I had read in my uncle's books of creatures he had seen in Africa that lived in trees and had the ability to climb so swiftly that they seemed to fly among the branches. Now one such creature met my sight, dressed in human clothing, a brief tunic of spotless, brilliant white. Of course, as soon as I had recovered from my initial surprise and adjusted to the distance separating us I realized it was a boy, but never had I seen a boy who climbed in such a manner. As I gazed in amazement, he pulled himself up effortlessly to stand on a stout branch far above the ground, then crouched there, gathering himself, gazing upward and balancing on all fours, before launching himself in a flying leap to grasp another bough above him and swing himself nimbly onto it, spreading his legs and scissoring them to grasp the limb, then gliding flu idly, with no sign of effort, to where he sat astride the branch, at a dizzying height above the rock- strewn forest floor. There, without pausing to look around him, he repeated the entire sequence and so continued, seeming indeed to fly upward, until the limbs of the huge tree grew so closely together that he was able to use them simply as a step-ladder, practically running upward to disappear completely among the thick foliage at the apex of the tree.
Although my reason told me that this was simply a boy, when I lost sight of him at last I had to suppress a shiver of superstitious dread, an old and formless fear stirred by remembered tales of dryads and forest sprites. And then as I sat there unmoving, he descended again, dropping from branch to branch and limb to limb as though falling wildly, yet every move and every leap timed and controlled to perfection so that again I felt the stirring of goose-flesh, this time caused by incredulous admiration.
He leaped nimbly to the ground from the lowest fork of the tree and disappeared again among the bushes before I thought to rouse myself and swing my horse around to give chase.
Down and around we thundered, my horse and I, gaining the valley floor and swinging back hard to cover the ground between us and the fleeing boy, and as I rode I wondered who he might be. We emerged at full gallop from the cover of a thick clump of bushes and yet again I hauled my mount to a halt, so that he slid, stiff-legged, his haunches almost on the ground while I stood in my stirrups in amazement. Before us, the far wall of the ravine in which we rode rose sheer for thirty paces and more, and on the flat sward at its feet the boy stood staring upward, his eyes fastened on the cliff above him. Before I could move, he sprang forward and began to swarm up the stony, grass-covered face. No more than thirty paces and a thin screen of leaves parted us, but I knew that he was unaware of me, having neither seen nor heard my approach. I kicked my heels into my horse and then, just as it began to move forward, the boy stopped climbing and looked sideways, allowing me to see his face for the first time.
It was Cassandra! The realization stunned me. Her name sprang to my lips and I kicked my horse harder, urging him forward, but she had already made her choice of direction and now her total concentration was on the cliff face and her climb. I shouted again, knowing as I did so that she could not hear me. I waved wildly, but her concentration was absolute. In almost less time than it takes to describe, she had reached the rim of the cliff and disappeared beyond it without once looking back. But I had had ample time to look at her, and wonder how I could ever, even from a hundred paces, have erred in thinking she could be a boy.
Bitterly disappointed by her disappearance—she had vanished beyond the rim of the cliff so quickly that I knew I had no hope of catching her—yet filled with a glorious elation, I sat there beneath the stony face of that cliff and thought on her: the clear-etched muscles of her long, lithe legs below the shortened, tucked-in skirts of her white tunic, and the shape of her body as she had paused at several points in her ascent, her weight distributed perfectly, her eyes scanning the rock above her for her next handhold, had brought an ache to my throat. What kind of girl was this? I asked myself. How and where had she learned to perform such feats? Where had she come from? And where might she disappear to, once she had fully recovered from her injuries? One thing was frighteningly clear to me. Her body had fully recovered already, and today I had seen little evidence of any other damage, either to mind or spirit.
I made my way eventually to the hidden valley, my thoughts and my heartbeat still in turmoil, and found it strangely difficult to approach the small stone hut. She was there, as was Daffyd. When I entered, she looked up at me and nodded, then continued what she had been doing, scraping and curing what I took to be a rabbit skin. She had discarded the white tunic and now wore the simple homespun shift that was her normal dress. Daffyd mumbled at me, and then he, too, continued working on whatever had demanded his full attention that afternoon.
I felt uncomfortable there, even though the concentration shown by both of them left me free to stare at Cassandra as much as I might wish. Her hair, unbound, fell down before her face, obscuring all but the line of her cheekbone on one side. The fullness of a soft breast was a mere suggestion to interfere with my breathing. The line of her thigh beneath her shift was as clean and pure as the arc of a rainbow. I felt guilty and miserable, although to this day I have no idea why that should be so, and soon I took my leave and rode home in a mood that was half misery and half unbearable excitement. I knew she had recovered. I knew that I loved her. And I knew I had no way of telling her, of wooing her, or of keeping her beside me.
Heading back to my quarters one morning, however, on the way from a dawn parade, I was shocked to see Daffyd coming towards me. I gazed at him, wondering what he was doing here in Camulod, so far away from his ward.
"Daffyd," I said, hearing the incredulity in my voice. "What are you doing here? Where's Cassandra?"
"At home, boyo! In the valley."
"Alone? What are you thinking of?"
"I'm thinking of the work I have to do, and the tasks I have been neglecting."
"What? What d'you mean?"
He winked at me and shook his head in reproof. "Merlyn, I said I'd stay with the girl as long as she needed me. She doesn't need me now and there are others, I hope, who do. Mod and Tumac, for a start. Their education has been sadly neglected these past weeks. They'll be wild as the heather by the time I see them again. Probably have to beat them, I will, to get them back into harness."
I was still gaping at him, aware of the movement of people around me and the clatter of hobnailed sandalled boots on the cobbles as the men dispersed from the parade. The sky was cloudless; the day would be hot. A blackbird was singing somewhere close by, and I was almost whispering in my urgency to chastise Daffyd without anyone hearing what I was saying. "But you left her all alone out there?"