(long over-due) SECRET GARDEN FIC
Chrissie, I have always been a raging Colin/Mary fan, but I tried valiantly for the Colin/Dickon, and I hope I do not disappoint you too badly? :x!
FOR THE DARLING sesame_seed. <3
Dis/Appearing Acts
Mary mentions to Martha at breakfast one spring morning three years into her residence in England that Misselthwaite Manor and the moor seem to brighten exponentially as the years pass.
"Eh! Th' moor's always fair lovely in spring wi' the gorse an' broom an' heather's in flower. It smells o' honey an' th' bees an' skylarks, don't it?" Martha draws back the curtains and unlatches the windows proudly. "I wouldn't live away from th' moor for anythin'."
"It seems lovelier than usual," Mary tells her primly. "The flowers become more beautiful each year." Her eyes catch at the bright colors of the gardens outside; a glow settles on her face. "We plant new plants and flowers and bushes each year. And all the ones from past years bloom again too."
"Th' colors do look nice against th' sky," Martha agrees. "As for the Manor, well. It's been cheerer ev'r since thee arrived, Miss Mary. Thee an' Master Colin together." She brushes past, surveying the cleaned plates approvingly, and picks up the tray.
Mary stands up and walks over to the window, letting the sun bathe her face with its shy rays. "The Manor is a very magical place," she replies distantly.
"It'd have t' be. I declare none of us down in th' servants' hall know jus' what happened wi' Master Colin an' Mr. Craven. Mother says it's one o' th' miracles o' th' moor." She laughs.
A warm west wind blows through the room and ruffles the hem of Mary's dress. She puts her hand against the windowsill and can feel the strong wood of legacy pulse under her touch. She has never known home until Misselthwaite, has never known beauty until the moor. She breathes in a lungful of air sweetened by the honey of hundreds of busy bees feeding off the vivacity of the land and lets it out, an exchange from one life to another.
"Yes," Mary speaks suddenly, very firm. "It's a miracle. A magical one."
*
Colin never stops believing in magic, and neither does Mary.
"It's impossible to doubt. If it weren't for magic, I probably would have already died by now," Colin speculates reasonably.
"Don't talk about that," Mary chides sharply, and Colin falls silent. She twists her lunch napkin in her hands; Colin busies himself with his fowl pudding. "You should think more about being alive. The magic works better that way," she amends. Colin has always spoken the topic of their mortality freely, mostly because he lived so close to the implication of death that a casual sense of expectation grew, and he no longer took it as morbid, but rather as a tragic pity. Mary up to the age of nine always received what she wanted, and death had never flitted across her childlike mind before, not even when her parents and her Ayah died from cholera. Magic saved them both, and they both savored it, Colin more curiously than Mary. She prefers to savor its mysteries, its secrets strewn like a wild wind at night.
The only one who the magic affected the least was Dickon, and Colin and Mary both half-suspect Dickon is already so filled with magic that he is magic, or at the very least a solid personification of the blooming spring moor.
A soft roll of thunder sounds in the distance, and Mary lowers her fork in surprise. "A storm, already! And so quick, too. It was perfectly sunny this morning."
"Spring showers bring the summer flowers," Colin shrugs. He pads over to the window and closes it just as the first few droplets hit the glass. A few years earlier, and he would have called a servant up three flights of stairs to do the trivial task and waited patiently as the carpet splattered with rain, Mary reflects. "We'll just have to stay inside this afternoon."
"I wish I could restore all the abandoned rooms," Mary tells him. "There must be hundreds of locked passage ways. We only use one wing of the entire Manor. It feels wrong, to have the outside so beautiful and the inside the same as three years before."
"You can renovate all you want once you are Mistress of Misselthwaite," Colin pronounces grandly.
Mary laughs out loud. "Don't be silly. The Mistress of Misselthwaite Manor will be your future wife, not me."
Colin hesitates at her words; she looks up and her cheeks color immediately. She raises her teacup hurriedly to hide her spreading blush.
They pass the afternoon quietly without another mention of the subject, but they are both shier in their words and actions and astonishingly mature, an evidence of their similarly unique childhoods and the divergent path magic leads them on from normal children.
