Elemental Magic: All-New Tales of the Elemental Masters Read online

  “Mei, which door?” Isabelle wanted her to lead as much as possible, to keep her attention focused so she wouldn’t have time to be scared.

  “I think . . . that one, Headmistress.” Mei indicated with a tilt of her head, as one hand gripped Isabelle’s tightly, and the other clutched the peony’s pot.

  “Are you ready, David?”

  He nodded and said, “Let me go first. I’m still shielded.” It was also clear he was straining to maintain those wards.

  Alderscroft opened the door to the King’s chamber. The wave of despair was visible coming out of the room, but it never reached them. As it neared, it simply dissipated and became the illusion it really was. The White Peony worked. Seeing no more visible threat, Alderscroft thinned his shields until they were unnoticeable.

  The trio approached the King’s bedside. The attendant doctor looked as if he were coming out of a long sleep in the chair where he had been sitting watch. Already the gloom was lessening, the light through the gauzy drapes brightening.

  Mei-Hua approached the bed, carefully cleared small items from a bedside table and placed her White Peony as close to the King as possible. She fluffed it gently with her hands, delicately wafted air over it, and whispered soothing encouragement. The plant seemed to stand tall and fan itself out.

  As the fragrance permeated the room, the King’s color began to improve, and the remaining dimness retreated in ebbing waves.

  Isabelle and Mei stood close to each other, but back from the bed, holding hands and waiting. Alderscroft continued to be on guard, scanning the room for any new threat.

  Finally, the King’s eyelashes fluttered and opened.

  As the last traces of gloom vanished, Mei-Hua’s eyes widened, tears continued to run down her checks unnoticed, yet she stood straighter. They all stood straighter, as if the gloom had been pressing down on them physically as well as mentally.

  There was a long pause, while the King stared at her, and she said nothing, only stared back. Finally she gathered her courage and released Isabelle’s hand.

  Bowing deeply, she said, “Your Majesty, I bring greetings from my honorable departed parents, Special Envoys and Ministers Plenary to the Emperor of China, Henry Walsingham and An-Hua Walsingham, to His Royal Majesty Edward the Seventh, of the United Kingdom of Great Britain and Ireland and of the British Dominions beyond the Seas. May I present this flower on their behalf, in hopes that it will keep you well.”

  The King stirred, seeming most fatigued, but raised a hand. She extended hers for him to take, and curtsied.

  Finally, he uttered, “Our thanks to your parents for their service, and my personal thanks to you.” His voice was gravelly and strained, but his smile was clear.

  * * *

  Isabelle sighed. Needs displaced desires, but change, even for the better, was always a complication. She had finally accepted David’s invitation to move to the estate he offered.

  The country would be both healthier and safer for the children than London’s often thick air. Also, she was concerned about Mei. Since the King had recovered, Isabelle was afraid that the unknown plotters would make another attempt at either him, or Mei-Hua. The King had Alderscroft’s White Lodge to keep an eye on him, but Mei was Isabelle’s responsibility, one she took seriously. At least Lord Alderscroft’s offer of his estate out of London as a new home for the school would give them some distance.

  His Majesty did have inquiries as to the cause of the attack. It should be possible to determine the opposition, but it would take agents and ships and long weeks at least. In the meantime, they knew the threat existed.

  The girl continued to improve. His Majesty and His Majesty’s chief gardener had many conversations with Mei on the properties and history of her White Peony, for His Majesty had developed a personal interest in the flower. For now, though . . .

  “Come, Mei, it’s time to go.” Isabelle firmly took Mei’s hand. Mei was wearing her gift from His Majesty; He had arranged a cheong sam, in a shining white to match the Peony she had given him, brocaded in broad patterns.

  “Where are we going, Headmistress?” Mei-Hua looked around avidly. There was still a shadow lurking in the corners of her eyes, but Isabelle was relieved to know that she was on the mend.

  “We’re going back to the school to finish packing. I’m sorry we can’t remain longer, but you can visit again.”

