“If that’s it?”
“That’s it.”
She lifted her chin and considered him a moment longer before nodding. A short flick that ended their interaction absolutely.
“Good-bye, Mr. Cavill,” said Meredith.
He smiled, reached out to shake her hand. “Good-bye, kiddo. You take care now. Keep up your writing.”
And he watched them go, the two of them disappearing into the greenery, heading towards the castle. Long blond hair dripping down her back, shoulder blades that sat like hesitant wings on either side. She reached out an arm and put it lightly around Meredith’s shoulders and hugged her close, and although Tom lost sight of them then, he thought he heard a giggle as they continued up the hillside.
Over a year would pass before he saw her again, before they met again quite by chance on a London street. He would be a different person by then, inexorably altered, quieter, less cocksure, as damaged as the city around him. He would have survived France, dragged his injured leg to Bray Dune, been evacuated from Dunkirk; he would have watched friends die in his arms, survived a bout of dysentery, and he would know that while John Keats was correct, that experience was indeed truth, there were some things it was as well not to know firsthand.
And the new Thomas Cavill would fall in love with Juniper Blythe for precisely the same reasons he’d found her so odd in that clearing, in that pool. In a world that had been grayed by ash and sadness, she would now seem wonderful to him; those magical unmarked aspects that remained quite separate from reality would enchant him, and in one fell swoop she would save him. He would love her with a passion that both frightened and revived him, a desperation that made a mockery of his neat dreams for the future.
But he knew none of that then. He knew only that he could check the last of his students off his list, that Meredith Baker was in safe hands, that she was happy and well cared for, that he was free now to hitch a ride back to London and get on with his education, his life’s plan. And although he wasn’t yet dry he buttoned up his shirt, sat to tie his shoelaces, and whistled to himself as he left the pool behind him, lily pads still bobbing over the ripples she’d left in the surface, that strange girl with the unearthly eyes. He started back down the hill, walking along the shallow brook that would lead him towards the road, away from Juniper Blythe and Milderhurst Castle, never—or so he thought—to see either one of them again.
TWO
OH—but things were never to be the same afterwards! How could they be? Nothing in the thousand books she’d read, nothing she’d imagined, or dreamed, or written, could have prepared Juniper Blythe for the meeting by the pool with Thomas Cavill. When first she’d come upon him in the clearing, glimpsed him floating on the water’s surface, she’d presumed she must have conjured him herself. It had been some time since her last “visitor,” and it was true there’d been no thrumming in her head, no strange, displaced ocean whooshing in her ears to warn her; but there was a familiar aspect to the sunshine, an artificial, glittering quality that made the scene less real than the one she’d just left. She’d stared up at the canopy of trees, and when the uppermost leaves moved with the wind, it appeared that flakes of gold were falling down to earth.
She’d sat on the pool swing because it was the safest thing to do when a visit was upon her.Sit somewhere quiet, hold something firmly, wait for it to pass:the three golden rules that Saffy had devised when Juniper was small. She’d lifted Juniper onto the table in the kitchen to tend her latest bleeding knee and said very softly that the visitors were indeed a gift, just as Daddy said, but nonetheless she must learn to be careful.
“But I love to play with them,” Juniper had said. “They’re my friends. And they tell me such interesting things.”
“I know, darling, and that’s wonderful. All I ask is that you remember that you’re not one of them. You are a little girl with skin, and blood beneath it, and bones that could break, and two big sisters who very much want to see you reach adulthood!”
“And a daddy.”
“Of course. And a daddy.”
“But not a mother.”
“No.”
“But a puppy.”
“Emerson, yes.”
“And a patch on my knee.”
Saffy had laughed then, and given her a hug that smelled like talcum and jasmine and ink, and set her back down on the kitchen tiles. And Juniper had been very careful not to make eye contact with the figment at the window that was beckoning her outside to play.
JUNIPER DIDN’Tknow where the visitors came from. All she knew was that her earliest memories were of figures in the streams of light around her crib. They’d been there before she’d understood that others couldn’t see them. She had been called fey and mad, wicked and gifted; she’d driven away countless nannies who wouldn’t abide imaginary friends. “They’re not imaginary,” Juniper had explained, over and over again, with as reasonable a tone as she could muster; but it seemed there were no English nannies prepared to accept this assertion as truth. One by one they’d packed their bags and demanded an audience with Daddy; from her hiding spot in the castle’s veins, the little nook by the gap in the stones, Juniper had cloaked herself in a whole new set of descriptions: “She’s impertinent …,” “She’s obstinate …,” and even, once, “Possessed!”
Everybody had a theory about the visitors. Dr. Finley believed them to be “fibers of longing and curiosity,” projected from her own mind and linked in some way to her faulty heart; Dr. Heinstein argued they were symptoms of psychosis and had provided a raft of pills he promised would end them; Daddy said they were the voices of her ancestors and that she had been chosen specially to hear them; Saffy insisted she was perfect as she was, and Percy didn’t mind much either way. She said that everyone was different and why on earth must things be categorized, people labeled normal or otherwise?
ANYWAY.JUNIPERhad not really sat on the swing seat because it was the safest thing to do. She’d sat there because it afforded her the best view of the figment in the pool. She was curious and he was beautiful. The smoothness of his skin, the rise and fall of muscles on his bare chest as he breathed, his arms. If she had conjured him herself, then she had done a bloody brilliant job; he was exotic and lovely and she wanted to observe for as long as it took him to turn back into dappled light and leaves before her eyes.
Only that wasn’t what had happened. As she sat with her head resting against the swing’s rope, he’d opened his eyes, met hers, and begun to speak.
This, of itself, was not unprecedented; the visitors had spoken to Juniper before, many times, but this was the first time they’d taken the shape of a young man. A young man with very little clothing on his body.
She’d answered him, but shortly. Truthfully, she’d been irritated; she hadn’t wanted him to speak; she’d wanted him just to close his eyes again, to float upon the shimmering surface, so she could play voyeur. So she could watch the dance of sunlight on his limbs, his long, long limbs, his quite beautiful face, and concentrate on the queer sensation, like a plucked string humming, way down deep within her belly.
She hadn’t known many men before. There was Daddy, of course—but he hardly counted; her godfather, Stephen; a few ancient gardeners who’d worked on the estate over the years; and Davies, who’d babied the Daimler.
But this was different.