*
Colin leaves for preparatory school the next year, and, before he leaves, Mary places her hand atop of his and relishes the warmth they produce between the two of them. She has a governess now, a small and neatly-tucked lady called from London. She lives in the hallway two passages down and raps on Mary's door every morning promptly after breakfast. Wild strolls and romps on the hills end; Mary learns to perfect etiquette she never knew existed and read books on places that are not nearly as exciting as India. The first time she tells her governess about tigers and hunters, her governess looks at her with disapproving eyes and the story dies away on her lips. She will not believe about magic even if she told her, Mary realizes, so she doesn't, and she feels trapped within the very walls that liberated her just a short few years ago, but she bites her tongue; she thinks of Colin at his school, and she does not want him to move away from her, does not want him to think she is unsophisticated and uneducated. She does not want to fall behind.
Mary knows she is in love with the Manor and the moor, and she knows she will never be able to leave it.
*
"Save me, Dickon!" Mary collapses onto the grass dramatically. It is a bright day, and she does not want to act like a lady at all; she thinks with savage satisfaction that her governess is terrified of burning and can't follow her outside. The morning lesson had been especially stifling. Out of a twisted form of sympathy, her governess had opened the window to let in the breeze, and the autumn air made the time pass like agony.
"What has tha' been up to?" Dickon is dark from working outside, and the muscles ripple healthily when he moves. Mary feels vindictive with her pale skin, and she sits purposely outside the reach of the tree branches, letting her arms and face soak in the dying summer heat. It has already been too long since she's seen Dickon last; he came to see Colin off, but they are all old children now -- maybe not even children anymore, and their responsibilities carve deep into the wide swept moor. Dickon does odd jobs for the craftsman in Yorkshire, picking up skills wherever he can.
"Oh, awful things," Mary sighs. She unties the ribbon in her hair and shakes the locks out with her fingers. "I never thought learning would be this horrid."
"Aye, I told mother about thy schooling," Dickon says sympathetically. "She said I ought t' get a bit o' schooling meself, but outside work suits me better."
"It will ruin you," Mary nods fervently. She happier to see Dickon's face than she would expect, and his strange, natural smile and upturned nose immediately reminds her of the gardens, the magic. Her limbs and mind are always tired now, sluggish, and she feels like she did in India, only now she knows better and craves an escape.
They inspect the gardens all afternoon, laughing among the rose bushes and racing down the stone paths. She can't bear to leave, but the supper bell tolls thickly through the garden walls. Mary looks at Dickon guiltily.
"Tha' should get back," he says after a pause.
"I've already missed my afternoon lesson," Mary replies wistfully.
Dickon walks her to the front steps and waves good-bye; Mary tells herself to not look back but she cheats on the second floor stairs, sneaking a peek out the window, and a wave of nostalgia floods over her as she sees Dickon walking alone back to Yorkshire not on the dirt path but through the moor, the grasses tickling up on his knees and ankles.
Her governess nearly gasps when she sees Mary's tanned face and forbids her to go out midday without a parasol in the future. She asks Mary where her hair ribbon is and Mary remembers too late that she left it by the tree where she met Dickon. The governess keeps her for an hour longer in the evening to make up for the missed lesson, and Mary, desperately, thinks any more days like this and the magic will die out like a candle smothered in its own flame.
A letter arrives from Colin the next day, and a different wave of nostalgia washes over Mary, this time mixed with irrational guilt and newborn determination.
*
The letters arrive steadily in two-month increments. I am to pen a letter at least once a month, Colin writes. I write to father on odd months and to you on the even ones. I am sure you agree this is the fairest solution. His penmanship stabilizes with each additional letter, and Mary dutifully spends the day after a letter arrives writing back. She reads about the athletics offered, the architecture of the buildings, his classes, his new friends, all the different subjects he is learning. He recognized India in his Geography class and impressed the teacher and students alike when he told them his cousin is from there, and continued to entertain them with stories of the animals and traditions. She in return writes about the Manor: a painting fell down on the third passageway of the first floor, and Mrs. Medlock has decided to replace it with a portrait of Mr. and Mrs. Craven that had previously been locked in the attic. Dickon taught her how to properly tie a stack of tall grass so as to keep the inside sticks safe from rain and excess sun. She tells him she has a governess and does not mention how much she hates lessons. She writes instead she is learning many different subjects now too, and she will have many delightful stories to tell him.
The winter months pass. A thick sheet of snow and ice blanket the moor and the gardens. Dickon cannot visit in this weather, and Mary marks every two months on her calendar and counts the days in between.
