But overhead the stars should have shone clear. Clouds drifted, wrack in heaven. She looked up, wished them gone, that this night be what it ought. The deer and the hares looked up with their huge dreaming eyes, as for a little time the sky was pure. But quickly a wisp of cloud formed again, and fingers of wind drew the taint back across the sky.
“It is long,” Death whispered.
She turned, startled, laid her hand on the stone at her throat, for near the ring had appeared a blot of shadow, a darkness which hovered next a tree the lightning had slain, and for a moment ugly whisperings attended it
“Long absent,” said Lord Death.
“Go from here,” she bade him. “It is not yournight, and not your place.”
Death stirred. Deer, beside her, trembled, their shifting steps carrying them nearer and nearer her, and the air breathed with the dankness of most nights in this wood.
“Many years,” Lord Death said, “you have not come at all. Ihave walked here. Should I not? I have hunted here. Do I not have leave?”
“I care not what you do,” she said. But such was her loneliness that even this converse drew her. She regarded the shadow more calmly, watched it spread and settle on the riven stump as brush swayed. Something doglike settled too, a puddle of shadow at its master’s feet. It dipped its inky head and yawned, panting softly in the dark, while the deer and hares froze. “Do not settle to stay, Lord Death. I have told you.”
“Proud. Lady of cobwebs and tatters. The old oak is younger tonight. Do you not care to tend the others? Or can it be . . . that a little of you fades, each time you do?”
“He is rooted elsewhere, that old tree, and he is more than he seems. Do not set your hand to him. There are some things not healthy for you as well, Lord Death.”
“For many years, many summers, you have neglected this place. And now your eyes turn this way. Have you cause to come?”
“Need I cause . . . in my wood?”
“The Ealdwood is smaller this year.”
“It is always smaller,” she said, and looked more closely at the shadow, in which for the first time she could see the least distinction, a suspicion of an arm, a, hand, but never, never a face.
“Old friend,” he said, “come walk with me.”
She smiled, mocking him, and the smile faded, for the hand reached out to her. “Upstart youth,” she said, “what have I to do with you?”
“You have given me souls to hunt, Arafel. And they are withme when I have taken them, but there is no sense in them. No gratitude. And less pleasure. Why do I come? What do you see in your side of Eald? What is there, that I can never see?” The shadow drew itself up, and the hound rose too. The likeness of the hand was still extended. “Walk with me,” Lord Death asked softly. “Is it not a night for fellowship? I beg you—walk with me.”
The deer fled away, bounding this way and that; the hares darted for cover in panic. The hound stayed, a breathing in the shadow. Suddenly there seemed others of them, a shadowy pack, and the shuffle and stamp of hooves sounded where the darkness was deepest.
A wind started through the trees. Where stars had shone, the blight in heaven had become a dark edge of cloud. Arafel glanced from sky to trees, where the shadow flowed, where small chitterings disturbed the peace.
“Send them away,” she said, and the other shadows slunk away, and the wind fell. There was only the greater Darkness, and a chill sense of presence.
She walked with him, from out the ring and more and more solidly within this world where Men lived—incongruous companionship, elven-kind and one of Men’s less-reputed gods. He said little. That was his wont, and hers. She had no deep fear of him, for elven-kind had never been subject to him; when their wounds took them, they simply faded, and where they went, Death was not, nor ever had been. All had faded now, but she had not; they had gone away beyond the sea, but she had not been willing. She was last, loving the woods too well to go when the despair came on others. It was perhaps habit kept her now; or pride—her kind had ever been proud; or perhaps her heart was bound here. Death had never known the motives of the elves.
She did not walk the shadow-ways, that path which was mostly under her moon. Death could not reach to that other place, and she meant that he never should. She stayed companionable with him, her Huntsman, guardian of her forest what time she was absent, who had come to the land when Men came, and who haunted this forest most of all places on the earth. He showed her the land he had had in care, the great old trees with roots well sunk in her own Eald, that could not easily die. She saw their other selves, their aspect beneath this moon, and now and again she found one dangerously fading, and gave her strength to heal.
“You undo my work,” he reproached her.
“Only where you trespass,” she said, and looked again at the darkness, wherein two soft gleams seemed to shine. “If I do not go where the others have gone, at the last I shall have drawn all Eald-that-was to heal this blight that Men make; and where shall I be then, Lord Death, having used my strength up so? Is that what you wait for? Do you think my kind can die?”
“I wait to see,” he said, and his voice was soft and still. A shadow-sleeve rippled in wide gesture. “All of this you might restore, drive out Men, claim it all, and rule—”
“And die, as it did.”
“And die,” Lord Death said softer still.
She smiled, perceiving wistfulness. “Merest youth.”
“Invite me with you,” Death wished her. “Let me once see what you see. Let me see you as you are. Show me . . . that other land.”
“No,” she said, shuddering, and felt the brush of a touch upon her cheek.
“Do not,” Death pleaded. “Do not hate me. Do not fear me. All do . . . but you.”
“Banish hope. My land fadesfrom wounds.”
“But there is none can wound you,” he said. “None, Arafel. So you are bound here, to share the fate of Eald.”
“There are many who can wound me,” she said, looking placidly toward that place where she judged a face might be. “But not you.”
“Save when the woods are gone. Save when all that gives you strength has gone. And you live long, my lady of the fading trees, but not forever.”
“Yet I shall cheat you all the same.”
“Perhaps you will.” The whisper wavered, trembled. “Do you know where your kindred has gone? Do you knowthat that place is good? No. But me you know. I am familiar and easy. We are old companions, you and I.”
“Companions without fellowship.”
“Do you not know loneliness? That, we share.”
“But you are all darkness,” she said. “And cold.”
“Do all see you the same?”
“No,” she confessed.
“Perhaps,” he said, “you will come to see me as I am.”
She said nothing to that, for she was not as cruel as some of her kind, having felt pain.
“I also,” he said, “heal.”
Still she said nothing.
“Come,” he said. “I shall show you my other face.”
She stopped at his touch, for the way to another, third Ealdwood lay in his power and the wind from it was chill, that place of hismaking. “No,” she said. “Not there, my lord, never there.”