Never Knight
In a ray of spring light from an arrow slit, Alanna sat nursing newborn Percy. He sucked manfully at her breast. His milky blue eyes wavered, chubby hands waved. She tucked his soft, kicking feet securely under one arm and cradled him in the other.
Percy was the ninth son whom Alanna had nursed herself. Always, the nurse brought the child to her swaddled, tight-bound to a cradleboard. Always, she undid the bands, lifted babe from board, and cuddled him, soft skin to softer skin. Now again, as eight times before, Alanna’s heart enfolded her newborn, body and soul.
But this time, the heart beneath the milk-rich breast was broken.
King Arthur’s messenger had left her…judging by the slant of arrow-slit light, an hour ago.
Sir Ogden, her lord for twenty-five years, was dead; and not in battle, and by no deadly illness. Unhorsed in a festive joust, Sir Ogden had broken his neck.
This milk may give Percy colic!
This brokenhearted milk. But—Alanna smiled a bit grimly at the thought—Not this babe! This one could nurse on blood!
Percy was the biggest, strongest babe she had ever borne. He had cost her more pain and weakness than even her first; here he was a week old, and still she could hardly sit on the bench without cushions and folded cloaks beneath her.
Now, of twenty-five years’ pains and loves, Percy was all she had left.
One by one, her little sons had grown into fighting men—Knights. What else could they be? Cabbage seeds grow to be cabbages, and Knights’ sons, like dragon’s teeth, grow to be Knights. But he that lives by the sword dies by the sword, and they all had died, not all directly by the sword, but all in the midst of knightly pursuits.
And now this sorry story will tell itself again. Another soft, sweet child will cut himself a sapling sword and duel with peasant boys till he gets his sword of steel…
If I could take Percy away to some far land! A land where men are content to spend their strength on field and farm, and are honored for it! But that land is farther off than I can think.
In the gathering shadows behind Alanna floor rushes rustled. Someone came softly, slowly, dragging a graceful hem.
Ivie.
Sir Ogden’s ward, daughter of his murdered brother, Ivie was nearly fifteen. For ten years now, she has been as my daughter. For God gave me none of my own. I have trained and taught, nursed and comforted like a mother. And now she learns her final fate. Now I must comfort again, biting my own grief back.
Ivie came gently into the arrow-slit light. She dropped her small curtsy and folded competent, square hands at plump waist. Only the long, fiery red braid looped down her shoulder warned of possible fire within.
When grief-heavy Alanna did not speak, Ivie murmured, “You sent for me, Lady.”
Alanna shifted Percy to her other breast and heaved a releasing sigh.
“You have heard the news.”
“Of Sir Ogden. The hall below buzzes with it. My Lady, I am sorry!”
Alanna glanced up sharply. Ivie’s young face, smooth with innocence, looked back calmly.
Naturally. Ivie never spent any time with Sir Ogden. To her, he was ever only a strong, always busy figure striding past. She grieves not for him, nor, yet, for herself.
“Have you thought what this means to you, yourself?”
“Ah…?” She’s had little time to think.
“Ivie, fetch a stool. Sit here by me…There. You are well set?”
“Aye, Lady.” Still the soft, docile voice! She has yet caught no clue, no thread to this tapestry.
“You will not fall off the stool.”
“Why, no, lady!”
“Ivie. The King’s messenger told me of my Lord’s death.” Ivie nodded, slow and sad. “He also told me that this hall will now belong to Sir Ryan Ironside.”
What! A glint of surprise? Maybe curiosity?
“You remember Sir Ryan?”
“Ah, yes. Somewhat.” She has seen him stride past her with Sir Ogden, rumbling oaths and threats to unknown enemies. She has seen him dine with Sir Ogden, fast and furious. She had to lean over his massive shoulder to refill his goblet. Once, I remember, seven times in a row!
“You are to wed him.”
No response.
There. Percy is satisfied. His sweet eyes close…
Slowly, Ivie’s smooth face froze.
“What think you, Ivie?”
Ivie licked lips, bowed head, looked up again.
“Speak.”
Ivie managed it. “I? I wed Sir Ryan Ironside?…I mean…why not you, Lady?”
Alanna shuddered so hard, Percy’s blue eyes drifted open.