  “Thank you, Headmistress,” the girl said, beaming.

  Isabelle took a final look around the Kew Gardens. The sculpted hedges made neat, geometric shapes around the controlled riots of colorful flowerbeds. But Mei-Hua’s attention was focused on a new exhibit, the result of her work with the Royal Gardener. It had taken many hours in the greenhouses and beds, and had only been made possible by Mei’s talent with plants. It was an exhibition on the White Peony, now named after Mei’s parents: the HuaWang-Walsingham Peony.

  Mei-Hua Walsingham bent over the wide expanse of beautifully blooming White Peonies, inhaled their fragrance, and smiled.

  “I am ready,” she said.

  Tha Thu Ann

  (Scots Gaelic for “There You Are”)

  Tanya Huff

  “Dr. Harris! Brian! Over here!”

  Ealasaid Harris tightened her grip on her father’s arm and directed his attention to the man trying to get his attention at the end of the pier. She felt muscles relax as he raised his other arm to wave.

  Short and stout with bristling, blond muttonchops, Dr. Evans was the physical opposite of her tall, thin father, although they shared a certain indefinable similarity. Most would assume that those similarities came from their shared profession, but Ellie knew it was as much their shared Earth Mastery as their medical degrees.

  Her father actually staggered under the enthusiasm of Dr. Harris’ greeting and Ellie braced herself as he turned to her. But he only smiled and said, “So you’re Ealasaid.” Even after eighteen years in Nova Scotia, he still had enough of Edinburgh in his voice that he didn’t mangle her name. “You have the look of your mother about you. The shape of your face.” His smile broadened. “Your hair.”

  Ellie only just stopped herself from rolling her eyes. At seventeen, she was old enough to control her reactions but her hair, thick and red and curling, was the bane of her existence. Twisted into a knot and secured under a straw hat before leaving the ship, she could already feel escaped tendrils brushing against her ears and neck. On the other hand, it was one of the two things that identified her as her mother’s daughter and, of the two, gave her significantly less trouble. Not that the Captain’s six-year-old daughter had been trouble; tied to the moment of her mother’s death by her father’s grief, she’d been more than willing to move on. The trouble had come when Ellie’s father found her on the aft-castle, comforting Captain Wooler as he sobbed.

  And from her father refusing to believe.

  “The dead are dead, Ellie. You have to stop this . . .” He’d had to breathe deeply for a moment before he could continue. “I can’t . . . Doctor’s wives die young.” His expression had held equal parts guilt and pain. “Just, don’t.”

  So she didn’t talk to him about seeing the dead. But that didn’t stop her from seeing them. Or doing what she could to help them move on. Or hating the new distance that had grown over the last four years between herself and her father.

  “—impression of Halifax, Miss Harris?”

  Too late she realized Dr. Evans had been speaking to her for some time. “It’s very different from Edinburgh,” she said, hoping he hadn’t noticed she’d missed all but the last five words.

  He smiled, apparently unaware, and gestured at the city, roads rising up from the docks to the Citadel on the hill. “Well, it’s a lot younger. The whole country’s only four years old although there’s been a British garrison here in Halifax for over a hundred and thirty years.” His
smile broadened. “Keeping an eye on the French, you know.” Bushy brows drew in and his smile faded. “But our work, yours and mine, Brian, would be easier without that garrison or all these sailors in and out, let me tell you. Never mind though, we soldier on, as it were. Nothing we can do about drink and . . .” A glance at Ellie, a reminder of his audience, and the final word remained unsaid. “I have a cab waiting,” he continued, “The shipping office has your address, the porters will send your trunks on so there’s no need for you to linger in this miasma of dying fish and warm tar. I found you a house.”

  For a moment, everything stopped. The noises of people pouring onto and off of ships, the screaming of gulls, the slap of the water against the pier. Everything. In a moment of perfect silence, Ellie’s father said, “You found us a house. With a garden?”

