Eventually, the writhing slowed, the mounds flattened, and the ground was still. All was quiet. Even the fish lay exhausted, their gills opening and closing uselessly. Aron felt cheated not to see the face of the creature whom Petal had called "My love, my love," but he was satisfied that it would be a problem no more.
But who was that second creature?
Aron returned quickly to his cottage and, first thing, checked Petal's room. He saw, to his relief, that she was indeed there, curled up in her bed. So he went to bed himself and slept more peacefully than he had in a long time.
The next morning he awoke and went directly to his loom, waiting for Petal to rise and make him some breakfast. But she slept late that morning. Finally, his stomach rumbling, Aron called out, "Petal! Come on! Make your old father some breakfast."
She didn't answer.
Perhaps she knows what I did and is being spiteful, thought Aron. "Come on, girl! Up!"
She didn't answer.
Aron went to her room and found her still lying in her bed, curled up. Naturally, there were no puddles this morning, a fact that gave Aron much satisfaction.
"Up, my girl!" he called, walking over to her and brashly pulling away the covers.
His eyes nearly popped out of his head. It was not Petal at all but pillows set up to mimic her form.
Without a moment's hesitation, Aron dashed from the room, grabbed one of Petal's large gardening shovels, and ran to the dried pond.
When he got there, he saw what, in his eagerness, he had missed the night before: his daughter's gown, lying rumpled on the bank. He immediately stepped into the mud to get to the center, but the farther he went, the deeper his legs went into the mud. At one point the mud came nearly up to his knees, and he could hardly walk. But he pressed on, thinking only of his darling Petal lying buried in the mud.
Then, as he neared the center of the pond, Aron noticed something odd. There, right where he meant to dig, was a tiny green plant shoot. Or rather two tiny green plant shoots. They were entwined delicately about each other. And before Aron could pull his right leg from the mud, those two green shoots, right before his eyes, began to grow.
In a matter of moments, they transformed into long, elegant tree saplings, both still entwined about each other. But they didn't stop there.
They continued to grow toward the sun, their trunks thickening as they grew. And as they did so, they encircled each other. They put out ever more branches, tiny leaves, and even some reddish fruit that hung in clusters.
Soon, what had been two delicate shoots only moments before were now two sturdy trees in full-grown glory, their thick, nearly merged trunks coiled around each other, their roots bulging from the mud, their lofty crowns meshed and arching over the entire width of what had been the pond.
Aron pulled himself out of the mud by one of the roots. He gazed at the two entwining trunks and at the leaves overhead, which now filtered out the sun. "Petal," he whimpered, "forgive me. I believed my love was enough."
And there, in the shade of the two trees, Aron Dewweb sat and wept. By the time the sun had set and the moon had risen, sending its sprinkles of silver light through the two trees' crowns, Aron died of a broken heart, and little green leaves fell gently to cover him…
So ended Barryn Warrex's tale.
When Aril Witherwind looked up from his book, he detected in one of the old man's eyes a solitary tear. The half-elf himself sighed from sadness and had to brush away from his page a teardrop or two that threatened to make his ink run. "Well, I must say, that is not a story I expected from a knight," he said.
Barryn Warrex stirred, his eyes and ears once more seeing and hearing what was before him. And when he spoke, it was once more with his own deep but tired voice. "I warned you," he said. "It is what has been in my heart." With a creaking of his armor and bones, he slowly rose to his feet.
"Well, now it's in my book, as well," said the half-elf, blotting the page and shaking off his own sadness. "But as to the title. How about, 'A Tale of Eternal Love'? — no, no, too corny. How about, 'A Tale of Two Loves'? You see, it's about two kinds of love, get it?"
Barryn Warrex, not much caring what title the folklorist gave the story, trudged over to the flat rock where his helmet and shield were lying.
"Well, I'll have to give that some thought," continued Aril, tapping his quill feather against his downy chin. "By the way, this is most important: Should I put this story down as fact or as fable?"
The knight put on his visorless helmet, his grand white moustaches flowing well out from it on both sides like two elegant handles. "The story is true enough as far as I'm concerned."
"Well, I don't know," said Aril, squinting at the page through his spectacles. "It seems pretty incredible — even for the Forest of Wayreth. Perhaps if you had seen those Entwining Trees yourself, it would lend credibility — »
With some effort, Barryn Warrex stooped and lifted his heavy, dull shield. "My friend, all I know is that I, too, once had a beautiful daughter, and that one day, she, too, reached marriageable age. I behaved no better than this Aron Dewweb."
"Oh — I'm so sorry," said Aril Witherwind awkwardly, not sure how to respond to such a confession. "Uh, I myself have never had children — »
The old knight slung the shield across his back, and he became as stooped under its weight as Aril was under his tome. Even as he spoke, Barryn Warrex started off down into the grassy, flower-dotted valley, where butterflies flitted about him as if to cheer him up. "It is many years since my own daughter ran away with her lover."
Aril remained perched on his rock, and, trying to hear the retreating knight, he started a new page and began scribbling once more in his book.
"Now this old knight has but one last mission in his life," said Warrex, walking ever farther off, his voice growing fainter, "and that is to find my daughter and this husband of hers — »
" — and," murmured Aril, repeating the knight's words exactly as he wrote them down, " — give — them — my — blessing."
A Painter's Vision
Barbara Siegel and Scott Siegel
"It looks so real," said Curly Kyra with awe. She brushed long ringlets of black hair away from her eyes and stared at the painting, ignoring calls from down the bar for another round of ale. "It's a beautiful boat." Softly, with wonder in her voice, she added, "It seems as if it could almost sail right off the canvas."
"Almost, but not quite," replied Sad-Eye Seron, the painter. He was a skinny man with a gentle face. His eyebrows drooped at the edges, giving him the perpetually sad expression that had earned him his nickname. But he smiled now, enjoying the effect his new painting was having on the lovely, young barmaid he had courted all summer long.
"Will it make a lot of money?" asked Kyra hopefully.
Seron's smile vanished. "I sometimes think that you're the only one who likes my work. Everybody else in Flotsam says, 'Why buy pictures of things that I can see whenever I look out my window?'»
"Hey, Kyra," bellowed a patron with an empty mug. "Am I going to get a refill, or should I just come back there and pour my own?"
The tavern owner stuck his head out of the kitchen. "Tend to business," he warned his barmaid.
"All right, I'm going," Kyra said. But she didn't move. Instead, she shook her head at the magnificent sailing scene and stood there in admiration of Seron's artistry.
If Seron was an underappreciated painter, the same could not be said of the pretty picture known as Curly Kyra. Every unmarried man — and plenty of the married ones — had hopes of bedding her. She had alabaster skin, bright brown eyes, and full lips that seemed created expressly for kissing. Even more inviting than her lips, however, was the purely feminine shape of her figure; since coming of age this summer, she had to slap men's hands more often than she had to slap at bugs.