She counseled herself, It is but a natural thought. Given Ivie’s age, and my own…
She explained. “Ogden Hall remains with Sir Ogden’s blood, Ivie. I am to wed, also; wherever the King decides.” When does a woman rest?
“I…Ah…Oh!” Pure crystal welled in Ivie’s blue eyes and rolled down paled cheeks.
“It may not be so bad, Ivie.”
“Sir…Sir Ryan! Holy blessed Mary, Queen of Heaven!” Tears flooded down Ivie’s frozen face.
“Oh, come! You always knew—”
“But, but, him!”
“Ivie, we have seen worse men.”
“Not me! I’ve seen no one worse!” Hiccup.
Percy sleeps.
Rushes rustled back in the shadows. Alanna eased Percy down on her knees and drew a scarf over her breasts.
“My Lady Alanna,” said a kind voice at her shoulder, “I’ve brought you strengthening ale.”
Ivie wept on, head erect, face still frozen.
Edik stepped into the shaft of light.
Sir Ogden’s trusted steward was small, dark, and ageless, but for occasional gray curls among the black. Thoughtful as always, he alone in the hall had come to offer Alanna solace in this hour of grief.
Unsurprised, she thanked him with a deep nod. “Leave it here beside me, Edik. I’ll drink it if I can.”
Lithely he crouched, brushed rushes aside, and placed the full goblet by her feet. Crouched, he laid a bold, brown hand on Ivie’s knee. “You have heard your own news, I see.”
Alanna bit back a comment on his forwardness. He’s been like a younger uncle to her. Now he can help comfort her.
Ivie gurgled, “I’m to wed…Sir Ryan Ironside!”
Edik patted her knee, as he might pat a sick dog. “So they say down in the hall. They are pleased, Ivie. They say, at least we will still have you here.”
“I wish…I wish…”
“What is your wish, child?”
Alanna breathed a feeble protest. “Edik, you reach too far!”
He turned soft brown eyes to her. “Lady, what if I could grant her wish?”
Ivie blurted, “I wish I could go somewhere! Where I could choose my own husband! Or none! None at all! If only there were such a place in the world…”
Pat, pat, pat. Edik turned back to Ivie. “I know just such a place.”
“Wha…what?” Ivie gulped back grief.
What can he mean?
Pat, pat, pat. “Not very far off, neither.”
Alanna’s heart flopped over like a great, caught fish.
“Edik! What can you mean?”
He kept his face to Ivie. Over his shoulder he asked Alanna, “Lady, have you also a wish?”
Almost, she laughed. What folly we talk in despair!
“Naturally, Edik. We all have wishes.”
He turned to her.
“And what is yours?”
“Why! That I could take my babe here to some far, unknown place, where he need never be Knight!”
“The same place Ivie longs for. It is not so far.”
“There truly is some such place?”
“Within sight of here.”
Oh, God! Can he mean what I think?
“Stand up, Lady. Stand up, Ivie. Look out the slit.”
Alanna laid sleeping Percy against her shoulder. Cramped from long sitting, weighed down by grief, she rose slowly to the arrow slit. Already there, eager Ivie leaned into light.
Edik said behind them, “On the horizon.”
Aye! What I thought!
Ivie whimpered. “Nothing there, Edik.”
They looked down across Alanna’s garden, where Holy Mary’s statue stood guard under a vine-laden lattice. With the servants, they had barely commenced to spade here. They looked farther down, across Sir Ogden’s three villages, farmlands, pasture lands, bare-boughed woodlots, all shining brown and gold in spring light. Beyond all, shone the distant, pale orange smudge of the forbidden, Fey forest.
“See you not the forest, yonder, young Ivie?”
Ivie dried her eyes on her sleeve and looked again. “I see only the…the Fey forest.”
“There, you can choose your own man.”
“There!”
“There, Lady Alanna, you can raise your son to be a man, and never a Knight.”
Holy Mary! Help me now!
Alanna faltered. “But, Edik…How would we live, there?”
“You asked that not, before. You asked only for a land where Percy would not grow to be Knight. There is the land.”
“Nonetheless…” Alanna swallowed the spit of fright. “To raise him at all, anyway, I must live somehow.”
“There, you will live by your own hands and wits.”
