Then the Eldest pulled one of his hands free and rested it on Lionheart’s head. “Ah. It’s you.”
The words were simply spoken. But they went to Lionheart’s heart. He closed his eyes and pressed his forehead into the signet ring on his father’s other hand.
“There was . . . there was some difficulty between us?” the Eldest said, and his voice held a question but also a trace of comprehension. For a moment he was himself, and though he could not remember much, what he did remember was true.
“Yes, Father,” Lionheart managed. “There was some difficulty. But I’m here now, and I’m sorry that I left.”
“Did I wrong you, my son?” the Eldest asked, a world of tenderness in his words and in his hand upon Lionheart’s head. “I’m an old man now, older than I should be. Did I wrong you without understanding?”
Lionheart shook his head. “You did right,” he said. “You did right by me, and I failed to see it. But I see now, and I thank you for what you did.”
The Eldest nodded solemnly. “I used to hate my father sometimes,” he said. “Hard blows are difficult to take with grace. But you know what? I think sometimes his punishments hurt him as much as they hurt me.” He frowned, the creases of his tired face wrinkling slowly, with great effort. “I don’t remember what I did to you.”
“It doesn’t matter,” said Lionheart, and he lifted his face and met his father’s gaze. For a shining moment, each saw the other truly, and in that truth, they each loved. “None of that matters now. I am here. And I am sorry, and . . . and you did right. You are a great Eldest, the ruler of Southlands. And you are a good father.”
The Eldest nodded and turned once more to the window. His brow relaxed, then wrinkled again, and he leaned forward, squinting into the dusky garden. “Lights Above, is that the queen?” he said, his voice quavering. “What is she doing out at this hour? Quickly, boy, go tell her of her error before it gets too dark.”
6
A NEW PAIR OF EYES. Young eyes.
Eyes a hundred years old are still young. Eyes a thousand years old are still young. It’s all a matter of comparison.
These young eyes are keen and see many things, even blurred as they are by tears.
Tears . . . such a strange sensation! Not just the feel of water upon flesh or the burning inside the head. Tears fountain up from the soul. They wash or they drown, but they never truly cleanse. Not a soul such as this.
A strange feeling is a soul, especially one so fierce.
Look through these eyes into the Wood and wander, searching, searching, searching.
A gate into the Near World. That is what we—it—they—I! That is what I want! That world would be a good place to start again. And this one loves that world, loves that Land that is the only land to him. But he cannot find it. Looking through these eyes, there is only the Wood forever and ever.
The tears are blinding. Why must this soul sorrow? Only in death can there be new life. Why can they never understand? Why must they always—
Crescent Woman.
Long ago, he had called it the Gray Wood. Now it was simply the Wood to him as to all others, for it was not solely gray. All colors and no colors might be found in its ever-shifting deeps. He had learned this very soon upon entering (so long ago it seemed to him, for he could scarcely remember the day), and in learning, he had been afraid.
The young warrior did not fear the Wood now, however, as he moved through its depths. Blood stained his arms and neck, blood not his own. He would wash it off eventually, but for now he wore it as a badge of honor to the memory of the beloved dead.
And the watching eyes of the Wood drew back, trembling.
Few things might frighten him now, this stern-faced warrior whose features may have seemed youthful, save for those bloodstains. Around his neck he wore two cords of rough-woven fibers. On one was strung a stone that gleamed like gold or bronze. It was this that caught the eyes of the Wood and left the warrior with a clear path through the gloom.
But it was the second cord that drew his searching fingers. On it were strung two beads. One was red, painted with the crude image of a panther. The second—this one the warrior touched even now, unconscious and tender—was blue and painted with a white six-petaled flower.
Not far off, he heard the songs of sylphs. Their voices drew him up sharply, and he stood as still as a wildcat poised at the beginning of a hunt, his nose uplifted to catch scents, his head tilted to receive all possible sounds. The sylphs were near and they were singing, which meant they were on their lonely hunt. From the sound of the song, they had caught someone and even now dragged that luckless victim of their love into the deeper Wood.
