A Hero's Tale

  I waited for the voices to pass by. Instead they grew louder, until through a flimsy wall of fern I saw two children crest the nearest hill. What children might be doing in the wilderness I could not imagine. They wouldn't be there alone. Their elders would be nearby, and if they had children with them, they were not warriors. They might be herding people in search of pasture or folk for whom traveling is a way of life.

  I would have been safe from a band of warriors. Warriors would have stayed on the trail, but children seldom keep to trails. Their longing for adventure leads them into places where they believe no one else has been. These two were exploring. I watched them as they wandered over the hillside, coming ever closer to my hiding place.

  My pack lay next to me, half undone. I slipped my wolfskin out of it and put it on, pulling the wolf's head cap well down, to cover my face. I waited motionless as they drew near. When they were close enough, I moved, just a little, just enough to draw the eye.

  I couldn't see them very well through the wolf's head cap, but the voices stopped, and there was silence for a moment, then a small cry and the sound of running feet. I peered out from under my mask and watched them, until they vanished behind the hill.

  Perhaps none of their elders would believe the children's story of a lone wolf prowling the wilderness, but if they were shepherds, they would come anyway, to ensure the safety of their flocks. I had no time to lose. Still clad in my wolfskin, I did up my pack as quickly as I could and ran the other way.

  It was only midafternoon, and I was debating with myself which was the safer course, to find a new hiding place or to keep moving, when I caught my first glimpse of the forest. Even if I were spotted and pursued, once within it I would become as invisible as the forest people. In another hour I was safe among the trees.

  Though the forest felt like home to me, I saw nothing that I recognized. I must have been some distance to the south of the place where Maara and I had first entered it. I started north, trying not to stray too far from the forest's edge. I could find hidden trails without Maara's help, but I had less faith in my ability to judge direction. Nevertheless, despite my best intentions, the forest drew me deeper into it, until I had no choice but to trust where it was leading me.

  It was safer now to travel in daylight than in darkness. Here no one could see me from a distance or approach me unawares, and in daylight I could read more easily the signs left by other travelers. There weren't many. Sometimes I ran across the trail of two or three traveling together, people more likely to be hunters than warriors.

  I spent my first evening in the forest listening to the sounds it made. At midwinter I had listened to the forest's dreaming. Now the forest was awake, and the ancient trees were listening too. They were aware of the animals scurrying around their feet, of the birds and squirrels nesting in their arms. They were aware of me. At midwinter they had let me share their dreams. Now they were curious and questioning, as if I were telling them a story, as if I were the dreamer.

  Late the next day I found myself in a familiar place. With the hunters of the forest people I had tracked a boar and killed it there. Now green with spring, it had been snow-covered then. I knew it only by a tree that I remembered, an ancient yew growing out of solid rock. How it had begun to grow there, I could not imagine. Now it held the rock captive in the tangle of its roots.

  I kept on for another hour, until the light was gone. By then I was sure of where I was. If I got an early start, a day's travel would bring me to the bathing rock.

  In the morning I took the hidden and more difficult way used by the forest people, the way Maara and I had taken when we started home. It was longer than I remembered. By the time I reached the hollow tree, darkness had fallen. That may have been what I intended all along. For a time I stood outside the entrance before I found the courage to step inside.

  I thought at first that it would hurt, that being there alone would make the loss of Maara yet more painful. Instead I found it comforting. We were there still. What we had shared there the tree remembered. I remembered. I sat within the living tree, within its open heart, and closed my eyes, until I brought her back to me.

  What surprised me was how much of her I still had with me. I could bring her image into my mind's eye, could see again the smile she kept just for me and feel her fingertips across my cheek. More than that, I could live again in memory the moments after we made love, when we lay heart to heart, open to each other, unafraid, when we would speak endearments that knit our hearts together and tell each other stories we feared to tell ourselves.