*
Colin returns from school for summer holiday the next year. He has grown even taller, and he looks healthier than before he left, the meat and muscle filling out his thin frame. Mary is overjoyed to see him and does not know how she should begin, but he grabs her hands and twirls her in a circle, and her shyness disappears as if a gap had never taken place. Mary's governess is dismissed for the summer months, and Mary hopes it is the last she sees of her. She suspects it probably isn't.
"I've missed this!" Colin flings his windows open and the sound of birds and leaves fills the room. "How I envy you, Mary!"
"Why?" Mary asks impulsively, surprised.
"Why -- why, because you do not have to go to school! Because you can stay here, with the gardens and watch them grow! Because you can run on these hills and do as you please without worrying about disapproval! Because you can pack picnics and have lunch by the rose bushes any day you want! Because -- because the magic is here!" Colin gestures to the vibrant array of color outside.
Mary is at a loss for words, and she looks at him, helpless. She does not know how to tell him that she hasn't experienced magic since before he left, that the closest she has is when Dickon visits, and that Dickon himself is so busy in town that she hasn't seen much more of him than she has seen of Colin. She feels ridiculous in her pink dress and pink ribbons that she chose that morning, ridiculous that there are no new flowers in bloom this year, and while it is not the fault of Colin, it is also not the fault of her.
"My governess doesn't like picnics. She said the sun -- it is bad for my skin," she says finally.
Colin looks at her like he is seeing her for the first time since his return, and realizations starts to color on his features. "But you--" he stops. Neither one of them speaks for a moment. "Let's have a picnic today, then. We will have Cook prepare us a cold midday dinner, and I will tell you about the people I have met." He extends a hand to her, and she accepts, a smile emerging that she has kept hidden for close to a year.
They reminisce a breadth of conversation topics during their picnic. Magic is not one of them.
*
Dickon visits in the afternoon. He tells Colin generously that Misselthwaite Manor is not nearly as regal without him; Colin rewards him with a strong chin and pleased smile.
"Where did tha' travel?" Dickon asks once all three are seated in Colin's room. The maid carries in three cups of tea and biscuits, and they settle comfortably on the sofa and pillows.
"My school's about an hour carriage ride outside London. We went to the theater for winter holidays," Colin relays. Dickon listens to his words, wide-eyed.
"London! What did tha' see? An' th' theater!" His biscuits lay forgotten at his fingertips. Mary has heard the same stories a few short hours ago, but she still listens eagerly, marveling at the way Colin shapes his words into grandiose images and elaborate plots. Colin describes the mysterious lighting and disappearing acts actors pulled, smoke generated onstage without fire and the sounds of horses trotting even when the stage couldn't even fit on animals.
"It must o' been magical," Dickon breathes out.
Colin stops, and continues, confident, "Yes, yes, it was magical. A lot of things were, actually. I felt all year that London and my school has magic in it, like magic is everywhere I go, and maybe even in places where I have never been before," he confides. "When I am older, I will go everywhere in the world to see the distance magic can spread."
Mary is delighted and confused at the same time; she still believes in magic and it is good to hear Colin talk about it again, but it sounds wrong to hear him say he felt magic as far away as his school when she hasn't felt it even while staying at the Manor.
"Eh! There's magic everywhere. I felt it before I met thee an' Mary; I just didn't know what t' call it," Dickon reaffirms, causing Mary to fall even deeper into confusion.
"Sorry, but I need to excuse myself for a moment," Mary says loudly, standing up quickly and awkwardly smoothing out her dress. "There's something I forgot to tell Martha."
"We'll wait here, then," Colin replies slowly, his tone slipping into concern. She flashes a reassuring smile at him.
"Tell Dickon some more about your school. I'm sure he wants to know." She hurries out the door and down the hallway, collapsing only after she has round a corner. She leans against the wall, facing two portraits of people who look down disapprovingly at her. She wants to confess to Colin she hasn't felt magic, but in truth she has; the only times she has felt magic the past year is with Dickon, and she cannot bring herself to articulate this truth into acceptable words.
She walks to the window at the end of the hall and breathes in deeply before turning quietly back to Colin's room. She hesitates at the doorway and catches Colin's movement as he raises a hand to brush Dickon's temple: pale, aristocratic skin against honest sun-spun color. She finds she cannot blame him; she cannot deny him this source of magic, when she herself cannot offer him what he wants. She and Colin have always been similar; they are explorers of magic and nothing more. Dickon is the only one who channels magic through himself, makes himself one with the moor and the animals. He is the one who breaks the path, and she and Colin follow to study and savor.