The warrior would have gone on his way without a second thought. Sylphs, after all, are strange beings with their own customs, and while many might consider them foes, they were no danger to him or his at present. So he would have passed into the shadows and vanished from this story altogether, save that his nose caught a scent that brought him up short.
“Crescent Woman!”
The warrior turned and pursued the sylphs.
They moved in a swirling nexus, creatures of air and invisible beauty, unable to hold on to physical form for more than mere moments. In those moments, one might catch a glimpse of a face neither male nor female, of hair long and streaming, of eyes dark beyond existence, like a storm’s gale. They were huge and they were small, beings of wind and sound.
And they loved mortals with a dangerous love; as the cold moon must love the fiery sun for its heat; as the ever-changing sea must love the stolid shore for its sameness; as a man must love a woman, so the sylphs loved the dirt-bound mortals and called them into their wild games so that they might touch mortal hair, might feel mortal limbs, might hear mortal voices rising in chorus with their own.
To these aerial beings, the most inexplicable and beautiful mystery of all was mortal death. They pulled and pushed their captives in fey patterns only to watch them fall down, exhausted, battered, and, finally, dead.
The warrior had seen it before. He had come upon hosts of sylphs, each one rendered no bigger than a spring morning’s whisper, gathered about the corpse of some luckless mortal, touching its still face with their wisps of fingers and asking one another, “Why does it no longer dance? Why does it no longer sing?”
It was their foolish way. The warrior had long since learned to ignore them.
But he could not ignore the scent of the Crescent Land.
“Come, fickle, fleeting, Fiery Fair,
Come and join our dance!
We’ll run our fingers through your hair;
We’ll dance beyond all thought or care!
Come, and in our wildness share
And leave your life to chance!”
So sang the strange voices of the sylph in their manic but beautiful song. The warrior chased it, following his ears and his nose, and at length he caught glimpses of the sylphs themselves, their faces reminiscent of a man’s but more like a bird’s, or perhaps both at once. When he could see nothing else of them, he could still discern the signs of their passing: the wind-tossed branches, the trembling of the trees. The air became thick in their wake, filling with mist in the sudden stillness so that the warrior became nearly blind in his pursuit.
Then he picked up the sound of footsteps and knew he must be drawing near to the mortal caught in the center of the swirling air.
A flash of red drew his eye, red like water or like fire. He saw the mortal at last: a tall, straight figure clad in light, flowing garments that lent themselves naturally to the pulling winds. The red he’d glimpsed was her flowing hair.
“Let her go!”
A dozen unseen faces turned upon him; their unseen eyes fixed him with angered stares. The song turned to a snarl, and he felt them massing together into one great body, ready to blow the flesh from his bones in their anger.
The warrior stepped forward, unafraid. He could see little enough other than the young woman—not much beyo
nd girlhood, he realized—who stood with her back to him, her hair and white gown beating the air behind her in the ferocity of the sylphs’ breath. He did not think she could hear his voice, but that did not matter. The sylphs could.
“This mortal is of my kin,” the warrior declared. “Born of the Crescent People in the mortal Land Behind the Mountains. You will give her back to me.”
The sylphs, wordless in their rage, flew at him. As one force they tore at his face, at his clothes. But they did not topple him, and he put his hand to his throat and lifted up the bronze stone.
“By the Mound of my master, I command you to let her go.”
He did not have to speak loudly. A whisper was enough. The sylphs saw and knew. And the sylphs, again moving as one, howled their anger. They twisted around the warrior, around his limbs, his neck, his head. They shied away from touching the stone, however, withdrawing as though stung—if anyone can sting the wind.
Then they leapt back from him, crossing once more to the woman, and their long, vaporous fingers touched her face and hair with a caressing sadness.
The next moment, they were gone.
