along hand in hand through the dense blackness, following any path
they crossed. Lightning seemed to be all around them now, and every white flash lit up a dreary landscape that held no familiar sight. One black field followed another. They might be one mile from home, or they might be ten. They certainly felt that they had walked a hundred.

  As they stumbled along, footsore and exhausted, Emily let out an excited squeak and tugged Kate around. Far across the fields, a light was shining. It wavered, winked out, and then showed up again. The girls turned and scrambled toward it.

  The light was a bonfire, blazing up in the darkness with a reddish glow, and figures moved back and forth before it. The fire lit up no house or barn. It appeared to be built in the middle of an empty field. Kate began to watch the figures by the fire uneasily. A hunting party? Gypsies? Vagabonds? Two men stood by the fire in long cloaks, their hoods pulled down over their faces. That spoke perhaps of hunting and of the stormy weather. Two or three short people moved about as well. Children? They had to be, but there was something odd about their shapes. As the girls came nearer, Kate noticed four horses standing patiently beyond the fire. They appeared to be saddled. Hunting, then, but who would be out on such a night? She began to slow down, not so anxious to walk out of the darkness toward this strange group, but Emily, clutching Kate’s hand, began to speed up. Warmth, light, people—these held no fears for her. She broke into a trot, pulling her sister behind her.

  The party turned, sensing their approach. One of the short figures broke away from the firelit circle and bustled toward them.

  “Oh, look! Two pretty girls right out of the storm! Do let old Agatha tell your fortune, dears.”