*
Colin never stops believing in magic, and neither does Mary. They have always believed Dickon is magic, and they believe even now.
FOR THE DARLING sesame_seed. <3
Dis/Appearing Acts
Mary mentions to Martha at breakfast one spring morning three years into her residence in England that Misselthwaite Manor and the moor seem to brighten exponentially as the years pass.
"Eh! Th' moor's always fair lovely in spring wi' the gorse an' broom an' heather's in flower. It smells o' honey an' th' bees an' skylarks, don't it?" Martha draws back the curtains and unlatches the windows proudly. "I wouldn't live away from th' moor for anythin'."
"It seems lovelier than usual," Mary tells her primly. "The flowers become more beautiful each year." Her eyes catch at the bright colors of the gardens outside; a glow settles on her face. "We plant new plants and flowers and bushes each year. And all the ones from past years bloom again too."
"Th' colors do look nice against th' sky," Martha agrees. "As for the Manor, well. It's been cheerer ev'r since thee arrived, Miss Mary. Thee an' Master Colin together." She brushes past, surveying the cleaned plates approvingly, and picks up the tray.
Mary stands up and walks over to the window, letting the sun bathe her face with its shy rays. "The Manor is a very magical place," she replies distantly.
"It'd have t' be. I declare none of us down in th' servants' hall know jus' what happened wi' Master Colin an' Mr. Craven. Mother says it's one o' th' miracles o' th' moor." She laughs.
A warm west wind blows through the room and ruffles the hem of Mary's dress. She puts her hand against the windowsill and can feel the strong wood of legacy pulse under her touch. She has never known home until Misselthwaite, has never known beauty until the moor. She breathes in a lungful of air sweetened by the honey of hundreds of busy bees feeding off the vivacity of the land and lets it out, an exchange from one life to another.
"Yes," Mary speaks suddenly, very firm. "It's a miracle. A magical one."
*
Colin never stops believing in magic, and neither does Mary.
"It's impossible to doubt. If it weren't for magic, I probably would have already died by now," Colin speculates reasonably.
"Don't talk about that," Mary chides sharply, and Colin falls silent. She twists her lunch napkin in her hands; Colin busies himself with his fowl pudding. "You should think more about being alive. The magic works better that way," she amends. Colin has always spoken the topic of their mortality freely, mostly because he lived so close to the implication of death that a casual sense of expectation grew, and he no longer took it as morbid, but rather as a tragic pity. Mary up to the age of nine always received what she wanted, and death had never flitted across her childlike mind before, not even when her parents and her Ayah died from cholera. Magic saved them both, and they both savored it, Colin more curiously than Mary. She prefers to savor its mysteries, its secrets strewn like a wild wind at night.
The only one who the magic affected the least was Dickon, and Colin and Mary both half-suspect Dickon is already so filled with magic that he is magic, or at the very least a solid personification of the blooming spring moor.
A soft roll of thunder sounds in the distance, and Mary lowers her fork in surprise. "A storm, already! And so quick, too. It was perfectly sunny this morning."
"Spring showers bring the summer flowers," Colin shrugs. He pads over to the window and closes it just as the first few droplets hit the glass. A few years earlier, and he would have called a servant up three flights of stairs to do the trivial task and waited patiently as the carpet splattered with rain, Mary reflects. "We'll just have to stay inside this afternoon."
"I wish I could restore all the abandoned rooms," Mary tells him. "There must be hundreds of locked passage ways. We only use one wing of the entire Manor. It feels wrong, to have the outside so beautiful and the inside the same as three years before."
"You can renovate all you want once you are Mistress of Misselthwaite," Colin pronounces grandly.
Mary laughs out loud. "Don't be silly. The Mistress of Misselthwaite Manor will be your future wife, not me."
Colin hesitates at her words; she looks up and her cheeks color immediately. She raises her teacup hurriedly to hide her spreading blush.
They pass the afternoon quietly without another mention of the subject, but they are both shier in their words and actions and astonishingly mature, an evidence of their similarly unique childhoods and the divergent path magic leads them on from normal children.
