“Yes.” Up went the eyebrows again. “I rather thought you’d have unravelled it, to get through it in the first place. You didn’t?” Her eyes went distant for the space of a heartbeat, then regained their sharpness. “Hm. You didn’t. However did you get past it, then?”
“Thank goodness for motorcars,” said Robin.
“No, thank goodness for you,” said Edwin.
“Ah,” said Mrs. Sutton. “Yes. The more magic you have, the stronger the push.” Her glance was a question—Robin answered it with “Not a drop.”
“And I’ve only a few drops,” said Edwin. “Perhaps a teaspoon.” It didn’t hurt as much as he expected. He wondered what would have happened if he had as much magic as he’d always wanted. For all he knew he might have grabbed the wheel from Robin and crashed them into a ditch.
Mrs. Sutton summoned a second pair of spectacles from a table across the room. The magic was fast and neat and casual; moreover, she did it with one hand, and with a gesture that Edwin had never seen in his life. He burned to ask her to repeat it, but she was already donning the glasses, which somehow had the effect of doubling her gaze’s intensity.
She reached out an imperious hand. Edwin thought stupidly about calling cards. Then he shifted closer and laid his hand in hers. His arm thrummed with tension, ready to draw back.
“Oh,” she said, after what seemed like an age. A small smile broke her face for the first time. “You’ve an affinity like mine, Mr. Courcey. I expect you’ve a thumb green enough to raise oaks.”
“I—wouldn’t say that, no,” said Edwin.
Now her hands, paper-dry and cool, landed on Edwin’s cheeks. He forced himself to sit still. Up close, he could see the cloudiness of her eyes in detail, the yellow tinge of the whites.
“There are more kinds of power than the men of this country have bothered to know,” she said kindly. Her hands dropped. Edwin’s breath gusted out. “You asked about the warding around the estate? I grew it with the trees themselves. I had to help their growth along as a secondary factor, of course, but I made the contract with the first seedlings and it held when I took cuttings. In combination with this being Sutton land, it was enough.”
Half of that made no sense at all, drawing on impossible and irrational assumptions, but the other half was pinging off bits and pieces from Edwin’s own reading, including Kinoshita.
“Wait, wait,” he said, fumbling after the mental shape of it. “You imbued the living plants? And you’ve never had to re-do it? How is that possible?”
“I believe I just told you,” she said, schoolmarmish. “Start when life starts. Beginnings and endings are powerful. Liminal states. You can create profound change if you slip in through the gaps.”
“Spin it from twigs,” Robin said, suddenly. “Like the saying? Like an orchard?”
It shocked a laugh from Mrs. Sutton, just as sudden. “I suppose I did. And the maze as well, and there’s far more than warding in that. I wouldn’t want to be the magician who set foot in there. The visitors love it, of course. Someone wrote a lovely article about my gardens for Country Life magazine last year.”
“All that to keep magic-users off your estate,” said Edwin. He thought about the kinds of people who tucked themselves away from other magicians. He knew why Hawthorn did it—or, at least, he knew as much as anyone, and more than most. You did it because magic had hurt you, or someone of yours, beyond the bounds of what you could bear to be reminded of.
Or because you were keeping a danger at bay.
“All that to keep my part of the contract away from dangerous hands,” said Mrs. Sutton. “The maze is where I kept it.”
“How mythological of you,” said Robin. “Building a labyrinth to keep something enclosed.”
A tissue-crumple of dimples. “I rather thought so.”
Robin gave Edwin a look that might have been a question. Edwin had no answers for him, but a moment later he rather wished he’d said something anyway.
“I’m having visions,” Robin told Mrs. Sutton. “I think I might have had one of your maze.”
“Visions? Come here, boy. What manner of visions?”
“Foresight,” said Edwin. “Or at least it would seem so.” He didn’t trust this woman, but it was Robin’s curse, Robin’s business, and Edwin could hardly blame him for grabbing at the slimmest chance of help now that Edwin had failed to provide any. So Edwin explained that part of the story, including what Hawthorn had said and what little he’d managed to work out from his own research. He let Robin describe the visions—and the pain, which made Mrs. Sutton wince. Good, Edwin thought, fierce.