I didn't know what to say to such things. Fortunately, she didn't seem to expect me to say anything, but pointed to the ground in front of her perch, saying "here, here" until I moved to the spot she wanted. Once I was in place, she stood tall with her hands on her hips, looking me up and down. "No child—certainly no girl of fourteen—can exist without a best and dearest bosom friend. I think you'll do nicely . . ."
"Me?"
". . . though before we begin, you must tell me what you've done to yourself. You look as if you've had a disagreement with a bull and a hay fork!" With one finger, she turned my head to the left where she could get a better view of my bruised forehead and the myriad abrasions that extended from eye to jawbone.
"A clumsy encounter with the floor of the Gaelie stables," I said, stepping back as if she might learn the cause of my injuries by touching them. "Embarrassing mostly."
"Hmm … so I must pry it out of you as part of our relearning how to be children. Ten-year-old boys are not so easily embarrassed. Tell me, what do ten-year-old boys enjoy? Ah, I've got it. . . ." And before I could answer, she hopped down from the stoop and darted into the woods. The shifting colors of her clothes made her disappear so effectively, I might have thought she was nothing but the laughing voice that echoed through the trees, calling out, "Hide-and-seek . . . and you're seeker!"
I stood stupidly in the lane, trying to decide if it would better suit my purpose to indulge her whimsy or wait for her to give it up. But I concluded that I wasn't going to get any information if I wasn't with her, so I took off through the noonday woodland, stopping every so often to listen and search for her path. She was very good at moving quietly, only occasional bursts of giggling giving her away, and she was very fast. But she knew nothing about covering her tracks, so it was only a matter of staying on her trail and waiting for her to pause too long.
Only at the end did she succeed in throwing me off, when I strode through knee-high stems of fading may apples and wood-sorrel to the center of a sunlit glade, losing her trail beneath the canopy of a monstrous oak that stood there alone. I listened, but heard nothing. I crouched down to examine the faint trail of crushed grass that ended so abruptly. She must have used some sorcery to hide herself. Or else . . .
I looked upward and a small hard missile bounced off my head. I caught the second one. An acorn. Ten more followed the first in quick succession.
"I thought I won the game if I caught you," I said, peering into the branches over my head, thinking I saw a shifting blue-green tunic somewhere in the leaves. "Not fair to attack."
"But you've not caught me yet. There's a chance I can drive you away with my weapons. And you are down there, and I am up here."
"Easily remedied, if that's what it takes," I said and swung up to the low-hanging branch that had given her entry to the tree.
"There, you see? You know how it's done. You just have to work to remember the rules."
She scrambled up higher in the tree. I followed until we were perched on the last two branches that could possibly hold our weight, a height that left us far above the roof of the woodland, able to see across the leafy green sea to the meadows and mountains, sharp-edged and clean in the morning light.
"Is this not a marvelous tree? I think we should stay up here until sunset," she said. "How long has it been since you were in such a joyful place as this?" Sunbeams danced in her eyes, and her cheeks were colored a deep rose.
"Forever." The answer had formed itself unbidden. I grasped feebly at my purpose. "So what is my prize for finding you?"
She pulled off two leaves, colored the bright green of new growth, and curled them in her fingers. "I'll have to think on that. Boys always have to win and get their prize, don't they? Whether at games or stories. With ten-year-old boys, winning at hide-and-seek is a matter of life's breath."
"I suppose."
"The palace in Avonar was the most delicious place to play hide-and-seek. My brothers and I knew every crack and crevice of it. Even better, D'Leon was a Word Winder, and even at thirteen, he could cast windings that made us invisible to each other, so we had to hunt through all five hundred rooms using only hearing and smell. Once D'Alleyn hid in my father's council chambers during a very serious meeting. D'Leon and I found him just at the same time, and chased him out from under the council table and around the columns and in and out of the room. Imagine ten pompous sorcerers remarking on the change of seasons causing such a disturbance in the air, assuring each other it wasn't evil spirits or evil omens for the times to come.
"But Papa knew exactly what it was, and he sent us to our country house for a month with our tutors commanded to teach us proper deportment, which we thought very cruel. My uncle J'Ettanne told me later, though, that Papa laughed himself to tears at the memory of his hoary-headed counselors looking for evil auras and portents when it was only three children playing hide-and-seek. It was one of our best family legends."
She sprawled out on the length of her branch like a cat stretching, and propped her head on her hand as if prepared to stay there forever. "Now you must tell me of times when you would play hide-and-seek. I know it's still done; children's games do not change over the centuries."
"I wasn't much for games," I said. "I've no brothers or sisters, and we lived remotely, so other children weren't about very often. My father was away. The war and all. And my mother … I lost my mother when I was small. I spent most of the time alone or with my nurse."
"So you have no family legends, no games to tell of? That's so very sad!"
Her expression revealed such shocked sympathy that I found myself trying to soothe her by spewing out words. "Well actually, my mother had one story about playing hide-and-seek in our house . . . the house I grew up in. Though not so cheerful an outcome as yours, I suppose. Maybe I shouldn't spoil—"
"No. Now you've started, you must tell the story."
"When my mother was very young, she was playing with her brother and his friends, and hid herself in an old cupboard deep in the cellars. The others abandoned the game without telling her, and she couldn't get out of the cupboard. She'd been told so many stories of wicked monsters who hunted naughty children in the dark that she was too frightened to make a sound, and it was two days until she was found. It wasn't until she met my father that she could bear being in a dark confined space again. My father says it was the only thing she was ever afraid of."
It wasn't exactly the humorous story she'd told, but I didn't think it was so awful that it would make her turn pale. The light and shadow were so tricky, I thought perhaps I was mistaken. Whatever her judgment of my tale, she didn't say, but instead, with movement faster than I could grasp, she shinnied her way down through the tree branches and dropped lightly to the turf. "I'll race you back to the house." As she disappeared into the trees across the glade, she cried over her shoulder, "The loser has to tell a secret!"
I dropped through the branches, getting well tangled and scratched, half cursing at her foolery. Though I told myself I only entered the race to win her secret and keep her out of mine, I would have run after her even without the promise of a prize.