Peter Beagle - Tamsin

Finally I had the Manor more or less to myself one afternoon— Evan and Sally were working, Tony was locked in his studio, and Julian was at a school friend’s house, the two of them totally involved in some experiment I didn’t even want to think about. I couldn’t find Mister Cat anywhere, so I figured he must be off with Miss Sophia Brown. The Wild Hunt never bothered her, by the way. If it got too noisy overhead, she might open one eye and yawn, but that was it. You could plop Miss Sophia Brown down on an iceberg, and she’d probably burst into flame.

I grabbed a paper clip and went up the east-wing stairs to the third floor. It was as comfortably desolate as ever, dim as it was, even in midafternoon, I could actually see Mister Cat’s footprints in the dust on the floor. I found Tamsin’s door, straightened the clip, poked around in the lion’s left eye, heard the double click, and I was in the secret room. I could do it almost as fast now as Miss Sophia Brown could pour herself through the panel.

Tamsin wasn’t there. I called for her a few times, which was silly, and then I wandered around the little room, investigating the bedframe-chest combination, staring at the painting of Roger and Margaret Willoughby for a long while, looking for Tamsin—and finally I sat down in her chair. I felt like her, a little bit, sitting there, looking out into a world that couldn’t see me. I saw the chestnut tree, and the clouds heaped up like fresh laundry, and I saw the back of a woman going into the dairy, and William slogging past in the mud with a feed sack on each shoulder. I thought about New York, I thought about having been in Dorset for a whole year and a half, and about being practically fifteen and a Fourth Former, and what Marta and Jake would say if they could see me doing no-till farming. Tamsin’s chair was more comfortable than I’d expected, and the room was warmer than it should have been, considering the weather outside. I fell asleep.

When I opened my eyes, I was looking straight into Judge Jeffreys’s face.

It was the portrait at the Lodgings come perfectly to life: robes, brown wig, white lace at the throat, gentle expression and all. Even the hands were right, long and graceful and… reposeful as Tamsin’s hands. It’s a good thing I saw the eyes before I screamed, because I’d have brought the whole east wing down. But the eyes were angled, golden, mocking, and I didn’t scream. I said, “Evan warned me you had a really crude sense of humor.”

Judge Jeffreys shrugged lightly, and the Pooka said, “My humor suits me well. What else should concern me?”

“Nothing, I guess,” I said. “But could you please look like something different? Anything, I don’t care what—just not him , okay?” The Pooka shrugged again, and became Mister Cat, crouched at my feet, tail whipping back and forth. I yelled that time—not screamed, there’s a difference, just yelled ‘Wo!’—and the Pooka chuckled. I can’t describe that sound, as well as I came to know it: The best I can get into words is that there’s never any smile in the Pooka’s laughter. But he did change himself into Albert the sheepdog, and I was grateful for that.

I said, “You ever turn into things that hide under bathtubs?”

The Pooka sat back on his haunches and lolled his tongue out, which is the other thing Albert can do. “No fear, Jenny Gluckstein, I do not often come peeping at you or yours. I am here with word for Tamsin Willoughby.”

“Sorry, she’s in a meeting,” I said. “You want to leave a pager number or something?”

The main trouble with shapeshifters is that it’s too easy to forget what they really are and get careless. The Pooka didn’t turn into some other form, but slobby old Albert suddenly reared up over me like a grizzly bear, drooling blood, those giveaway eyes gone streaky-red and his chipped yellow teeth bulging his mouth. That time, all right—that time I screamed, and I knocked Tamsin’s chair over, trying to get to the door… and then it was just old Albert again, the only dog who smells like a wet dog when he’s dry. The Pooka said, quite calmly, “I am no billy-blind, Jenny Gluckstein.”

“No,” I agreed. I was pretty shaky. I said, “I’m sorry. I honestly don’t know where Tamsin is.”

“With the dancer,” the Pooka said. “She watches the dancer.”

I couldn’t take that in. “Tony? You mean she’s in Tony’s studio right now?”

Albert always seems to be grinning like an idiot, but the Pooka was definitely overdoing it. “Indeed, she had always a great fancy for galliard or brawl, or even a running-battle, such as men dance with swords. It often comforts her to watch the dancer.”

And like that I was jealous. My God, I was roaring jealous, howling jealous, Gaynor Junior High School jealous—horribly, disgustingly jealous. Tamsin belonged to me—I was her comfort, nobody else . I didn’t have a minute to brace myself; it rushed me like one of those waves that slams you down and tumbles you in so many different directions you can’t remember which way the air is—there was a moment where I was really fighting just to get my breath. It was absolutely horrible, and I was so ashamed.

And the Pooka knew. He didn’t say anything, but I took one look at that stupid old dog’s face and I couldn’t look at him again. I said, “Would you mind? Somebody I don’t actually know, please.”

The Pooka nodded politely, and turned into something that would have had me wetting my pants at some other time. It was more or less a naked human from the waist down—and so hairy I couldn’t tell if it was male or female—but the upper part was like a huge stoat or weasel, with a weasel’s short clawed forelegs, a weasel’s humped back, masked face and pointed muzzle, and a mouth way too full of white teeth when it put its head back to laugh at me. It said, “Will this do, Jenny Gluckstein?”

The weird thing is, I couldn’t be bothered with it. The way I was feeling right then was so much worse than any monster the Pooka could have come up with that I just nodded and said, “Fine, sure,” as though he’d been a waiter asking me if my dinner was all right. I said, “How come Tony can’t see her?” Because I’d have known if Tony had seen Tamsin. I can’t say why I’d have known, but I would have. Jealousy has its own awful magic.

The Pooka said, “Not everyone is given to see such as Tamsin Willoughby. Indeed, not every ghost can perceive another. As for your brother—”

“ Step brother—”

“Your brother sees his own ghosts,” the Pooka said. “Dances yet undanced, paces invisible to others that he must set down on the air for them. There is no room in his vision for Tamsin Willoughby, just as you cannot espy the spirits who come to partner him when he calls.” He gave me a weasel’s chattery grin, and added, “And so be easy, Jenny Gluckstein.”

I had myself pretty much under control by then. The shame and anger at myself hadn’t gone anywhere, but I figured I could face them later. “Well, if you know where she is, why didn’t you go there to give her your message? Why come to me?”

“The message is as well for you.” The Pooka came closer. He smelled like an entire weasel, not just half of one, and he towered over me in this shape, but I wasn’t afraid. He said, “You are the first she has ever spoken to.”

“I know that,” I said. “Mr. Guthrie told me.”

“It was not wise, that.” Far beyond the cold, thoughtless flare there’s always something a little like sadness in the Pooka’s eyes, only it’s not safe to look for it. He said, “Wisdom is no concern of mine—but for the dead to linger so long that they come to have speech with the living… this is not right . The least of boggarts would know that.”