  A little of the mystery unraveled. That I would risk my life to regain what we had shared, that much I already understood. Now I began to understand the sacrifice. I had seen the world the way it should be, and I would accept nothing less. Not only for myself. For Maara.

  When I reached the bathing rock early the next morning, there were no signs that anyone had been there. Leaves covered the rock itself, some still bright with autumn color, though they had lain all winter under snow. This was not what I expected. I thought that a few of Elen's people might have visited the rock, leaving a trail for me to follow back to Elen's house.

  Maara told me that Elen came there with her companions only in summer. At the time I thought she said it just to reassure me, but now I saw that it was no more than common sense. It was too early in the year for farming people to seek shelter from the heat in the coolness of the forest. Elen's house must be close by, but in which direction? I knew only that it lay on the far side of the brook, because the forest people seldom went there. They would travel a great distance to the north and south and east, but they treated the brook as a boundary. They seldom crossed it, and when they did, they grew more cautious.

  That knowledge didn't help me much. I could follow the brook either north or south, or I could travel west, which meant that I would have to climb the ridge that blocked my way and hope to find some sign of cleared land on the other side of it. Which direction should I go? I searched my memory for clues. Had Maara given it away? Had she revealed it in a glance or gesture?

  I couldn't remember. I hadn't been thinking of Elen then. I had been thinking about Maara, and I had put Elen out of my mind for reasons I was just beginning to understand. One of them was jealousy. If I had asked Maara to tell me about Elen's house, she would have. I didn't ask. I didn't want to know.

  Had my jealousy kept from me the knowledge I would need to save her life? It seemed too great a punishment for such a small crime. Jealousy is just a part of human nature. I wanted Maara's heart. I wanted all of it, as she had all of mine.

  I crossed the brook and spent all morning and half the afternoon searching upstream and down for any remnants of a trail. I found no sign of one. At last I decided to climb the ridge. From there I might see something to guide me.

  The way up was difficult. By the time I reached the top, the sun was setting, and I could see nothing for the trees. I followed the ridge north for a little distance before I found a tall pine that I could climb. From its branches I had a clear view over the treetops. I saw just what I feared to see -- another wooded valley and another range of hills. The forest stretched into the distance in all directions, until it vanished in the mist.

  I camped that night where I was. Going down the hill in darkness would be dangerous, and I hoped that in the morning the mist would burn away, so that I could see farther. The damp made the night feel colder, but I dared not indulge in the comfort of a fire. I rolled myself up in my wolfskin. While it kept me almost warm enough, my sleep was troubled, by the cold and by my dreams. Once I awoke from a dream in which I was trapped inside a maze. I understood its meaning well enough. I did feel trapped in this maze of hills, where every step might be taking me farther from my destination.

  I had counted on finding a trail from the bathing rock to Elen's house, but I realized I had been too optimistic. I had trusted that the way would open up before me. Now I had lost my way. I began to question my decision. Perha
ps I had done wrong, and now I would be punished for my treachery. Perhaps the way home was the only way that had been open to me after all, and now it was too late. That way had closed behind me. It was too late for anything but regret.

  The morning mist covered the forest. Above my head the treetops vanished into a shroud of white. Foggy tendrils hung like ghosts above the forest floor. Drops of water beaded on the leaves and slithered down the branches of the trees. Silence swallowed every sound. I never heard them fall.

  I would see nothing from the ridge today. Should I wait where I was, hoping the mist would lift, if not today, perhaps tomorrow? I had no time to waste, and I had wasted an entire day, with nothing to show for my fruitless climb but aching legs and troubling doubts.

  I usually felt more hopeful in the morning. Not today. Today I was truly lost, in a world that made no sense to me. Once all I had needed was the courage to take the next step on the path before me. Now every path was closed against me, or perhaps I had blundered off the path, to wander forever in the mist.

  If this was punishment, I must be guilty, though I hardly knew what I was guilty of. I had made a choice of evils. And of course it was not I who made the choice. It was my heart that made it. I had learned to trust my heart. When had it misled me?

