The Knight

“More than you can know, Able. Seek Eterne, but never forget me wholly.”

“I couldn’t.”

“So men say, yet many have forsaken me. When the wind moans in the chimney, O my lover, go into the wood. There you will find me crying for the lovers I have lost.”

Trembling, the boy Toug came forward. “Don’t send him after that sword,

Aelfqueen.”

Disiri laughed. “You fear he will make you go too?”

Toug shook his head. “I’m afraid he won’t let me come.”

“Listen to that! Will you, Able?”

“No,” I said. “When we get out of here, I’m going to send him back to his mother.”

“See?” Toug reached toward Disiri, though he did not dare touch her. “More than both of you together.” She straightened up. “Will you obey,

Able?”

“In anything. I swear.”

“In that case I have things to say to this boy, though he will have nothing to say to me. You need not fear he will return a man. There will be no such transformation.” She raised her sword and struck my shoulders with the flat of its blade, surprising me. “Arise, Sir Able, my own true knight!”

A step or two, and she had vanished among tall ferns as green as she; like a dog too fearful to disobey, Toug hurried after her and vanished too. I waited, not at all sure either would come back. The time passed slowly, and I found out that my new, big body was tired enough to die. I sat, walked up and down, and sat again. For a while, I tried to find two trees of the same kind.

All were large and all were very old, for Aelfrice (as I know now) is not a place in which trees are felled. Each had its own manner of growth, and leaves of its own color and shape. I found one with pink bark and another whose bark was purple; white bark, both smooth and rough, was common among them. Leaves were red, and yellow, a hundred shades of green, and one tree was leafless, having green bark in place of leaves, bark that hung loose in folds and drapes so that it got more exposure to the light. Since that time alone in a forest of Aelfrice, it has always seemed to me that the spiny orange must have come from there, as I said earlier, its seed carried by an Aelf or more probably by some other human being as forlorn as I was, returning to his own world. However that may be, I took the last of my seeds from the pouch at my belt and planted it in a glade I found, a place of silence ind surpassing beauty. Whether it sprouted and took root, I cannot say.

In that glade, I paused at my planting to look up, and saw the comings and goings of men, women, children, and many animals—not each step each took, but the greater movements of their days. A man plowed a field while I blinked, and returned home tired, and chancing to look in through his own window, saw the love his wife gave another. Too exhausted to be angry, he feigned not to have seen and sat by her fire, and when his wife hurried out, looking like a dirty bed and full of lies, he asked for his supper and kept quiet.

As I finished planting the seed, I thought about that, and it seemed to me that the things I had seen in the sky of Aelfrice were like the things my bowstring showed in dreams; I had unstrung my bow the way you do, but I strung it again and held it up so I could study my string against that sky, but Parka’s little string vanished into the great gray sky, so that I could not make out its line.

I did not understand that then and do not understand it now, but it is what I saw. When I had tamped earth over the seed, I would have gone back to the spot where Disiri had left me if I could. Unable to find it, I wandered in circles—or at least in what I hoped were circles—looking for it. Soon it seemed to me that the air got darker with every step I took. I found a sheltered spot, lay down to rest, and slept.

―――

I woke from terrible dreams of death to the music of wolves. Bow in hand, I made my way among the trees, then paused to shout “Disiri!”

At once an answering voice called, “Here! Here!”

I hurried toward it, feeling my way with my bow, entered a starlit clearing, and was embraced with one arm by a woman who clasped an infant in the other, a little woman who rushed to me weeping. “Vali? Aren’t you Vali?” And then,

“I’m so sorry! Did Seaxneat send you?”

It was a moment before I understood. When I did I said, “A gallant knight sent me to find you, Disira. His name is Sir Ravd, and he was concerned for you.

So am I, if you are out here alone.”

“All alone except for Ossar,” she told me, and held her baby up so I could see him.

“Seaxneat told you to hide in this forest?”

She nodded, and cried.

“Did he say why?”

She shook he head violently. “Only to hide. So I hid and hid, all day and all night. There was nothing to eat, and after the first day I wanted to go back, but—”

“I understand.” I took her elbow as gently as I could and led her forward, although I had no idea where we were or where we might be going. “You tried to find your way back to Glennidam and got lost.”

“Y-yes.” A wolf howled as she spoke, and she shuddered.