Peter Beagle - Tamsin

“I don’t know what you mean,” I said. “I’m sorry.” And I was sorry, because she’d been speaking to me as though we were the same age, even out of the same century, with the same experience, the same understanding. And all I could do was remind her that I was thirteen, from New York, and didn’t know what the hell she was talking about, and I hated myself for it. I really expected her to vanish right there—just forget me completely, like one of the pretty girls back at Gaynor—and I wouldn’t have blamed her for a minute.

But Tamsin… Tamsin only looked at me with such pity in her imaginary eyes as I never saw in my life, before or since. She said, “Child, no, sure I am the blind buzzard here—it’s you must forgive my foolishness. Indeed, how should you know? How should you comprehend what I myself cannot?” She clapped her hands soundlessly. “It’s all mystery anyroad, live or die, leave or stay. Let be—did I not promise to show you the true Stourhead night? Come, so.” And she put her arm through mine.

No, I didn’t feel that either—I couldn’t have, I know I didn’t—but I thought I did, and I can’t explain it any better than that. She looked so solid, not transparent at all, and her eyes were as bright as Julian’s when he’s got a surprise for you. At the time I’d have sworn up and down that I felt the pull and bump of another human body in the bend of my arm, and when I think back on it now, I remember . Like Tamsin remembering the world.

I yelled back to the house that I was going for a walk. Sally called that she might want to come with me, but I pretended I hadn’t heard. Tamsin led me down the rutted tractor path that runs to the south fields, but she turned away from it before we got there, toward a row of huge beech trees that the Lovells kept after Evan to cut down because most of them were half-dead. Evan wouldn’t do it. He said they were as old as the Manor, and belonged there as much as we did. By day they looked a mess—all bald and twisted and shedding bark, putting out leaves on one branch in ten—but now they stood up over us like fierce, proud, horrible old men. No, I don’t mean horrible ; more like people who’ve suffered so much that it’s made them mean. But Tamsin was so happy to see them she let go of me and ran ahead, floating through the moonlight, not quite touching the ground. When she reached the first tree she swung around it to face me, and if the trees looked like men, she looked as young as Julian.

“Still here—oh, still here!” she called—halfway singing, really. “Oh, still holding to Stourhead earth, they and I.” She hooked her arm around the tree and swung again, as though she was dancing with it. I knew she couldn’t have touched it, felt the bark or the dry leaves, any more than I could have felt her arm against mine— but nobody looks as beautiful, as joyous, as Tamsin looked right then when they’re feeling nothing. Nobody , ghost or not, I don’t believe it.

“I saw my father plant these trees,” she said as I came up with her. “Jenny, they were such minikins, hardly saplings—truly, I must bend down to pet them good morning, as I do Miss Sophia Brown. And see them now, grown so great and grim—stripped and battered by the years, yet still here, unyielding.” She wheeled toward the beech trees again, asking them, “Were you waiting for me then, little ones, all this time? Would you ask my sanction before you fall? Well, I do not grant it, do you hear me?” Her voice didn’t change at all; she might just as well have been talking to me. “Nay, if I’m to stay on, so shall you—and I am even older, so you’ll mind what I say. Whiles I remain at Stourhead, you’re to keep me company, as Roger my father bade you. Hear!”

There was the tiniest flick of a breeze just now beginning to stir, and that’s probably why the trees seemed to be bowing their raggedy heads to her. Tamsin turned back to me. She said, “Beeches are kind, beeches will help if they can. Elders, too, and even ash, if you speak them courtesy. But ware the oak, Jenny, for they love men no whit more than they love the swine who eat their acorns. Ware the oak, always .”

It sounded as much like a command as when she’d told the beech trees they couldn’t die as long as she was at the Manor. I said I would, and Tamsin took my arm again. “Now, Mistress Jenny,” she said. “Now I will take you to meet another old companion of mine.”

I tried to find it the next day, that path Tamsin took me by in the hot darkness, but I never could. It had to be on Stourhead Farm, because she couldn’t pass its boundaries, and it had to be somewhere near the barley fields, because they take a lot of water and I could hear the auxiliary pump working. There’s a regular path, of course, that runs right to the fields, but that’s not the one we were on, I know that. Six years, and I’ve never been able to find it again, no more than I’ve ever found that feeling of utter, absolute, total safety that I had walking with Tamsin that night. I’m as scared of the dark as anyone else—with more reason—but not then, not with Tamsin beside me, glimmering and laughing, teasing me that my family had let the path go to hell. “La, what a shaggy tumble it’s become, where once one saw clear to the high road. What horses then! aye, and how we heard their hoofbeats for miles, as it seemed, before the brave carriages whirled into view. Well, well, never fret, dear Jenny, it must have been long ago, I’ll warrant.” But she wasn’t sure it was long ago—she was still listening for those horses. You could tell.

I don’t know when it hit me that we weren’t alone. First I looked around for Miss Sophia Brown and Mister Cat, but then I realized someone or something was pacing us, just off to my left. I can’t say how I knew, because I couldn’t see it, whatever it was, and it didn’t make any sound. No crackling brush, no growl—no breathing, even—but the thing was close, and I would have been scared out of my mind if I hadn’t been with Tamsin. She put her arm around my shoulders, which I couldn’t feel any more than I’d felt her hand on my arm, but I was glad of it just the same. She said quietly, “Do not fear. There is no danger.”

We stood together, waiting. I didn’t know for what, but I wasn’t afraid, because Tamsin had said not to be. We stood there, and after a while the thing that had been walking with us came out into the moonlight.

It was a dog, the biggest dog I’ve ever seen, the size of a cow. It looked like the Hound of the Baskervilles, except that it was totally black—so black that the moonlight made it look even blacker, as though it was soaking up the light and turning it to darkness inside itself. Its eyes were glowing red, but it didn’t look savage: more like really dignified, almost sad. I whispered to Tamsin, “What is it? What kind of dog is that?”

“That is the Black Dog,” Tamsin said. I just blinked at her, which seemed to surprise her. “The Black Dog. He appears always as a warning.”

“Warning about what?” Tamsin didn’t answer me. She moved toward that huge creature, and I thought he wagged his tail the least bit, but maybe not. Her voice was different than when she talked to me. She said, “Why have you come, tell me? What need for such as I am to beware?”

She beckoned to me without taking her eyes off him, but I couldn’t move. I knew I wasn’t scared, but my legs didn’t. Tamsin turned and saw how I was standing, and called softly, “Jenny, to me! No harm, no harm,” as though she were coaxing a skittery animal. I went to stand beside her, and I made myself look straight into the Black Dog’s red eyes.

To this day I don’t have any idea what the Black Dog is. Maybe he’s nothing more than a presentiment, a way of telling yourself to watch out for something you already know to watch out for. I could believe that if he hadn’t looked so real—he even smelled like a real dog. I’ve never yet had a presentiment that smelled.