Camille smiled, but silently added, Save for the cloud which hangs over thee.
“Speaking of the months that have passed, have you ever wondered about time?” asked Alain.
“Time, my lord?”
“ ’Tis a great mystery to dwellers of Faery, for here it holds no sway.”
“How so, my lord, for do not events occur, things grow, days pass in Faery? And if so, then what is that but a measure of time?”
Alain laughed. “Ah, Camille, you are too clever by far, yet this is what I mean: indeed things do grow and days pass, but nought in Faery becomes overly aged, with the attendant infirmities that does bring. People do not wither and die of time’s rade, do not pass away into the dust of the years. All things in Faery simply are.”
Camille frowned. “But Alain, people do grow old in Faery. Look at Andre; he is a man of age.”
“Ah, but that is because he spent overlong in a place outside Faery, out in a mortal land where time does rule, and his age caught up to his years.”
“Oh,” replied Camille. “But what of those such as Jules? He is but a lad. Will he not age in Faery, not grow into his manhood?”
“Ah, there is the mystery of it, Camille. Jules will indeed age-though at a slower rate than in the mortal lands-up until he reaches his prime, and then he will not go beyond.”
“All part of the magic of Faery?”
Alain nodded. “Indeed.”
Camille paused and laid down her fork beside her plate. “Which reminds me, Alain: is the harvest eternal in the Autumnwood? If so, then how can that be? When grain is reaped, when crops are picked, what happens then? I mean, without winter to rest, spring to renew and seeds to be sown, and summer to ripen, how can autumn bring forth a harvest?”
“ ’Tis another mystery, that, my love,” replied Alain. “I think Borel’s winter demesne does somehow allow all the Forests of the Seasons to rest, and that Celeste’s Springwood somehow permits the renewal of all, as well as the sowing of-what? — not seeds, but rather crop. Too, my Summerwood somehow allows the ripening of the bounty that is to come, while Liaze’s demesne takes from them all and provides an eternal harvest. Things plucked or reaped in the Autumnwood-or in the other Forests of the Seasons as well-simply seem to… reappear.-Oh, not instantly, but after some while, and not as long as anyone is watching; but one day it will be there, as if it had been there all along, somehow overlooked or unseen. Beyond that, I cannot say aught, for ’tis of Faery in the Forests of the Seasons we speak; I add, however, that elsewhere in Faery, across its far-flung realms, other conditions apply, some of them quite uncanny.”
“My, but these are strange rules which govern this part of Faery and the life herein,” said Camille, taking up her fork and spearing more of the delicious asparagus.
Alain said, “You speak of rules, my darling, as if there were many, but I know of only two.”
“Two?”
Alain nodded and stood and walked to her end of the table. He leaned down and peered at her with his grey eyes through his grey silken mask, then he kissed her, and said, “The first rule of life is to live, Camille, but the prime rule of life is to love.”
She reached up and pulled him down for another kiss, this one decidedly more lingering.
Alain then strode back to his end of the table and sat, and Camille said, “The reason I spoke of the year and some months that have passed, beloved, is that I would like to visit my family and see how they have fared, especially Giles. I think I would need but a sevenday at Papa’s cottage, seven days to catch up in all.”
Alain took up his goblet of dark ruby wine and sipped. He set the glass down and said, “I will arrange for it to be done.”
“Would you not come with me?”
“My love, the Bear will be your escort, though I will send couriers ahead and have Borel and his Wolves accompany you through the Winterwood so that what happened there shall not occur again.”
Camille hid her disappointment that he would not be with her and said, “Very well, my lord.”
A handful of days later, after a night of passion and a tender and tearful adieu just ere dawn, in midmorn Camille set forth with the Bear from Summerwood Manor, she riding once more, he again laden with bundles, a cottage just beyond the far edge of Faery their goal.
As they came to the oakwood lane, Camille turned and waved au revoir to those who had gathered on the portico to see her off-Blanche, Lanval, Jules, Andre, Renaud, the seamstresses, and others of the household staff-all of whom Camille had come to love dearly. “I shall return in a moon or so!” she called, though whether they could make out her words, she did not know. And she faced front once again, tears streaming down her cheeks.
Across the Summerwood they went, as the sun traced an arc through the sky, and late in the day they came to the pool where the Waterfolk-otters had played, but they seemed wholly absent this eve, for none whatsoever were in sight. Even so, remembering, Camille did not shed her clothes to swim or bathe. At this place, as well, a camp awaited them, pheasant on the spit above the fire. Once more she and the Bear shared a pleasant repast, and then the bear waddled up to the dewberry briars on the hillside above and again sat among them and feasted.
The following day just after sundown, they came to the twilight border where the Summerwood ended and the Autumnwood began. Here another firelit camp awaited, with another meal on the spit above: several trout, altogether enough for Camille, though the Bear afterward rooted about ’neath fallen logs for whatever under there it was he ate.
The next morn they entered the Autumnwood, where the Bear’s fur became grizzled reddish brown, and they passed back along the way they had come months agone, and they took sustenance from the plentiful harvest. As evening fell, no campsite awaited, for, in this realm, game acook above a fire was not needed, or so did Camille reason.
On the second day in the Autumnwood, as the Bear topped a hill, on another knoll in the near distance stood a white Unicorn. “Oh, Bear, look there’s a Uni-”
With a toss of its tail, the Unicorn snorted and spun and trotted away, disappearing down the far side of the knoll. Tears welled in Camille’s eyes, for now she truly knew what Fra Galanni had meant about being unsullied, and what Agnes meant about being pure; no longer having her virgin’s blood, Camille was dismayed by the Unicorn’s rejection, and it seemed somehow unfair.
On this day as well, at the top of a vale above a field of grain, they again had passed the huge man sitting with his back to a tree, a scythe across his knees; and, as before, he had gotten to his feet and bowed low as the Bear and Camille had passed.
In midafternoon of the third day within that demesne, they once again reached a twilit border, this one leading into the Winterwood.
The Bear stopped at the bound, and he whuff ed when Camille asked if they would make camp at this place. She spent the dregs of the day finding a suitable stream to fill the waterskins she had insisted on bringing, for, as she had told the Bear, she would not abide again the brimstone-foul water of the ice-clad pools within the realm to come.
The next dawning Camille awakened to the cold nose of an animal nudging her cheek. “Bear!” she shrieked as she bolted upright, only to find a Wolf shying back. Laughter rang across the daybreak, for Borel and his pack had come. Yet chuckling, Borel said, “Best put on your cold-weather gear, Sister mine, for where we go ’tis quite chill.”
Into the Winterwood they fared, into that tangle of twisted and broken trees, the skies above dismal, the light dim, ice and snow and shattered rock and crags looming alongside. The Wolves ranged fore and aft and on the flanks as well. Occasionally the Bear, his fur now white, paused and sniffed the air and grunted, but what he may have scented, if aught, Camille did not know. Even so, with a Bear and a Wolf pack and Borel-he armed with a long-knife strapped to his thigh and his bow in hand, arrows in a quiver at his hip-Camille felt quite safe.