Ivie murmured, “How would we enter there, Edik? I have always heard that none who entered there came out alive.”
“I can take you safely in.”
You can?
Alanna and Ivie turned round to face Edik. Spring light glinted in his graying, black curls, in his squinting, suddenly merry, brown eyes.
I thought I knew this man, my Lord’s steward! I knew him loyal, dedicated, truthful…loving. What more may be there to know? What secret has he kept, all these years?
Ivie asked, “But…once in…how would we ever come out again?”
“You would not.”
“Not ever?”
“Not ever. Think not to go, young Ivie, if you will ever wish to return.”
Holy Mary! “Percy!” Alanna cried softly, “Percy could never return from there?”
“He could not, Lady.”
“Then…the King’s long arm could not reach him there!”
“It could not.”
New, unknown strength stiffened Alanna’s arms. Sleeping Percy stirred and wiggled against her grip. “But would he hear tales, songs, of Knighthood and Chivalry?” Well I know the power of such songs!
“Unlikely.”
“So he would never know what he had missed, I mean, what he had been saved from!”
“He would think himself a Fey, Lady, like those who live there.”
Fey. Good Folk. I must think again on this…The Good Folk have no goodness, no virtue, no Honor.
“Ah…I am not sure…”
“Your Percy will be Fey or Knight, Lady. That is the choice God gives you.”
“Never Knight! Never Knight!” Alanna kissed the soft, fuzzy head nuzzled in her neck. Have I not seen enough of the virtue and Honor that breed endless Death, circling like ravens? “Edik, I will go! I will take Percy to the Fey forest!”
“Whisper, Lady.”
“Ah, yes.” But no one had heard. The dusky room beyond Edik was empty.
Brightly eager now, Alanna turned to Ivie. “You will come, Ivie? Had I been offered this chance when I was young…”
But Alanna stopped there. When she was young she had been virtuous, honorable. She had always done as she was told. Her braid, now graying, had been a dark, rich brown, like fertile soil; never tinged with the fire of self-will, like Ivie’s braid.
Is this truly a good choice for Ivie?
Till a moment ago Ivie had no choice. She faced rough old Sir Ryan’s bed, repeated childbirths, likely death in childbirth; and there was no escape. Now…
After all, who knows what may await in the Fey forest? Magic castles? Frog princes? Maybe a truly better life!
“You can stay here and wed Sir Ryan if—”
“I’d go to Hell first, if I knew the way!”
“Not so far,” Edik said gently. “But fast. They are saying down in the hall that Sir Ryan rides here now.”
Holy Mary! And me just up from childbed, and all of forty years old!
All the same. “Edik, we will go with you.”
“Tomorrow night, then. Before the moon flowers full.”
***
Edik pulled his donkey up on a dark edge of forest. He turned to Alanna and Ivie, reining in behind him, and said very softly, “Ladies, this is your last chance to turn back.”
The four donkeys huddled together, waggling nervous ears and shaking heads. One was laden with the little baggage Edik had allowed to be packed. (“Take only what you can carry, walking.”) The only exception, Alanna’s wooden Mary statue, lay strapped along the donkey’s back. Alanna would not leave her garden without that. Down the donkey’s sides bulged two sacks of tools and cook pots wrapped in clothes. Nothing clinked or jangled. For two nights they had traveled silent but for soft hoof-beats, muffled in soft earth.
Crossing the last pasture the second evening, they had steered toward the full moon hanging over the Forest ahead, the full moon which, for some reason, Edik considered so important. But now they had come to the forest edge; in forest shadow, the moon was hidden behind trees.
Last chance to turn back?
Saddle-sore, bleeding, and exhausted, Alanna was tempted.
She looked over at Ivie; at swaddled Percy, held against her shoulder. (If Alanna held him, he wanted to nurse continually. At Ivie’s breast, he slept.) Dressed as a peasant boy, exuberant hair hidden inside her tunic, Ivie glowed in the dark. So excited, so rejoicing to be free was Ivie, If I said “turn back,” she would go on in by herself!
And God and Mary know, we have fled. We have deserted hall and King and Sir Ryan Ironside already. How to explain our absence, should we turn back now?
And my babe there, sleeping on Ivie’s shoulder; Knight he must never be! Nothing has changed.
