“I told you—my sister gave it to me.” Dall sighed with relief as the tip found the perfect itchy spot to scratch.
“And where did she get it?”
“She found it in the woods last fall; we were all out nutting together, and she was feeling among the leaves in between the roots, and there it was.”
“By itself?”
“I don’t know. I didn’t see her find it. Why, what could have been with it?”
The man sat down, heavily. “Dall, I carved that knife myself, two winters gone. I had thrown away my sword—oh, aye, I had a sword once, and mail that shone like silver, and a fine prancing horse, too. I had a dagger yet, and while I was snowed in, that first winter of my freedom, I whittled away on the kindling sticks. Most I burnt, but a few I kept, for the pleasure of remembering my boy’s skill. Then spring came, and when I set out again I tossed them in the stream one summer’s day to watch them float away.”
“So the knife is yours,” Dall said.
“I threw it away,” the man said. “Like my sword. And unlike my sword it has come back, in a hand that valued it more.” He cleared his throat. “I just wondered… if any of the others were found. Some flowers—mostly rose designs, over and over—and one fairly good horse.”
“I don’t know,” Dall said. “But if the knife is yours…” He held it out.
The man shook his head. “No, lad. I threw it away; it’s yours now.”
“But it’s special,” Dall said. “It saved me—” He rattled on quickly, sensing the man’s unwillingness to hear, about the little people in the grass, and the serpent’s bite, and the strange being that appeared from nowhere and vanished back into nowhere, and the water…
The man stared at him, open-mouthed. “That knife?”
“This knife,” Dall said. He held it out again. “Your knife. You made it; the magic must be from you.”
“’To ward from secret treachery, from violence and from guile, from deadly thirst and hunger, from evil creatures vile…’” The man’s voice trailed off. “It can’t be…” His fingers stretched toward it, then his fist clenched. “It can’t be. It’s gone; what’s loosed cannot be caught again.”
“That’s silly,” Dall said. He felt silly too, holding out the knife. “When we let the calf out of the pen, we just catch it and bring it back.”
“Magic is not a cow, boy!” The man’s voice was hoarse now; Dall hardly dared look at his face for the anger he expected to see, but instead there were tears running down the furrows beside his mouth. “I forswore it…”
And will the wind not blow? And will not the spring return? The man’s head jerked up; he must have heard it too.
Dall took a small step forward, and laid the knife in the man’s hand, folding the man’s fingers around it. As he stepped back, he saw the change, as if the sun had come out from behind a cloud. Light washed over the man, and behind it the man’s filthy old shirt shone whiter than any cloth Dall had seen. His scuffed, worn boots gleamed black; his mud-streaked trews were spotless. On his tired, discouraged face, a new expression came: hope, and love, and light. What had seemed gray hair, once clean, now gleamed a healthy brown.
And the knife, the simple wooden knife, stretched and changed, until the man held a sword out of old tales. Dall had never seen a sword at all, let alone such a sword as that.
Vows are not so easily broken, or duties laid aside. Dall had no idea what that was about, but the man did; his quick head-shake and shrug changed to an expression of mingled awe and sorrow. He fell to his knees, holding the sword carefully, hilt upright. Dall backed away; a stone nudged the back of his legs and he sat down on it. He watched the man’s lips move silently, until the man looked straight at him out of those strange green eyes, eyes still bright with tears.
“Well, boy, you have done quite a work here.”
“I didn’t mean to,” Dall said.
“I’m glad you did,” the man said. He stood, and held out his hand. “Come, let me call you friend. My name’s Felis, and I was once a paladin of Falk. It seems Falk wants me back, even after—even now.” He looked at the sword, the corners of his mouth quirking up in what was not quite a smile. “I think I’d better find this wood where your sister found the knife I carved, and see if any of the other bits washed up there. Something tells me the road back to Falk may prove… interesting.”
Dall took the proffered hand and stood.
“What about me?” he asked.
“I hope you will travel with me,” the man said. “You saved my life and you brought me back my knife… my life, actually, as a servant of Falk. And surely you want the sister who found it to know that it saved you.”
“Go home?” Dall’s voice almost squeaked. He could imagine his father’s sarcasm, his brother’s blows.
“It seems we both must,” Felis said. “We both ran away; the knife called us both. But neither of us will stay with your father, I’m sure. What—do you think a boy who has saved a paladin remains a drop-hand forever?”
In the days of high summer, when the trees stood sentinel over their shade at noon, still and watchful, and spring’s racing waters had quieted to clear pools and murmuring riffles, Dall no longer Drop-hand returned to his home, walking across the hayfield with a tall man whose incongruous clothes bore no sweat-stains, even in that heat. Gory the Tall recognized Dall the moment he came out of the trees, but the man with the spotless white shirt and the sword he did not recognize. Dall’s brothers stood as if struck by lightning, watching their brother come, moving with the grace of one who does not stumble even on rough paths.
That evening, in the long soft twilight, Felis told of Dall’s courage, of the magic in the knife he’d carved, of his oaths and his need to return.
“Then—I suppose this is yours too,” said the youngest girl, Julya. She fished out of her bodice a little flat circle of wood carved with rose petals and held it out to him. Dall could hear the tears in her voice.
Felis shook his head. “Nay, lass. When I carved the flowers, I thought of my own sisters, far away. If it has magic, let it comfort you.” He touched it with his finger. Then the air was filled with the perfume of roses, a scent that faded only slowly. The girl’s face glowed with joy; she sniffed it again and tucked it back into her clothes.
“And he really saved you?” Dall’s oldest brother asked.
“I slipped and fell,” Dall said.
“At exactly the right moment,” Felis said, a wave of his hand shutting off the gibes Dall’s brothers had ready. “I hope he’ll come with me, help me find the rest of the carvings I must find before I go back to my order.”
“But—” Gory the Tall peered through the gloom at his son and at Felis. “If he’s not the boy he was…”
“Then it’s time for him to leave,” Felis said. He turned to Dall. “If you want to, that is.”
He was home without blows and jeers; he had triumphed. If he stayed, he would have that to fall back on. Stories to tell, scars to show. If he left, this time it would be for such adventures as paladins find—he knew far more about real adventures now than he had… and he was no longer angry and hurt, with every reason to go and none to stay.
An evening breeze stirred the dust, waking all the familiar smells of home. At his back, Julya pressed close; he could just smell the rose-scent of the carving in her bodice. But beyond that, he could smell the creek, the trees, the indefinable scent of lands beyond that he had only begun to know.
“I will go with you,” he said to Felis. And then, to his family, “And someday I will come home again, with gifts for you all.”