  “With a garden.” Dr. Evan’s smile softened and he clasped the other man’s arm. “It’s on the south edge of the city with land enough to make your own. My own house isn’t far and—”

  A shrill whistle cut him off and, over Dr. Evan’s shoulder, Ellie could see the waiting cabbie make what could only be a very rude gesture. He grinned and touched his cap when he saw Ellie watching.

  * * *

  The area immediately around the docks looked both poor and rough, but with her wide experience, for she’d seen the docks in Glasgow when they boarded and in Ireland from the ship, Ellie knew that was only to be expected. The streets were narrow, the buildings three- or four-story red-brick tenements, dark with coal smoke. The accents she could hear were mostly Irish. The children were thin and grubby, and the women were . . .

  Cheeks flushed, Ellie turned her attention back to the inside of the cab. It was one thing to know such women existed and another entirely to observe them at work in the middle of the afternoon.

  “. . . you and I at the hospital and the youngest son of Lord Burroughs—and when I say youngest, the man’s fifty if he’s a day—who has orchards in the valley.” Dr. Evans was saying quietly, his voice barely carrying over the sound of the wheels against the cobblestones. “Four ship captains that I know of are Water Masters—they sail out of Halifax although they’re seldom in port at the same time—and there’s another, a retired captain, in Annapolis Royal. His late wife was an Earth Master. I’ve heard there’s a Fire Master in the garrison though I’ve not met him, and an Air Master in Chester. Rumor has it she hasn’t left the house since her husband’s ship went down last spring. There may be more, I don’t know; we’re an independent lot here in the new world.”

  “The discards of the old world. Looking for new lives because the old lives have failed us.” Ellie’s father sighed. “Or we’ve failed them.”

  Dr. Evan’s ginger brows dipped in. “That’s a little harsh, Brian.”

  “Would you have emigrated if your family had accepted Caroline? Would I, had I still had Ellie’s mother, and not merely the memory of her haunting my every step? Do the sailors and the soldiers Her Majesty sends make homes here? No. We are the flotsam and jetsam of the British Empire, Conrad, and of as much importance in the councils of the Queen.”

  “We are men of power—” Dr. Evans began.

  Ellie’s father raised a hand. She frowned at how pale it had become. “Men of power we may be, but you were cast off by your family for the love of a woman without power, and I am broken by the loss of a woman I’d have given up power for.”

  “Papa—” Ellie began but he turned his hand toward her, silencing her before she was entirely certain of what she’d been about to say.

  * * *

  The house Dr. Evans had found for them was small and square, its two stories clad in wide boards painted a soft, butter yellow—the paint colors of the shore moved inland a mile or two. Set back from the road behind an evergreen with almost fanlike branches, the house had a center door, with a window to each side and two small windows on the second floor. There was a new house maybe fifty feet to the left, and an older one more than twice that distance to the right. Ellie could see what was probably a small stable at the end of the drive and, more importantly, beyond that nothing but grass and trees and unfamiliar weeds.

  “You own right back to the next road,” Dr. Evans smiled broadly at them both. “It’s a bit of a jungle, but I thought you’d rather sort it out yourself.”

  Ellie didn’t know what her father saw when he stared back into the land that was his to guard—well, not specifically anyway—but his expression suggested he saw something and she, in turn, saw the tension drain out of him. She started to follow when he headed for the back of the house but Dr. Harris touched her arm and stopped her.

  “Let him go,” the Earth Master told her quietly. “It’s hard for a man like your father to spend so much time at sea, with no earth under his feet at all.” When Ellie nodded her understanding, he asked, “How is he, in general? Does he still blame himself for your mother’s death?”

  “Yes.” There was so much more she could say to that, and perhaps if she came to know Dr. Harris a little better, she might. For now though, that single word would have to suffice.

  * * *

  The next morning, Ellie watched her father hurry down the front path, pause and look toward the rear of the house, then be tugged into the buggy by Dr. Harris. She couldn’t hear what was said between them, but she thought he looked better as they drove away. Although he didn’t look happy. He hadn’t looked happy for the last four years.