  That thought gave me a little hope. One thing was certain. If I stayed where I was, I would never reach my destination. I might as well go back to the brook and follow it, in one direction or the other. I started down the hill.

  I could see little through the mist. That didn't matter. There was no way to go but down, though the hillside was steeper here. I hadn't bothered going back to the trail I made climbing up, and I was beginning to think that was a mistake, when suddenly my feet slid out from under me. As I fell, I caught hold of a shrub that held me for a moment before its roots let go of the hillside. I slid down a steep embankment and landed in a heap on a rocky ledge.

  It was a hard fall, but I didn't think I'd broken anything. The embankment was too steep to climb back up, so I slipped off the ledge and slid the rest of the way to the bottom. I made a softer landing this time in a pile of leaves.

  I tried to discover where I was. The hillside looked nothing like it had the day before. Not only was it steeper here, but the soil was thin, and the mountain's bones protruded everywhere. Loose stones and slippery leaves made the footing treacherous. I would have to be more cautious. Another fall could cripple me.

  The mist was so thick that it was impossible to see how far down the hill I'd come, but I didn't think I had come farther than halfway. My fall convinced me to find an easier way down. If I worked my way south along the hillside, I would eventually run across the trail I had made the day before.

  As I traveled, the hillside grew less steep. I went quite a distance without seeing anything familiar. In a moment of inattention I could have crossed my own trail without seeing it. I gave up looking for it, and when I came to a gentle slope, I started downhill. At the bottom of the hill there was no brook, nor anything I recognized.

  Then I understood what must have happened. The mist had baffled me. Somehow I had gotten turned around and started down the far side of the ridge. I had followed it north, not south, and instead of going toward the brook, I had been traveling away from it.

  There was nothing else to do but climb back up the hill. When I reached the top, I grew even more confused. This ridge seemed to run the wrong direction, more east to west than north to south. I walked along the crest, trying to find my way back to where I had been that morning, but everything I did was wrong. The mist declared itself my adversary. With insubstantial fingers it blocked my way, deceived my senses, sent me in the wrong direction, stole my sense of time.

  At last I had to stop. I was exhausted. I lay down on the forest floor and closed my eyes. This time I didn't try to soothe my fears with the hope that soon the mist would lift. Even if it did, I had wandered so far into this maze of hills that I would be lost for days.

  When I awoke, I didn't know if it was day or night. It could have been either sun or moon glowing through the mist. I forgot my destination and my plans. All I wanted was to escape this murky half-light and find a clear view of the sky.

  And I was thirsty. I had a gourd of water with me, but it was almost empty. I found a gentle slope and started down it. When I reached the bottom, a thicket barred my way. There was no water here, and the thicket was so dense and full of brambles that I dared not try to fight my way through it. To go around it, once again I would have to climb the hill.

  I fell to my knees as if I had been dealt a blow, and I had no strength to get up again. The heart went out of me. Under a thin scattering of leaves the ground was covered with sharp stones. I lay down there anyway, on that damp and rocky ground, curled myself into a ball, and pulled my wolfskin close around me.

  I was alone. There was no path for me to follow, nothing to guide me, no one to help me. The world had turned against me. The sun refused its warmth and light. The trees offended me with their indifference. The earth denied me comfort. I felt her waiting for my bones. If there was no way forward and no way back, then let the abyss open at my feet, and I would throw myself into it. I let go the last slender thread of hope.

  74. The House of Kindness

  A hunter found me. I heard him draw his bow. I heard the sound it made, the groaning in the wood as it took the hunter's strength into itself. There was no game here, no sound of hooves picking their way over stones, no rustling of fallen leaves, no birdsong. What could be his quarry?

  I opened my eyes. From under the edge of the wolfskin I saw his feet and legs. He stood a little distance from me, but within bowshot, and by his stance I knew that if he was holding a drawn bow, he was aiming it at me. I waited for the singing of the bowstring. I waited for my misery to end.

