The man stopped just short of them, open-mouthed, his face a study in hope, and fear that hope will be yanked away. “Your Highness?”
Robin nodded.
The round woman had come up beside the man. Tears coursed down her face. She said calmly, “Teazle, don’t keep ’em standing in the yard. Look like they’ve been dragged backwards through the blackthorn, both of them, and probably hungry as cats.” But she stepped forward and touched one tentative hand to the prince’s cheek. “You’re back,” she whispered.
“I’m back.”
They were fed hugely, and Robin was decently clothed in linen and leather belonging to Teazle’s eldest son. “We should be going,” the prince said at last, regretfully.
“Of course,” Teazle agreed. “Oh, they’ll be that glad to see you at the palace.”
Moon saw the shadow of pain pass quickly over Robin’s face again.
They tramped through the new ferns, the setting sun at their backs. “I’d as soon …” Robin faltered and began again. “I’d as soon not reach the palace tonight. Do you mind?”
Moon searched his face. “Would you rather be alone?”
“No! I’ve been alone for—how long? A year? That’s enough. Unless you don’t want to stay out overnight.”
“It would be silly to stop now, just when I’m getting good at it,” Moon said cheerfully.
They made camp under the lee of a hill near a creek, as the sky darkened and the stars came out like frost. They didn’t need to cook, but Moon built a fire anyway. She was aware of his gaze; she knew when he was watching, and wondered that she felt it so. When it was full dark and Robin lay staring into the flames, Moon said, “You know, then?”
“How I was … ? Yes. Just before … there was a moment when I knew what had been done, and who’d done it.” He laced his brown fingers over his mouth and was silent for a while; then he said, “Would it be better if I didn’t go back?”
“You’d do that?”
“If it would be better.”
“What would you do instead?”
He sighed. “Go off somewhere and grow apples.”
“Well, it wouldn’t be better,” Moon said desperately. “You have to go back. I don’t know what you’ll find when you get there, though. I called down curse and banishment on your mother and father, and I don’t really know what they’ll do about it.”
He looked up, the fire bright in his eyes. “You did that? To the king and queen of Hark End?”
“Do you think they didn’t deserve it?”
“I wish they didn’t deserve it.” He closed his eyes and dropped his chin onto his folded hands.
“I think you are the heart of the land,” Moon said in surprise.
His eyes flew open again. “Who said that?”
“A guard at the front palace gate. He’ll probably fall on his knees when he sees you.”
“Great grief and ashes,” said the prince. “Maybe I can sneak in the back way.”
They parted the next day in sight of the walls of Great Hark. “You can’t leave me to do this alone,” Robin protested.
“How would I help? I know less about it than you do, even if you are a year out of date.”
“A lot happens in a year,” he said softly.
“And a lot doesn’t. You’ll be all right. Remember that everyone loves you and needs you. Think about them and you won’t worry about you.”
“Are you speaking from experience?”
“A little.” Moon swallowed the lump in her throat. “But I’m a country witch and my place is in the country. Two weeks to the east by foot, just across the Blacksmith River. If you ever make a King’s Progress, stop by for tea.”
She turned and strode away before he could say or do anything silly, or she could.
Moon wondered, in the next weeks, how the journey could have seemed so strange. If the Seawood was full of ghosts, none of them belonged to her. The plain of grass was impressive, but just grass, and hot work to cross. In Little Hark she stopped for the night, and the blond boy remembered her.
“Did you find your teacher?” he asked.
“No. She died. But I needed to know that. It wasn’t for nothing.”
He already knew the prince had come back; everyone knew it, as if the knowledge had blown across the kingdom like milkweed fluff. She didn’t mention it.
She came home and began to set things to rights. It didn’t take long. The garden wouldn’t be much this year, but it would be sufficient; it was full of volunteers from last year’s fallen seed. She threw herself into work; it was balm for the heart. She kept her mind on her neighbors’ needs, to keep it off her own. And now she knew that her theory was right, that earth and air and fire and water were all a part of each other, all connected, like silver and gold. Like joy and pain.
“You’re grown,” Tansy Broadwater said to her, but speculatively, as if she meant something other than height, that might not be an unalloyed joy.
The year climbed to Midsummer and sumptuous life. Moon went to the village for the Midsummer’s Eve dance and watched the horseplay for an hour before she found herself tramping back up the hill. She felt remarkably old. On Midsummer’s Day she put on her apron and went out to dig the weeds from between the flagstones.
She felt the rhythm in the earth before she heard it. Hoofbeats, coming up the hill. She got to her feet.
The horse was chestnut and the rider was honey-haired. He drew rein at the gate and slipped down from the saddle, and looked at her with a question in his eyes. She wasn’t quite sure what it was, but she knew it was a question.
She found her voice. “King’s Progress?”
“Not a bit.” He sounded just as she’d remembered, whenever she hadn’t had the sense to make enough noise to drown the memory out. “May I have some tea anyway?”
Her hands were cold, and knotted in her apron. “Mint?”
“That would be nice.” He tethered his horse to the fence and came in through the gate.
“How have things turned out?” She breathed deeply and cursed her mouth for being so dry.
“Badly, in the part that couldn’t help but be. My parents chose exile. I miss them—or I miss them as they were once. Everything else is doing pretty well. It’s always been a nice, sensible kingdom.” Now that he was closer, Moon could see his throat move when he swallowed, see his thumb turn and turn at a ring on his middle finger.
“Moon,” he said suddenly, softly, as if it were the first word he’d spoken. He plucked something out of the inside of his doublet and held it out to her. “This is for you.” He added quickly, in a lighter tone, “You’d be amazed how hard it is to find when you want it. I thought I’d better pick it while I could and give it to you pressed and dried, or I’d be here empty-handed after all.”
She stared at the straight green stem, the cluster of inky-blue flowers still full of color, the sweet ghost of vanilla scent. Her fingers closed hard on her apron. “It’s heliotrope,” she managed to say.
“Yes, I know.”
“Do … do you know what it means?”
“Yes.”
“It means ‘devotion.’”
“I know,” Robin said. He looked into her eyes, as he had since he’d said her name, but something faltered slightly in his face. “A little pressed and dried, but yours, if you’ll have it.”
“I’m a country witch,” Moon said with more force than she’d planned. “I don’t mean to stop being one.”
Robin smiled a little, an odd sad smile. “I didn’t say you ought to. But the flower is yours whether you want it or not. And I wish you’d take it, because my arm’s getting tired.”