Peter Beagle - Tamsin

They went up ahead of me. Once I’d pushed the boards and rubbish aside, those two shot past me and vanished into the darkest darkness I’d ever seen—a darkness that didn’t have a thing to do with the sun rising and setting. An old darkness that knew itself. When I started up, I felt it tasting me , licking at my neck and my face—daintily, carefully—the way Mister Cat will lick at something he isn’t sure he wants to eat. But I kept climbing, out of pure plain stubbornness. I’m not proud of the cranky way I still get sometimes, but I can tell you it has its uses. There’s a line in the Bible about perfect love casting out fear. That I don’t know about, but orneriness will definitely do it every time.

It was lighter on the third floor, because of the high window at the far end. I could see clouds and sky, and the top branches of that same tree I’d been sitting under. The cats were halfway down the hall, and I walked toward them, already feeling a sneeze coming on, because the dust was so thick everywhere. But a sneeze was fine, a sneeze was ordinary —nothing ghostly or spooky about a sneeze. The third floor was turning out to be a floor, that was all— closed doors and cold dust, a couple of tottery old cabinets, a few faded portraits hanging above curved sconces, candleholders. Dimness, not darkness.

Mister Cat and the Persian were waiting for me, not at a door, but at a narrow panel on the left side of the corridor. It wasn’t any different from any other section of the wall: same grungy oak trimmed with the same ivy-leaf molding, top and bottom, with the same chipped, bruised satyr faces peeking through at the corners. There was a bigger face about a third of the way down, looking like a lion, or maybe a sunflower with teeth. The other panels had that one, too, but this lion had little hollows for eyes, as though they were supposed to hold bits of bright glass, or jewels.

Just as I got there, the Persian gave that distant meow of hers and melted through the panel, the way I’d imagined she would when we came in from outside. She didn’t actually walk into it, though—she sort of gathered herself into a shapeless gray-green mist for just a moment, and then she flowed right through, all at once. Five seconds—tops—and gone.

Mister Cat and I stared at each other. It’s still the one and only time I’ve ever seen him looking as bewildered, dumbfounded and flat-out flabbergasted as I felt. He said, “ Prrrp ?” and I said, “How the hell do I know?” No doorknob, no hinges that I could see— maybe to everyone else who reads this, that’s a dead giveaway to a secret room, but it wasn’t for me. I felt over the panel, pressing hard on every single ivy leaf, or anything else raised. I even tried pressing the lion-head’s empty eyes, because why not? Nothing. Mister Cat meowed impatiently. I said, “I’m trying .”

Then I thought, if there had once been stones of some kind in the lion’s eyes, maybe they’d rested on something under the sockets. I dug in my pockets until I came up with a paper clip, bent it straight, and started poking around the hollows. Right eye, nothing—left eye… left eye, a little hole at the bottom of the socket… a soft click , and a louder click after that… and suddenly daylight around the molding, and the panel swinging back, very slowly. I remember, I saw one corner of a painting, and the legs of a chair.

Mister Cat was through the crack so fast you’d have thought his kibble dish was on the other side. But I stood right where I was, because there was a third click —this one in my head—and I realized that what was beyond that panel had to be the room that we never could find in the house plan, or in any of the paintings of the house; the room whose pointy window never reflected the sun. And when I realized that, I wanted to run, but I didn’t. I stood there, not moving, for maybe a month, maybe two, and then I pushed that secret door the rest of the way open.

And there was Tamsin.

She was sitting in a chair with her back to me, looking out that window. The Persian was on her lap. I remember wondering crazily if a ghost could feel the ghost-weight of a ghost-cat, since I hadn’t felt a thing when the Persian jumped up on my bed. Because there wasn’t any more question about the woman than the cat—I could see the window through her, and the chestnut tree through the window; and when she put the cat down and stood up to face me, I saw that her hair and skin and gown were all the same color, a kind of pearl-gray, but with a light in it, the way rain clouds can look when the sky’s almost purple behind them. She said, “Jennifer. Aye, I thought it would be you to find me.”

I’d expected her voice would be as tiny as the Persian’s meow, but actually it was clear as could be. Low and soft, but absolutely clear, with just a bit of what sounded almost like a Southern drawl. I couldn’t answer her. I just stood there.

She smiled at me, and I guess that has to be when I fell in love with her. There was so much loneliness in that smile, but there was amusement, too, and understanding. She wasn’t anything more than understanding; she was held together by memories of understanding, memories of laughter. No, of course I didn’t know all that then. I didn’t know anything, except that my life was never going to be the same again. And that was fine with me.

“I am Tamsin Willoughby,” she said. With the chair behind her, I could see her better as she moved toward me. She wasn’t tall— my height, maybe an inch more—and I couldn’t have said much about her hair or her eyes (except that they were as delicately slanted as the Persian’s), because everything was that glimmering gray color. And I can’t say—even now—whether she was beautiful or not. Her face was a little round, and her mouth was probably too wide, with maybe a bit too much chin below it. But I couldn’t stop looking at her, and I couldn’t speak, not for the longest while. Tamsin just waited, never looking impatient, never looking as though she was patiently being patient. Time didn’t mean anything to Tamsin—that was the first thing I ever really learned about her.

And the first thing I ever said to her, when I could talk, was, “How do you know my name?”

She laughed then, in a funny, breathless sort of way, like a child who’s been running for no reason, just to run. “La, indeed”—she really did say that, la—“and how should I not know it, with you and your family abounding this way and that, filling the air with all your sweet riot—your jests, your labors, your songs, and your quarrels?” She pretended to count on her fingers. “Your father is Evan, your mother Sal, your brothers Anthony and Julian. As to Graymalkin here, I confess myself witling.”

“His name’s Mister Cat,” I said. Graymalkin’s out of Macbeth , which we had at Gaynor, in Introduction to Drama, so I knew. “And Evan and Tony and Julian aren’t my family.” I’d never said it just like that, not even to Sally when I was really pissed. I said, “They’re my step-family, sort of.”

Close to, I could see that the grayness had a slow pulse to it— clearer… dimmer… clearer… dimmer—like a heartbeat. Tamsin was looking at me altogether too shrewdly, considering she was dead and we’d just met. But all she said was, “You’re not of Dorset—no, nor of England neither, I think. You’ll be from the Colonies.”

“The Colonies,” I said. “Oh. Right. The Colonies. America, yes. There was a revolution. We’re an independent country now. I guess you wouldn’t know.”

Her hair was a mass of corkscrew curls, drawn up on top and spilling down over her right shoulder. It didn’t move when she shook her head. She said, “This house has not always stood empty, Mistress Jennifer—there have been a mort of other voices than yours passing my door, crying the news below my window. Well I know that Romish James is departed, and the Hanovers come long since, and those weighty men who visited my father by night as surely dust as I. Colonies gained and lost, powers arisen and fallen away, alliances sworn, alliances broken, poor Dorset long losel as a Jacobus… What may be the year now, child?”