  Back in the house, Ellie headed for the kitchen, sliding sideways around the two trunks in the hall to borrow an apron until her own could be unpacked.

  “Mrs. Dixon, may I . . .” She stopped, uncertain.

  The two men at the table stood.

  “Miss Ealasaid, this is my husband, William, and my son, James.” Mrs. Dixon set the pitcher of water down on the counter by the pump. “They’re here to carry the trunks upstairs before James begins work in the garden. Your father left detailed instructions,” she added, when Ellie opened her mouth. “And you two might as well get started; Miss Ealasaid’s room is at the front of the house and Dr. Harris’ is at the back. Don’t mix the trunks or you’ll be moving them again!”

  The old man nodded as he passed, the younger, James, who couldn’t have been more than fifteen or sixteen, shot her a sideways look, and she thought he might have blushed when she smiled but his skin was too dark to be sure.

  “Is there anything you needed, Miss Ealasaid?” Mrs Dixon watched her, carefully as though they were strangers, which Ellie allowed they were, having only met briefly the day before and then this morning as the cook/housekeeper served breakfast.

  “Could I borrow an apron, please? Just until mine are unpacked.”

  “Of course, Miss Ealasaid.”

  She tried not to stare as Mrs. Dixon crossed the kitchen to where three identical white aprons hung, but she’d never been so close to an African before. She’d never had a chance to speak to any of the few who lived in Edinburgh, and while there’d been more working on the docks in both Glasgow and Halifax, they were men, stevedores, and she couldn’t have spoken to them. Yesterday, before going into the house, Dr. Harris had asked if they minded.

  “Comes highly recommended, used to keep house for Colonel Briant before the regiment got sent home. And just keep house,” he’d added, color high on his cheeks. “But if you have a problem . . .”

  “You and I have done enough surgeries to know skin color has nothing to do with what makes up a person,” her father had snorted. “If she can do the job for what I can pay her, I don’t care if she’s green.”

  Mrs. Dixon had beautiful, rich brown skin, more like black tea than like coffee. Her palms were paler, her hair curlier than Ellie’s own although better behaved, and her eyes so dark Ellie couldn’t see the pupil. More importantly, though, her eyes were kind as she handed Ellie the apron and said, “Strange new world for you, isn’t it Miss Ea
lasaid. Never mind though, it’ll look more familiar when your bits are out and about. I had your other trunk moved to the sitting room first thing.”

  * * *

  With the painting of the Highlands up over the sideboard and silver stag-head candlestick holders and her grandmother’s embroidered runner on it, the sitting room had begun to look . . . not more like home, exactly, but a little less strange. Ellie had just set her mother’s china shepherdess on the morning room mantle when she heard voices. A quick look out the front window showed an older woman and three—no, two—girls bustling up the path toward the door.

  Mrs. Evans was as round as her husband, pleasant enough, but it wasn’t immediately apparent why Dr. Evans had abandoned family and homeland for her. Both sixteen-year-old Anna and fourteen-year-old Katherine had her dark coloring. It didn’t take Ellie long to realize that only she could see the third girl standing like Anna’s shadow.

  “. . . and settled you with some Gaelic monstrosity of name. Still, Ellie’s pretty isn’t it?” Smoothing her skirts, Mrs. Evans examined the parlor. “It’s not a pretty room. It needs a woman’s touch, doesn’t it? How lucky your father is to have you. Well, at least until you find a husband of your own.”

  All three girls giggled, even if only two could be heard. The third girl raised her left hand to her mouth as Anna raised her right.

  “Did you see the paper this morning, Ellie?” Katherine demanded. “Isn’t it horrible?” When Ellie admitted she hadn’t seen the most recent paper, although she’d seen a stack of old ones piled in the kitchen, the younger girl was quick to tell the story of graves disturbed and bodies taken. “It happened first about a month ago and it keeps happening! Papa says it’s like Edinburgh!”

  Ellie frowned.

  “With the body snatching and then the murders and then they hanged them!” Katherine expanded.