It was Death, in the wreckage of an old tree.
“Begone,” she said to him.
“They will give you pain.”
“Begone, upstart.”
“They have no gratitude for gifts,” he said.
“The third time—begone.”
He went, for at her third command he must, and left a chill behind him.
She frowned and drew back, departing her own way into elven night, and the light of her own and pale green moon.
She thought often about the meeting, but she took her time in venturing again in the face of Death’s taunting. Her pride, pricklish elvish pride, refused to acknowledge that he had disturbed her, but she put it off past one midsummer’s eve, and yet another, and perhaps more . . . time meant little to her, who measured the oldest trees against her lifetime. But at last she came back to that forest below Caer Wiell, dismayed anew to realize how fast human life fled, for the babe was much taller when she had found her again playing on that strip beneath the walls. The child stared at her from wide, little-girl eyes, her doll forgotten in her lap. She had her attendants, who sat to themselves and laughed shrill sly laughs and never saw their visitor. They chattered among themselves, a ring of bright skirts and fingers busy with embroideries. But the child was grave and curious.
And Arafel sat down crosslegged on the ground, let a child show her daisy-chains and how to count wishes.
They laughed together, but then the watching girls came and fetched the child away from the forest edge and scolded her.
It was not every day, nor even every moon, that Arafel came. Sometimes other concerns kept her; but she remembered Men more often than her wont in those days, and sang much, and was happy.
Still the mortal time was long; and when at last she delayed for months, the child took her pony into the woods and set out seeking her, along the Caerbourne’s willow-shaded banks.
The wood grew darker very soon; and it was no good place to be. The fat pony knew that, and shook her off and raced away in terror. And Branwyn wiped the wet leaves from off her hands and tried to keep her lip from trembling, for what had frightened the pony chuckled and whispered in the bushes nearby.
Many the human intruder in Ealdwood that dusk, with calling and blowing of horns; and they found the poor pony with his neck broken. Lord Evald rode farthest and most desperately, driven by a father’s love . . . and Scaga led the searchers farther than most would have dared but for shame to Evald’s face and dread of Scaga’s anger.
Arafel came looking too, having heard the cries and the intrusion. She found the child tucked like a frightened fawn in the hollow of an old and trustworthy tree, dried her tears, banished the dark from that glade. “Did you come hunting me?” Arafel asked, her heart touched that at last, after so many years, there was some hope of Men. “Come,” she asked of Branwyn, trying to draw her to that place where childhood might be long, and life longer still. But the child feared those other sights.
And suddenly a father’s voice rang out, distant through the wood; and the child chose once for all, and called out, and fled for him.
Arafel drew away; and stayed away very long. It was shame perhaps, for intended theft. And pain . . . that, perhaps, most of all. Midsummers passed, and beltains, while mortal Eald grew rank and Death did as he would there, failing her presence.
But come she did when her heart was healed. She expected the child where she would always be, at the forest’s edge; and when she did not find her there . . . at least, she thought, Branwyn would be playing on the hillside on so bright a midsummer day; and finally, seeking with persistence, she went even to the stones of Caer Wiell, man-hewn with painful iron.
So she found Branwyn at last, on the tower’s crest, in that sheltered nook where the wind could not reach.
The child’s shape had changed. It was a budding woman in a woman’s gown, who stared at her in alarm and did not truly remember her, forgetting childish dreams.
Branwyn had brought bread there for the birds, and stopped in the very motion of her hand, the cornflower eyes greatly amazed, not seeing howher visitor had come, but only that she was there, which was the way most mortals looked at Arafel when they saw her at all.
“Do you remember me?” Arafel asked, saddened at the change she saw.
“No,” said Branwyn, wrinkling her nose and tilting her head back to stare at her visitor, from soles of her feet to a crown of her head. “You are poor.”
“So some see me.”
“Did you beg of me on the road? You should not have come inside.”
“No,” said Arafel patiently, “Perhaps you once saw me differently.”
“At our gate?”
“Never. I gave you a flower.”
The blue eyes blinked, and did not remember.
“I offered you magic. I did you daisy chains, and found you in the woods.”
“You never did,” Branwyn breathed, cupping the crumbs in both her hands. “ I stopped believing in you.”
“So easily?” asked Arafel.
“My pony died.”
It was hate. It wounded. Arafel stood and stared.
“My father and Scaga brought me home. And I never went back.”
“You might . . . if you would.”
“I am a woman now.”
“You still remember my name.”
“Thistle.” Branwyn drew back, out of her shadow. “But little-girl playmates go away when girls are grown.”
“So I must,” said Arafel.
And she began to. But she stopped on a last forlorn hope and cast a glamor as once she had done, on the birds which hovered round about, silvering their wings. Branwyn quickly cast crumbs, and the birds alit and fought for them, so that the gleaming faded in a knot of wings and thieving. She threw more. Such were Branwyn’s magics, to tame wild things, by their desires. The cornflower eyes lifted, dark and ill-wishing, conscious of their own power and disdaining forever what was wild.
“Good-bye,” said Arafel, and yielded up the effort which held her so far out of Eald.
She faded back then, out of heart to linger there.
“Did I not warn you?” Death made bold to ask her, when next their paths crossed. Then in anger Arafel banished him from her presence, but not from the wood, for she was out of sorts with Men. The dream she had dreamed of humankind had proved more than vain, it was turned altogether against her, like the child who had grown as the saplings had grown in Death’s new forest, taking root in this world, and not in hers.
She slipped within the safer, kindlier light of her moon, and into the forest of Eald as her eyes saw it, a forest which had never faded since the beginning of the world, save those areas gone for good. Here all the leaves were silvered in the moon’s greener, younger glow; here waters sang, and the birds were free, and the deer wandered with all the stars of night in their eyes.
It was her consolation then, to dream, to walk the woods she loved, and to keep that which remained as it had always been, forgetting Men. Of midsummer nights, sometimes she came, and saw mortal Eald grown wilder and more deserted still. How Death fared, she had no knowledge, nor cared, though it seemed that he fared well, and hunted souls.
ELEVEN
Dun na h-Eoin
The banners fluttered over the tumbled stones, the watchfires flickered in the dusk, like stars across the plain. There was war. It had raged from the Caerbourne to the Brown Hills to Aescford and south again, for the King had risen, Laochailan son of Ruaidhrigh, to claim the hall of his fathers, ruined as it was.
Evald had come, of course. He was among the first, riding out of Caerdale to forestall the King’s worst enemies in the days before the King declared himself. He came with Beorc Scaga’s son, and armed men and no few stout farmers’ sons out of the dale, with all the strength that he could muster. And Dryw the son of the Dryw of Niall’s day, rode from the southern mountains with the largest rising of that folk since Aescford. So Luel rose; and Ban; they were expected. Latest came the folk of Caer Donn, high in the hills: lord Ciaran led them. Ranged against them were Damh and An Beag, the wild men of the Boglach Tiamhaidh, and the bandit lords of the Bradhaeth and Lioslinn.