Finally Yorik discovered her beneath a spreading cherry bough. In this quiet place, the Princess had parted the long grasses to form a cradle. Erde lay within. The Princess knelt beside the withered brown girl, gently tapping her leafy twig and making little clouds of misty water that settled over Erde’s dry form.
Yorik knelt beside the cradle. Erde was so small now, curled into a ball no larger than one of her old mud-balls. She wasn’t speaking, and her eyes were closed.
“Is that helping?” Yorik asked, nodding at the mist.
“No,” said the Princess miserably. She stood abruptly, waving the twig across the grass stains on her gossamer dress. The stains vanished. “So where’s the other ghost-boy?” she asked. “He must have appeared by now.”
“He did,” said Yorik. He explained about Thomas.
“Too bad,” murmured the Princess. “I could have used another servant.”
Yorik could tell she was trying to resume her old imperious manner. But her heart was no longer in it. Even as the aviary glade burst with life, the Estate darkened, and Erde crumbled.
Yorik stood too. “Poor Thomas,” he said, looking down at Erde. “He can’t do anything to help his father.”
“If he’s so useless,” snapped the Princess, “then what did you want him so badly for?”
“I only wanted to bring him here, for protection. But now I’m not sure how I would have gotten him in. A lot of Dark Ones are surrounding your glade now, you know.”
The Princess laughed darkly. “I wish a few of them would drift a little closer, but they know better, don’t they?” This idea seemed to perk her up.
Yorik continued. “And there are more of them everywhere, all the time. It’s getting harder for me to move around the Estate.”
The Princess’s dismal mood returned. “What does it matter?” she said. “Did you really think you’d find a way to defeat the Yglhfm? In all these nights of prowling everywhere with those dogs, you haven’t, have you?”
“No,” said Yorik, crestfallen. “Not yet. But I have learned something. The Dark Ones are focused on the Ravenbys. First Thomas, then his father. There must be a reason for that.” As he said it, he remembered the words of the topiary hare: Is not the fate of one bound to the fate of all?
The Princess snorted. “You would think that. Humans think everything involves them.”
“But—”
“But nothing. Don’t you realize you are dealing with an ancient evil far more powerful than a few humans? Not to mention you, a stubborn little ghost-boy, not even one year old!”
Yorik turned away. “At least I’m trying.”
The Princess’s voice turned to icicles and venom. “Beware, ghost. I can banish you from my glade. You can spend your days among the Yglhfm if you like. You know very well I—”
“—can’t leave the glade because of beastly Father,” finished Yorik. “I know.” He turned to her. The Princess’s leafy twig was sparking as though it were angry too. He pointed. “What if you let me use that? I could take it with me and use its power against them.”
The Princess shook her head. “Can’t. It doesn’t have any power except the little I put into it. And it’s part of me. It can’t leave either.”
“Right,” said Yorik. “Just like Thomas can’t leave his father.”
The Princess sighed. Her glowing face looked weary, as Yorik had never seen it before.
“You know, ghost-boy,” she said, “you see so many things, you think you see everything. But you don’t. There are things you fail to see that are right in front of you, and you shouldn’t even need ghost eyes to see them.”
“Like what?” ventured Yorik cautiously.
“Like your little murderer friend. Do you think he’s staying with his father because he’s stupid? Do you think he doesn’t fear the Yglhfm?”
“Why, then? Why would he stay?”
The Princess sank slowly into the grass, her gossamer dress billowing. Her glow dimmed. “Perhaps,” she said quietly, “it was something he did. Something terrible. And he feels responsible for everything bad that has happened since. He won’t leave his father because he doesn’t believe he deserves to be fixed. And so he stays there, among the Yglhfm, in the dark.”
“My murder,” said Yorik. “He feels responsible for my murder. But I’ve forgiven him for that.”
“I mean something really, really bad,” said the Princess distantly. “An unforgivable sin.”
“Your Highness, I—” Yorik stopped. The Princess was not listening, nor was she looking at him. She was sitting in the grass with downcast eyes, her face shadowed, her fingers fidgeting with her leafy twig.
Her voice was so quiet now that Yorik could hardly hear her. “Sometimes you do something,” she whispered. “Something so awful you can never atone for the crime. Even if you want more than anything to help someone you love … there is nothing you can do.”
Yorik understood now that the Princess was no longer talking about Thomas.
He looked up at the stars, thinking. These nights, the sky above most of the Estate was covered with writhing flame-blue clouds. Only here, above the aviary glade, could the stars still be seen. He watched them blink and shimmer.
He looked back at the girl sitting in the grass, her head with its laurel crown cast down, her glittering hair spilling around her. “What could you …” He hesitated. “What could someone have done, for their sin to be unforgivable?”
The Princess’s glow vanished. The aviary glade grew dark.
Then the Princess drifted up from where she sat, rising through the cherry boughs.
Yorik climbed swiftly, following her. In his ghost form, he could climb forever and never fall. At the very top of the tree he found her sitting as before, now on the very tip of the highest branch. Yorik crouched near her, balancing on a branch no wider than his finger.
The Princess raised her arm and pointed with her leafy twig. The twig moved along the sky, across the length of the bright Milky Way, the river of stars. The white Way glowed ever brighter as the twig traced its path.
“A girl was once given charge of a river,” came the Princess’s hushed voice, soft and sad. “A bright, clear, shining river.”
As Yorik watched, the leafy twig twisted. In the river there appeared swift black shapes, dipping and rushing in the flow, free and happy in their swimming.
“What are those?” he asked.
“They are dolphins,” said the Princess. “They asked the girl to come and play with them, and swim in the waters.”
“Did she?”
“At first,” she said. “The girl would come to the river’s edge each morning and call to them, and they would come to her and she would swim with them, up and down the river’s length, from its source in mountain springs to its end, where sea winds blew over salt waters.”
Yorik watched the white Way glitter and gleam. It filled with more of the dark swimmers, and the stars around them seemed to dance.
The Princess went on. “All was well, in the beginning. But in time, the girl grew bored. She became angry with her father for giving her only this river, when she thought she deserved so much more. And so she left it behind, and went to other places she thought more worthy of her. She ignored the shining river.”
The stars that had seemed to dance slowed and then stopped. The happy swimming of the dark shapes changed too, becoming frantic and crowded. Something was terribly wrong, and despite himself,
Yorik felt afraid. He almost did not want the Princess to continue. At last he spoke. “Go on.”