Edik dismounted and came to help Alanna. She could almost step to the ground off the little donkey; yet with the encumbrance of gown, pain, and modesty, dismounting took a few awkward moments. By the time she stood squarely, looking up at budding trees and into dark forest depths, Ivie was on her feet jiggling whimpering Percy; and herself a-jiggle, wildly eager to enter their new, mysterious life.
Edik murmured, “If you are sure, I’ll unpack the donkey.”
“Aye,” Alanna told him firmly, quietly, “we’re sure.”
She studied the darkness ahead. A new life awaits us here. Edik warned us it would not be easy. My own soul warned me. I have worked hard all my life. Now I will need to work harder than ever, and watch out for our defense. Ivie and I will be entirely responsible for ourselves—and for Percy—from now on forever. Amen, so be it.
“Ladies, I am turning the donkeys loose.”
“What?”
“Turning the donkeys loose. Since you are determined.”
Alanna turned to Edik. He had the baggage on the ground. Mary stood by Herself on Her feet like a fifth person, a near-grown child. “Surely, not all the donkeys.”
“Yes, all.”
“But Edik, how will you return to the hall?”
“I will not return.”
Edik stepped from one donkey to the next, slapping each lightly on the rump. In no rush, the donkeys ambled a short way and stopped to graze.
I should have realized…Edik could no more explain our absence—and his—than we could!
“But do you mean to enter the Fey forest, yourself?”
“Even so.” Very calm, Edik scanned the sky above the trees.
“But you said…once in, we can never come out!”
“That is the rule.”
“Edik!” Alanna’s thankful astonishment overflowed; two or three tears coursed down her cheeks. “You carry loyalty too far!”
“Not so, Lady. Not so at all. Don’t weep. You’ll need clear eyes for this night’s work.”
“I cannot believe…”
“I do this for myself, Lady.”
“For yourself?” Alanna dried her eyes on her sleeve.
“Now Sir Ogden is gone and you are content with your choice, nothing holds me to this land. I may as well make myself a new life, even as you do.”
“Ah…” Edik wants a new life?
“Twenty-five years I have lived to serve. Now I am free. And remember, Lady. Once we enter this forest, I owe you no further service.”
“I understand.” With difficulty.
“You cannot understand yet, but you will. In there, all are equal.”
He’s right; it is a hard thought. All equal!
“Mark me. Any service I do you there, I will do only for love.” Still, Edik scanned the sky.
“I understand.”
“Once you set foot under those trees, Lady, your life, your being, will change forever.”
Take a deep breath!
“Aha!”
Alanna lifted her eyes to the treetops.
There rose the full moon, a silver grail.
Thump! Thump-thump!
“Edik!” Startled Alanna croaked. “What is that sound?”
Percy thrashed briefly in Ivie’s grip. Ivie swayed like a windblown birch and joggled him.
Thump! Thump-thump!
“That drum will beat all night. That is why we can enter the forest, almost safely, on this one night.”
“What…who…”
“Good Folk beat that drum.”
“Holy Mary!”
“I can still catch a donkey for you.”
“Oh…no. No.” Faintly, Alanna reminded herself, “Never, never, Knight!”
“Then follow in my footsteps. Now is the time. Stay in tree-shadow. Out of moonlight. Ivie, will Percy be quiet?”
“When we move, he’ll be quiet.”
“One moment more.”
Facing forest and drum, Edik raised and swept his arms about.
A signal.
He let his arms sink, and sighed deeply. “There. Now, we move.” He shouldered a small sack, one he himself had added to the load, unnoticed. Turning to wooden Mary, he caught Her about the waist and lifted Her in his arms like a heavy child.
Edik strode forward.
With no breath of hesitation, Ivie skipped after him.
The baggage! Clothes, tools, cook pots!
Edik disappeared into the night forest.
Alanna gathered up the three sacks. She slung one sack over her shoulder, and clutched two with one fist. At the new weight, she bled harder. Burdened and bleeding, she struggled into forest shadow.
Moonlight struck down between great trunks. That fluttering movement ahead must be Ivie, with now-silent Percy.