  Into a corner of my mind came a flicker of curiosity so faint that I almost disregarded it. Why would a hunter send an arrow through me without knowing who I was? Was every stranger here an enemy? Then I saw myself through the hunter's eyes. Wrapped in my wolfskin, to him I was a wolf, curled up asleep at the edge of the thicket.

  If I was going to die, a wolf's death was not the death I wanted. I was a hunter of the forest people, and I would die standing on my own two legs. And if this hunter was about to kill me, let him know that he was killing one of his own kind.

  Because I too was a hunter, I knew what he would do. He was making certain of his aim, taking care that he had a clear shot, with no leaves or twigs between that might deflect his arrow, but at the slightest movement of his quarry, he would let the arrow fly.

  I rolled quickly to one side. The moment I began to move, I heard the bowstring and then the arrow as it struck the ground beside me. While the hunter nocked another arrow, I threw off the wolfskin and sprang to my feet. I had nowhere to run with the thicket at my back. I stood facing him and watched his eyes. He had drawn his bow and was staring at me over the arrow's tip.

  At that moment I was as ready to meet my death as I would ever be. When he lowered his bow, I was both relieved and a little disappointed. Then I stepped back into the flow of time.

  I made a sign to him with my open hand, the sign the forest people made when they greeted one another. He approached me, his bow lowered but with the arrow nocked, ready to draw again if need be, and stopped a dozen feet away.

  He wrinkled his brow at me. "Who are you?" he said.

  At least I think that's what he said. I recognized the word for "you." It was the same word used by the forest people.

  "A traveler," I replied, using the word everyone understood.

  He gazed at me, undecided.

  "No harm," I said, in my own tongue.

  He shook his head. When I repeated it in the language of the forest people, he looked puzzled, but I believe he understood.

  "Lost," I said, in the language of the forest people. "I'm lost."

  The hunter debated with himself.

  "Come," he said at last, and to
ok his arrow from the bowstring.

  I didn't take time to open my pack, to put my wolfskin into it. I bound it to the outside of the pack as quickly as I could, before the hunter changed his mind. Then I looked around for my bow. At first I didn't see it. Lying on the forest floor, it looked like a fallen branch among the leaves. I did see the hunter's arrow, and when I bent to pick it up, I saw my bow beside it. At the same moment, the hunter saw it too. His shout of warning stopped me from reaching for it. I had the arrow in my hand. Slowly I straightened up and held it out to him. Still untrusting, he approached me and took the arrow before he bent and picked up my bow. He didn't offer it to me. Carrying both my bow and his own, he turned and started up the hill.

  I had been wondering how the hunter found me, but when I saw the trail I made as I blundered about, lost in the mist, that puzzle solved itself. A wounded boar running from his pain and terror could not have left a clearer sign of his passing. I knew better than to leave a trail like that, and though it seemed that all was now well, my encounter with the hunter might have ended in disaster. While I berated myself for my carelessness, at the same time I was encouraged. I'd had a bit of luck. Perhaps the world hadn't turned against me after all.

  When we crossed a stream, the hunter waited while I satisfied my thirst and filled my water gourd. Although I was still very hungry, I felt much better, and a little of my hope returned.

  The hunter seemed to know where he was going. I followed him blindly. I had become so lost that all directions were the same to me. Whether we were going north or south, east or west, it made no difference. The hunter knew the way, and I did not. I decided to trust my luck a little longer.

  We had been walking for several hours when we came to a bit of cleared land. I wasn't surprised that I hadn't seen the clearing from the ridgetop. Though it was quite large, several acres altogether, it was patchy and irregular, as it followed the contours of the hillside.

  At one end of the clearing stood a round house made of wattle and roofed with a thatch of reeds. Before we reached it, the hunter called out a greeting, and a woman appeared in the doorway. A child came running out the door but stopped when he saw me and hid himself behind his mother's skirts. The hunter gestured to the woman to take the child inside. He made a sign to me to stay where I was and followed them.