It was not until late spring that we were able to reprise our journey north so I could keep my vow to Last... but we’d all had our responsibilities, and dedication to them had at last brought the world to a breathpause into which we could slide our own errands. I was not sorry to have been forced to wait, for the weather was beautiful: bright skies, cool winds off the mountains and warm sunlight on our shoulders, and flowers everywhere in every conceivable hue, from palest peach to delicate lavender. It was a merry convocation that brought us together in Vigil: Eyre and Carrington and Guy from Evertrue, Radburn from the Archipelago with Chester, Amhric, Ivy and Kelu—now Kel—and Emily and Serendipity with me, and of course, the drake overhead. I did not constrain it to the saddle: “For,” I’d said to Ivy as we’d waited for our horses to be brought ‘round, “I don’t plan to be back soon, and if we fly we’ll be expected to be back soon.”

Kemses and Emily’s diminutive captain of the guard insisted on a proper escort; I insisted on a small one. We compromised, and rode out beneath Vigil’s banners with our outriders already before us and our rearguard discreetly out of earshot. For my personal protection, I brought the staff. As I had said to Last, I’d had the cap made for it, a finial that spoke of both duty and temperance, and of compromises like the one that saw us escorted. Such things were part of our life now. I did not mind it as much as I’d feared I would.

The trip was glorious. Though we rode through country that had been given to us by Troth for our use, and some part of me was at work cataloguing all the possible places we might put settlements or roads, we were for the most part free from our duties, and glad of one another’s company. No rain marred the halcyon days we spent riding to the mountains, and at night our bonfire crackled in merry counterpoint to our discussions. There was no need to rush, and we didn’t, and filled the days with everything from talks on university politics to weaving flowered crowns for Queen Emily and the tea brown hair of Ivy, called Princess only by those who did not fear her pique. “Princess,” she said. “Really. Me? Can you imagine them using me in those parlor games where they play at being royalty? And all because I married Morgan, a man I met when he was a university student without a title or a competence to speak of! Ridiculous.” She paused. “Now, if they’d wanted to call me queen, I would probably have had to give it second thought. But princess? Never!”

So we whiled the gentle days away until the ground corrugated into felted hills and we ascended toward Mother’s Stand, and then we fell silent. We had come to gather the bones of Last, my mother, and Marne from a dire battleground, and the solemnity of our errand lay close on us like a shroud. In procession we made our way through the trees where we’d fled the death of Marne and the release of the dead, through a forest vibrant with the perfume of spring flowers and new leaves.

This should have been warning enough, but we were shocked to leave the forest’s edge and find the Stand overgrown with wildflowers and trees. Of the battle that had taken place here, at these rocks where Last had declared an army could be barred by a single man, there was no sign. The soil tumbled by the passage of the dead had been used by the new grasses and the saplings, and a single tall tree waited there by the stone, one that had not been there before, an elegant thing with a strong narrow trunk and up-thrust branches crowned in verdant boughs and dotted with white blossoms.

“Oh,” Ivy whispered. “Last...!”

Amhric dismounted and took the reins of his horse in hand. He set a hand on the trunk of this tree, looking up at it, and then led his mount behind him into the defile. One by one we followed suit, and entered a world enchanted. There were no bones here. No signs of desecration. Nature had come behind and dissolved the cruel memories, replacing them with a fertile canyon rife with grottos and stands of trees, and a path that seemed to guide us gently to the stone altar where Marne had died. There was no body there to mark where he’d once been, and no bloodstain on the plinth. The grass lapped the edge of the table and trees nodded over it, and bright sunlight spilled from its edge like the regard of an angel. The wind sighed, bringing with it the scent of flowers... ruffled my hair against my shoulders, tugged my gaze upwards to the vault of the sky, more beautiful than any cathedral ceiling.

We found the second tree on the path leading up to the shrine where my mother had awaited us. Had she died there, or had the wind carried her ashes to the place where she’d kept her solitary vigil? Did it matter?

“What now?” Eyre asked me at the precipice overlooking the altar.

“Now,” I said, “we go lie on that sunny hill up there—” I pointed. “And we camp.”

By the time we had circled around to the rise abutting the shrine, our wonder had worn off and we could talk like people outside a church, rather than in it. I began it by saying, “I thought to bring home their bodies, but they are already at peace. Perhaps instead we might build a more formal shrine?”

“Or a small town,” Carrington offered. “This place is beautiful.”

“A town would be nice!” Emily agreed. “It should have genets.”

“All towns should have genets,” Serendipity said.

I laughed. “All good towns, anyroad. I sense this discussion would be improved by food. Shall we?”

So we set out a repast and talked, and our mood grew lighter as we contemplated who should establish this town, and who should live in it, and when we should build roads to it, and all the other minutia that made the fairy tale ending of our lives real. The meal was disposed of and then we relaxed, and this was precious beyond measure: time to ourselves, as a company, and so many of my loved ones near. Ivy had her head on my shoulder, and Amhric his head in my lap; Chester was resting on his palms on my other side, shoulder brushing mine. Guy was chewing on a blade of grass; Radburn petting Kel’s tail. Eyre had decided Amhric looked comfortable and was using Carrington’s lap for that purpose, and the two remaining genets were perched on the drake’s tail, turning their squinting faces up to the sun.

“You know, we never did finish school,” Radburn said suddenly.

“God dash it, my dissertation!” Chester exclaimed.

“You were so excited about it,” Ivy said, amused.

“I had no idea it would have practical application in my lifetime...!”

“Trust me, Chester, neither did any of us,” Guy said dryly.

“Still, I would have liked to have finished,” Radburn said. “Radburn Douglas, gentleman scholar.”

“Don’t worry,” I said as I threaded my fingers through Ivy’s. “I’ll endow a university in Vigil and they can award us honorary degrees. What do you say, Professor? Want to come be a trustee?”

“More university politics? I’ll kill you first, Morgan.”

“I’ll do it!” Carrington said with a laugh. “Keep John for your faculty advisor. I’ll gird my loins on your behalf, O Prince of Elves.”

“Remember you promised that in a year when I call for you,” I said, and meant it.

“What should we name this school of yours?” Chester asked. “Presuming you go so far as to found it.”

“Oh,” I said. “Naturally, we should call it Faith University.”

A pause, and then everyone burst into arguments, mostly about irony and appropriateness, and by the way where should we place it, and could genets attend, and what about elves, and what were the implications of tenure in long-lived races, anyway? I listened, striving and failing to hide my grin, and stroked the hair back from Amhric’s temple as Ivy snickered against my neck.

“You,” Kel said to me quietly as the discussion raged, “are impossible.”

“Insufferable,” I agreed.

“But ours,” Ivy murmured.

I squeezed her hand. Kel sighed and smiled. “But ours.”

“That always,” I said to them—promised. “Always.”