Lady Daylily sank to her knees and collapsed on her side, deep in the heart of the Wilderlands.
7
PART OF THE LIFETIME BATTLE that comprises Growing Up is learning (then relearning, then relearning again) that you can never go Home.
Home, that ephemeral world of warm, comforting, familiar love where a place is always set for you, where the conversation ever turns to topics in which you can enthusiastically participate, where the food tastes better, and where you sleep most restfully at night . . . it doesn’t exist.
In the all-too-real world, people change. Places change.
Over and over again Lionheart had swallowed this bitter pill, and yet it never entirely ceased to surprise him. He himself had altered so much in the months—which felt like mere days to him—of wandering in the Wood Between. He’d faced the Monster. He’d died. He’d been raised up again a new, whole man, albeit with a scar on his chest where a unicorn’s horn had pierced his heart.
He had altered forever. Somehow, though he knew better, he’d assumed that the place he called Home would not.
A selfish assumption. After all, could he truly resent an entire nation for moving on and changing in his absence? Home was gone. In its place was this strange world, where his cousin stood in Lionheart’s shoes, where his father was weak and tottering, where Lionheart might only walk in disguise. Even the tiles beneath his feet felt unfamiliar and unwelcoming. In light of these alterations, those few things that still looked to Lionheart as they once had took on an aura that both repelled and saddened him.
No, there could be no going Home. There could only be going on.
So that’s what he would do. Was he not Childe Lionheart now, servant of Farthestshore, knight in training? The journey to knighthood was his home now; a lonely home, perhaps, but a better one than he had yet known.
“Make peace with your father,” the Prince of Farthestshore, his new liege lord, had told him. Well, he’d done that. He’d faced the man he’d once looked to as a near-godlike figure, seen him reduced to mere shreds of manhood, and he’d made his peace.
Lionheart felt a dullness where his heart should be and knew, though he wouldn’t admit it, that he wept inside. The Eldest was dying. He wouldn’t last the year, probably not even the summer. And then who would sit in his place? Not his son. That young man, who consorted with dragons and demons, could never be trusted to rule Southlands.
“Here’s an idea. Let’s make Foxbrush Eldest instead!” Lionheart muttered under his breath.
By cover of night he crossed the Eldest’s grounds, away from the House and the many people who might recognize him there. His face was unpleasant with scowls, and he knew he should not allow himself to indulge in such bitter thinking. After all, did he consider himself a better man for the job? Recent history had done nothing but prove his lack of worth, his cowardice, his foolishness.
But still . . . Foxbrush.
“Anyone else,” Lionheart told the uncaring landscape as he trotted under a heavy sky. The moon did not shine that night; perhaps she did not care to look upon the disinherited prince fleeing his kingdom yet again. But Lionheart kept to the main road leading to Swan Bridge, and it was clear enough even in darkness. “Anyone else,” he growled. “Even the Baron of Middlecrescent! At least he has a head on his shoulders and some idea how to run a kingdom.”
No one could say the same for Lionheart’s cousin. The lad could scarcely run his own estate, preferring to leave it in the hands of his steward while he spent all his time at court, making cow eyes at Daylily. Or plastering his hair down with oil, or conducting research in the expansive court library on obscure and insanely boring topics. Like figs.
He believes he can save the kingdom.
The thought was not a welcome one, and Lionheart shrugged it away. After all, he had thought as much himself, and where had that led? A five-year exile, wandering across the unfriendly Continent, betrayal of the girl he loved, worse betrayal of his only friend. Not a record of which he could boast.
The idea that Foxbrush couldn’t possibly do any worse was no comfort.
So it was in this stormy frame of mind that Lionheart made his way across the Eldest’s parklands. His face was set and his feet strode with a determination that would brook no argument. He had failed in everything else to which he’d turned his hand. He’d not faced the Dragon. He’d not saved the kingdom. He’d not delivered Rose Red from the bondage to which he’d so heartlessly sent her.
