"We have to go," said Ceallach.
"O, but you must never go!" The whole creature vanished again in a swirl of dark water and the waters boiled and broke at once in the appearance of a black horse's head, and neck and back, and the whole beast was surging up as a horse comes up from swimming, a horse that made all the horses of the hold look stock and dull, a horse so beautiful and sleek and black that it seemed that the night itself had come up out of the river. And they desired it, did Meadhbh and Ceallach, more than anything they had ever seen or imagined to desire. It was freedom, it was all the might of the river, it was a creature that flowed like waters and beckoned them with power. They saw themselves as queen and king, woman and man in an instant, with never waiting for tedious years to pass. They saw awe in the eyes of all about them and they never, never needed fear any man or beast anywhere or ever in the world.
It came closer, lowering its beautiful head. The water dripped off its mane and made its hide sleek and shining. It extended its foreleg and bowed itself, offering them its back, and Ceallach went first toward it with only the dimmest remembrance that he ought to be afraid, while Meadhbh came with her hands held out to it as she would come to her own pony, quite, quite forgetting the love she had for that poor, plain beast, because desire burned in her for what this one could give.
"No," a voice said distinctly, "I should not"
Ceallach stopped, and the black horse tossed its head. Meadhbh looked wildly about and her heart all but turned over, for a stranger stood at the edge of the thicket, cloaked in gray and deep in a kind of light and shadow that made it hard to see him. His hand seemed to rest on a sword hilt on the shadowed side, and his whole aspect was grim and dangerous. Of a sudden there was a splash where the horse had been, a scattering of cold water on them that made them cry out in fright.
And then whatever had possessed them to be here unafraid melted away from their hearts and left them terrified. The wood seemed dark and the figure dire and sinister. They held to each other in the nakedness of the riverbank, and Ceallach wound his fingers into Meadhbh's in the spell of a moment too terrible to move.
"Hardly wise," the stranger said. "Who gave you leave to be here?"
"This is our place," Meadhbh said to this intruder who was per haps an outlaw and perhaps worse, perhaps some spy from An Beag or way up on the Bradheath; and she thought that she ought to have said nothing at all, but she was never skilled at keeping quiet. And nothing seemed right about this stranger, in the rapid shifting of this truth and that about the Caerbourne's dark banks. She could put no quality to the voice, whether it was young or old or what it sounded like, or make out clearly what the stranger looked like in the shadow which was not all that deep a shadow, except that some trick of the leaves and sun made it hard to see who stood there at all.
"Your place," the stranger echoed. "Most assuredly it is not." And the stranger brightened, just that, as if the light had stopped playing tricks or the sun had come out from behind a cloud. It was no man from An Beag, and in one way of looking at the stranger it was not a man at all, but a tall, slim lady in patchwork gray and green like a hunter's clothes, wearing a gray cloak over it all. She went striding right past them to the riverbank as if they had never mattered. "Fuathas," the lady said in a voice that sent a shiver up their backs.
It was oh, so soft a voice, but the water stirred, and a golden head came up very carefully, just the eyes showing above the water, eyes dark as the water was dark, and very wary.
So they knew then that they had seen two of the Sidhe—one of whom stood on the bank, there and not there, with a brightness that was different from the daylight.
"Come out," the Sidhe said.
"No." The golden head had risen so that the lips were above the water, and now the creature looked frightened. "No, oh no, no, no."
"Out. At once. Shall I call your name? I shall teach it to these children and they will call you whenever they like."
"No," the creature wept. It slid to the shore and lay bowed in a miserable huddle of weed, only a knot of old riverweed which moved and bubbled.
"So you remember," said the Sidhe, "whose wood this is, and where you are. —Would you have its name?" she asked suddenly, and looked at Meadhbh so that all the forest seemed to have gone dim, and in Ceallaeh's breast his heart began to beat so heavily it seemed to fill the forest. "No," said the Sidhe then. "You wanted it once and you would want it again; and you would want it to be, and to do for you, and to do more and more until you saw everyone afraid of you. Is this what you should be?"
"No," said Meadhbh. She recalled the dream that was the water horse and the power of him, and suddenly she shuddered at the thought of her father and mother becoming very small and herself very great and tall. That was not the way the world was meant to be. She never wanted that. And: "No," Ceallach said, thinking of him self and Meadhbh powerful over everything and all alone, with no more games to play and only fear around them, and between them.
"Its name is Caolaidhe," said the Sidhe.
"Ah!" the creature wailed, "ah no, ah no, o mercy no!" She looked up at them, held up thin white hands as if she cupped the pearls. "O mercy, o mercy, o no, no, not to leave the river, never, no. I'll give you gifts, o such gifts!"
The thought of the pearls leapt into Meadhbh's mind. It was a good thought and unselfish surely, how the pearls would look about her mother's neck, how her mother would wonder at her having them to give. Surely to give them away would be the right thing to do. But the tall, gray-cloaked Sidhe was staring at her with a look so strange and piercing that no leaf could have moved in all the forest.
She could only think that something was expected of her, something more than she had ever done and might ever do, a thing that was wise and at once as simple as understanding. "Let it go," Meadhbh said.
"Go back to the river and don't come out," Ceallach told it.
The creature cast a wild look about and bent and flowed away. "O kind," it cried as it slid into the water. "O good children, o kind—" The sound became bubbles, and the river flowed with its accustomed rush.
"My calling-name is Thistle," the Sidhe said gravely, as if the fuath had been no more than a passing breeze. "You might be trusted with my true one; I do think you might, young as you are. But I am no small matter, no, not like that one. You have done wisely at the last if not at the first."
"We have to go home now," said Meadhbh as staunchly as she could.
"I shall take you there."
"We can go ourselves," said Ceallach.
"Then I shall walk with you and see you safe."
"You mustn't."
"Ah," the Sidhe said gravely. "But I am your father's friend."
"Are you what he comes to see?"
"Perhaps I am."
"I had thought—" Ceallach said and let his voice fall away.
"Be still," said the Sidhe. "Name no names near the riverside. Caolaidhe is listening. Come. Come, now. There are worse things about this stream than the each-uisge."
She offered her hands, one to each, and as Meadhbh considered gravely, so did Ceallach, looking up at their tall rescuer.
"Now you are wary," said the Sidhe. "Good. But wary of the wrong one, and that is ill. Go as you please then."
"Come on," said Ceallach to Meadhbh, and took his sister's hand. They went climbing up away from the Sidhe, up the bank, fighting the undergrowth among the gray stones. Bracken grew here, but bracken gave way to rougher growth, and thorns scratched them and tore at their hair and clothes.
"I don't think this is the way," Meadhbh said after a while. "I think we should go more to the left."