*
Colin leaves for preparatory school the next year, and, before he leaves, Mary places her hand atop of his and relishes the warmth they produce between the two of them. She has a governess now, a small and neatly-tucked lady called from London. She lives in the hallway two passages down and raps on Mary's door every morning promptly after breakfast. Wild strolls and romps on the hills end; Mary learns to perfect etiquette she never knew existed and read books on places that are not nearly as exciting as India. The first time she tells her governess about tigers and hunters, her governess looks at her with disapproving eyes and the story dies away on her lips. She will not believe about magic even if she told her, Mary realizes, so she doesn't, and she feels trapped within the very walls that liberated her just a short few years ago, but she bites her tongue; she thinks of Colin at his school, and she does not want him to move away from her, does not want him to think she is unsophisticated and uneducated. She does not want to fall behind.
Mary knows she is in love with the Manor and the moor, and she knows she will never be able to leave it.
*
"Save me, Dickon!" Mary collapses onto the grass dramatically. It is a bright day, and she does not want to act like a lady at all; she thinks with savage satisfaction that her governess is terrified of burning and can't follow her outside. The morning lesson had been especially stifling. Out of a twisted form of sympathy, her governess had opened the window to let in the breeze, and the autumn air made the time pass like agony.
"What has tha' been up to?" Dickon is dark from working outside, and the muscles ripple healthily when he moves. Mary feels vindictive with her pale skin, and she sits purposely outside the reach of the tree branches, letting her arms and face soak in the dying summer heat. It has already been too long since she's seen Dickon last; he came to see Colin off, but they are all old children now -- maybe not even children anymore, and their responsibilities carve deep into the wide swept moor. Dickon does odd jobs for the craftsman in Yorkshire, picking up skills wherever he can.
"Oh, awful things," Mary sighs. She unties the ribbon in her hair and shakes the locks out with her fingers. "I never thought learning would be this horrid."
"Aye, I told mother about thy schooling," Dickon says sympathetically. "She said I ought t' get a bit o' schooling meself, but outside work suits me better."
"It will ruin you," Mary nods fervently. She happier to see Dickon's face than she would expect, and his strange, natural smile and upturned nose immediately reminds her of the gardens, the magic. Her limbs and mind are always tired now, sluggish, and she feels like she did in India, only now she knows better and craves an escape.
They inspect the gardens all afternoon, laughing among the rose bushes and racing down the stone paths. She can't bear to leave, but the supper bell tolls thickly through the garden walls. Mary looks at Dickon guiltily.
"Tha' should get back," he says after a pause.
"I've already missed my afternoon lesson," Mary replies wistfully.
Dickon walks her to the front steps and waves good-bye; Mary tells herself to not look back but she cheats on the second floor stairs, sneaking a peek out the window, and a wave of nostalgia floods over her as she sees Dickon walking alone back to Yorkshire not on the dirt path but through the moor, the grasses tickling up on his knees and ankles.
Her governess nearly gasps when she sees Mary's tanned face and forbids her to go out midday without a parasol in the future. She asks Mary where her hair ribbon is and Mary remembers too late that she left it by the tree where she met Dickon. The governess keeps her for an hour longer in the evening to make up for the missed lesson, and Mary, desperately, thinks any more days like this and the magic will die out like a candle smothered in its own flame.
A letter arrives from Colin the next day, and a different wave of nostalgia washes over Mary, this time mixed with irrational guilt and newborn determination.
*
The letters arrive steadily in two-month increments. I am to pen a letter at least once a month, Colin writes. I write to father on odd months and to you on the even ones. I am sure you agree this is the fairest solution. His penmanship stabilizes with each additional letter, and Mary dutifully spends the day after a letter arrives writing back. She reads about the athletics offered, the architecture of the buildings, his classes, his new friends, all the different subjects he is learning. He recognized India in his Geography class and impressed the teacher and students alike when he told them his cousin is from there, and continued to entertain them with stories of the animals and traditions. She in return writes about the Manor: a painting fell down on the third passageway of the first floor, and Mrs. Medlock has decided to replace it with a portrait of Mr. and Mrs. Craven that had previously been locked in the attic. Dickon taught her how to properly tie a stack of tall grass so as to keep the inside sticks safe from rain and excess sun. She tells him she has a governess and does not mention how much she hates lessons. She writes instead she is learning many different subjects now too, and she will have many delightful stories to tell him.
The winter months pass. A thick sheet of snow and ice blanket the moor and the gardens. Dickon cannot visit in this weather, and Mary marks every two months on her calendar and counts the days in between.
*
Colin returns from school for summer holiday the next year. He has grown even taller, and he looks healthier than before he left, the meat and muscle filling out his thin frame. Mary is overjoyed to see him and does not know how she should begin, but he grabs her hands and twirls her in a circle, and her shyness disappears as if a gap had never taken place. Mary's governess is dismissed for the summer months, and Mary hopes it is the last she sees of her. She suspects it probably isn't.