“All that’s changed now,” he told himself as he went. “That man died, that Lionheart, that failure. I am made new, and I will rise to new challenges!”
He would enter the Wilderlands once more, and he would rescue Lady Daylily, thereby proving to the worlds that he—
“You understand that you can never absolve your own sin?”
The memory of the Prince of Farthestshore’s words came back to him in the quiet of that hot, still night. Lionheart faltered, stumbling over nothing. His heart raced as though he’d heard the heavy breathing of a predator at his ear, but there was no danger. There was only memory. And darkness.
“All that is past is past.”
Though he knew it was only memory, Lionheart spoke as though making a defense. “I can’t just leave her. I wounded her. I used her and left her, and what has she become now? I can’t leave her to herself. I must rescue Daylily.”
And again he heard in the quiet place deep behind the arguments of his mind: “From this moment forth, you will serve me with the courage of roaring lions.”
“I will!” Lionheart cried. Any who might have seen him out there alone on that gloomy road would have thought him mad, for he brandished his fists and shouted desperately, though there was no one to be seen. “I will serve you, my Lord! And I will rescue Daylily!”
“Walk with me,” the Prince had told him far away, in a place beyond Time, on the shores of a dark and flowing river. For a moment, standing there on the road with only the chorus of chittering night bugs filling the heavy air, Lionheart thought he heard that rush and roar of water again, that sound of Forever, and his face was touched, however briefly, by a cool freshness that breathed of Eternity.
Then it was gone. He stood alone. No voice spoke to him either in memory or in fact.
And yet he felt an overwhelming urge to turn around and march back to the Eldest’s House.
“No!” he growled. For though he had learned a great deal about himself when he’d stood by that water, though he’d looked into the face of the moon and the burning eyes of a fallen star, for all that, he was still himself. Lionheart the stubborn. Lionheart the proud. And he had a long road before him.
“No,” he muttered and set out at a run, but the air was far too hot and he was very soon drenched in sweat. “I’ll save her. It’s my duty! I’ll find her in the Wilderlands, and I’ll bring her safely home.”
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Then she would forgive him. Then Southlands would forgive him. Then he could vanish and never return but leave behind at least one good deed in the memory of his kingdom.
He saw the broken stump where the Grandfather Fig had once stood. That tree, so ancient, so gnarled, so stately in its ugliness, had become a familiar landmark to all those who dwelled in the Eldest’s House. Famous artists of past generations had done their best to capture it in paint and pottery, and more than one prince or princess of Lionheart’s line had been depicted on canvas standing in the shade of those twisted, flower-laden branches.
Now it was gone. Ripped up, torn out, roots exposed. Yet another scar left in the Dragon’s wake.
Lionheart approached the stump and looked down the gorge into the Wilderlands below. He heard the shushing of branches not moved by wind as the trees whispered to themselves and pointed at him. They mocked him, he knew. But what had he to fear from their mockery? Let the Wood do its worst. A Path would be given him, and he would walk unscathed through that darkness. He would—
“Aaaaaaaarggh!”
The bone-rattling scream carried up from the side of the gorge, accompanied by the sound of slipping rocks. Lionheart gasped, “Dragon’s teeth!” and stared over the edge, willing his eyes to see in the dark, hoping against hope that his ears had deceived him.
For the first time that night, the moon peered through the film of clouds overhead. And Lionheart saw.
“Foxbrush!” he shouted. “What are you doing down there?”
At his feet lay a narrow path down the wall of the gorge, nearly invisible on that dark night. Only a fool or a hero (sometimes synonymous) would dare make such a descent.
And there, his back pressed to the wall, his feet braced, his hands gripping stones and dirt and tufts of hardy grass, was Foxbrush. He turned a face saucer eyed with terror up to Lionheart. His mouth opened and closed a couple of times, but that scream seemed to have knocked the words out of him. When at last he managed to garble something, his voice was too weak for Lionheart to understand.