Guardian of the Green Hill by Laura L. Sullivan Read Free Book Online Page A

window. Meg saw herself in soft pencil lines. It wasn’t a very magical portrait, but few can resist a compelling and flattering portrayal of themselves. Then, too, some of the artist’s last spell lingered on her, so she felt drawn to the picture and, thus, to its creator.
    â€œDo you like it, little one?” he asked. “I saw you and your illustrious relations in that charming equipage, and I couldn’t resist a quick drawing. I hope I have not been presumptuous.” He made a peculiar crouching movement evidently meant to be a bow.
    â€œIt is so like me,” Meg said. “I saw you on the roadside. It couldn’t have been for more than a second or two. How did you do it?”
    â€œOh, I have a knack for such things,” he said lightly. “Take it if you like it.” Meg held it reverently.
    â€œWe must pay you for it,” Phyllida insisted.
    â€œNo, no, wouldn’t hear of it.” He stretched his long thin lips into an ingratiating smile. “Tell you what you can do, my lady. I’d like to paint your portrait.” He held up the sketch of Phyllida. “I took this from the Gladysmere Gazette . I saw a photo of you at some festival, and I thought, What a kind face, what a gracious lady she must be.” He slid the sketch across the table toward Phyllida, who took it up automatically. “But that hardly does you justice. There’s only so much I can do from a flat picture in the paper, a copy of a copy of a copy, without the zest of the living woman.”
    Yes, only so much, but that was enough to have made her weak and uncertain, confused about her duty and careless of her obligations, for the two weeks he’d been executing trial sketches. Not quite enough to make her give up altogether and hand over the Guardianship to him. It would take a masterpiece, perhaps the work of weeks, to accomplish that. “Now I see you in the flesh, I know what a paltry thing this daub is, and I hope, I dream, I yearn to be permitted to pay your lovely face the honor it deserves.” He crunched himself into that bow again, a flattering, charming courtier.
    â€œWell, I don’t know,” Phyllida demurred, but he could tell she was only protesting for form’s sake. She was entranced at the idea of being immortalized.
    The artist whipped out a fresh sheet of paper and pulled a charcoal stick from a worn leather satchel slung over his shoulder. “Here, let me try from life.” Under the gaze of the audience young and old, he shifted his keen eyes from Phyllida to the paper and back again, making quick, light strokes. His lips moved as he drew, but he didn’t make a sound. He was of course casting a spell to make Phyllida assent to this, the first step in her overthrow. There was no particular ritual, no magic words, just the unyielding will and determination to bend her, to make his creation on paper and the living woman one and the same thing, blank and featureless save for what he chose to bestow on them. As the lines and shading appeared on the page, he concentrated his thoughts, his power hard-won in the East, on one very small thing: Phyllida must agree to have her portrait painted.
    He sealed the spell with his scrawled signature in the corner and passed it to Phyllida.
    Lysander leaned over her shoulder. “It is you! Exactly you!”
    â€œYes,” Phyllida said, frowning slightly. “Exactly.”
    Poor Gwidion. For all his artistic talent, for all his Persian magic, he was only a man, and, like every man, occasionally clueless about what will please, or more importantly, displease, a woman. It is true that this new portrait was much more accurate than the one taken from the grainy black-and-white photograph. This one captured every line of her face, every line. It caught the slackness in the flesh of her cheeks, the sagging of her once-firm jawline, the lengthening of her earlobes (a sign of enlightenment in a Buddha, but