"I've missed this!" Colin flings his windows open and the sound of birds and leaves fills the room. "How I envy you, Mary!"
"Why?" Mary asks impulsively, surprised.
"Why -- why, because you do not have to go to school! Because you can stay here, with the gardens and watch them grow! Because you can run on these hills and do as you please without worrying about disapproval! Because you can pack picnics and have lunch by the rose bushes any day you want! Because -- because the magic is here!" Colin gestures to the vibrant array of color outside.
Mary is at a loss for words, and she looks at him, helpless. She does not know how to tell him that she hasn't experienced magic since before he left, that the closest she has is when Dickon visits, and that Dickon himself is so busy in town that she hasn't seen much more of him than she has seen of Colin. She feels ridiculous in her pink dress and pink ribbons that she chose that morning, ridiculous that there are no new flowers in bloom this year, and while it is not the fault of Colin, it is also not the fault of her.
"My governess doesn't like picnics. She said the sun -- it is bad for my skin," she says finally.
Colin looks at her like he is seeing her for the first time since his return, and realizations starts to color on his features. "But you--" he stops. Neither one of them speaks for a moment. "Let's have a picnic today, then. We will have Cook prepare us a cold midday dinner, and I will tell you about the people I have met." He extends a hand to her, and she accepts, a smile emerging that she has kept hidden for close to a year.
They reminisce a breadth of conversation topics during their picnic. Magic is not one of them.
*
Dickon visits in the afternoon. He tells Colin generously that Misselthwaite Manor is not nearly as regal without him; Colin rewards him with a strong chin and pleased smile.
"Where did tha' travel?" Dickon asks once all three are seated in Colin's room. The maid carries in three cups of tea and biscuits, and they settle comfortably on the sofa and pillows.
"My school's about an hour carriage ride outside London. We went to the theater for winter holidays," Colin relays. Dickon listens to his words, wide-eyed.
"London! What did tha' see? An' th' theater!" His biscuits lay forgotten at his fingertips. Mary has heard the same stories a few short hours ago, but she still listens eagerly, marveling at the way Colin shapes his words into grandiose images and elaborate plots. Colin describes the mysterious lighting and disappearing acts actors pulled, smoke generated onstage without fire and the sounds of horses trotting even when the stage couldn't even fit on animals.
"It must o' been magical," Dickon breathes out.
Colin stops, and continues, confident, "Yes, yes, it was magical. A lot of things were, actually. I felt all year that London and my school has magic in it, like magic is everywhere I go, and maybe even in places where I have never been before," he confides. "When I am older, I will go everywhere in the world to see the distance magic can spread."
Mary is delighted and confused at the same time; she still believes in magic and it is good to hear Colin talk about it again, but it sounds wrong to hear him say he felt magic as far away as his school when she hasn't felt it even while staying at the Manor.
"Eh! There's magic everywhere. I felt it before I met thee an' Mary; I just didn't know what t' call it," Dickon reaffirms, causing Mary to fall even deeper into confusion.
"Sorry, but I need to excuse myself for a moment," Mary says loudly, standing up quickly and awkwardly smoothing out her dress. "There's something I forgot to tell Martha."
"We'll wait here, then," Colin replies slowly, his tone slipping into concern. She flashes a reassuring smile at him.
"Tell Dickon some more about your school. I'm sure he wants to know." She hurries out the door and down the hallway, collapsing only after she has round a corner. She leans against the wall, facing two portraits of people who look down disapprovingly at her. She wants to confess to Colin she hasn't felt magic, but in truth she has; the only times she has felt magic the past year is with Dickon, and she cannot bring herself to articulate this truth into acceptable words.
She walks to the window at the end of the hall and breathes in deeply before turning quietly back to Colin's room. She hesitates at the doorway and catches Colin's movement as he raises a hand to brush Dickon's temple: pale, aristocratic skin against honest sun-spun color. She finds she cannot blame him; she cannot deny him this source of magic, when she herself cannot offer him what he wants. She and Colin have always been similar; they are explorers of magic and nothing more. Dickon is the only one who channels magic through himself, makes himself one with the moor and the animals. He is the one who breaks the path, and she and Colin follow to study and savor.
*
Colin never stops believing in magic, and neither does Mary. They have always believed Dickon is magic, and they believe even now.