Slowly, painfully, Alanna skirted moonlight from tree to tree. Each tree passed was a new barrier placed forever between Percy and Knighthood. At first she glanced back often toward the open, silvering space left behind. Quickly it shrank between trunks, behind fern and bracken, and disappeared.
Flitting, stumbling, they passed one distant drum, and approached another. Far to the side, they could hear yet a third far, faint drum.
This is a new world. Who said it would be better than the old? Only Edik. Why was I so eager to believe it?
Too late to wonder, now.
Tree by tree, shadow by shadow, Alanna passed into mystery.
***
Before they built their own bower, Alanna and Ivie built Mary’s bower. On Edik’s advice, She stood by the trail they soon trampled from their small, sunny clearing down to the river. He said, “She will help keep you safe.” Alanna never doubted it.
Edik showed them how to bend saplings over Her, and weave branches and rushes between; and they used this same method to build their own shelter. Only, with his help, they made it stronger.
Edik found them seeds—they never asked where—and they spaded the clearing and planted peas and onions against the winter.
Edik had said, “Any service I do you there, I will do only for love.” Alanna chose not to wonder, nor to question the love that moved Edik to help them build their bower; to show them new methods of fishing and trapping; to teach them which wild plants and mushrooms to eat, and which to avoid; and to bring them meat.
She was only glad that Edik never suggested sharing the bower he had helped build. He came and went, appeared and disappeared like a songbird, or like a Fey; quietly, she and Ivie rejoiced in this.
Alanna found herself calling him Sir Edik. At first she said this only when speaking with Ivie. Then, one day, the “Sir” slipped out in conversation with him.
She blushed warmly and stepped back away. Maybe he did not hear…maybe he will ignore…
He turned to her, startled, pleasure bright in his face. “Have I been knighted, Alanna?”
Confused, surprised at herself, Alanna explained slowly to both of them. “I…I knight you myself, Sir Edik. For what that’s worth.”
“I’d rather you than Arthur, High King! But why?”
“Because…because you have shown me such good courtesy!” More courtesy than Sir Ogden ever did! “You do not object?”
He laughed. “I do not object! But how will you explain that ‘Sir’ to Percy, as he grows? You don’t want him to know about Sirs!”
“Oh, Percy! Percy will simply take it for your name.”
“Then so do I, Alanna. With thanks.”
Percy commenced loud and demanding, and grew more so. He kept Alanna and Ivie both running to rescue him several times a day. Sir Edik made him a basket, in which they laid him down to sleep as they tried to work at their new skills. But their main task continued to be changing moss diapers, feeding, bathing, and entertaining Percy.
More than once, Ivie sighed. “If we were back at the hall now, Percy Lamb would have a nurse.”
“And you would have a husband.”
“Mary and Martha! I forgot!”
“That’s why you came out here.”
“But you know, Lady, a nurse wouldn’t run to Percy every time he bawled! She would have other things to do, even as we have here. She would swaddle him tight against his cradleboard and leave him to yowl.”
“And she would not worry that his yowls might call interested…Others…to him.”
Ivie signed the Cross on her forehead and shoulders, and then on Percy’s.
Their first fears of the Fey had calmed, somewhat. Always they watched with wide-open eyes—in their clearing, on the trails they made to the stream, to their traps and wild herb patches. Using all vigilance, they saw no Fey. No Good Folk appeared. And only the drums that throbbed on full-moon nights reminded them that this forest was Fey.
Sir Edik explained the drums. “When the moon flowers, the Good Folk dance and mate.”
“Mate?”
“Like pagans at Midsummer fires.”
Evil walks when the moon flowers—I mean, when the moon is full. Then Satan rules his forest. Holy Mary defend!
Alanna issued her first command. “We must all be safely inside the bower by the first drumbeat, and stay there till sunrise!”
She meant, all four of them. But when she turned to Sir Edik, he had vanished.
By midsummer Alanna and Ivie settled into a routine. They gardened, fished, and trapped, taking turns with Percy’s constant care. While learning new skills, they had lost their former major occupation. “It feels so strange,” Ivie said once, “to never spin, or weave, or sew!”
Alanna agreed. “Any time my hands are idle they reach for distaff and spindle.”
“At this rate, Lady, we’ll soon be wearing skins.” The clothes they had brought were showing serious wear.
“I wonder where we will find skins!”
“I know where.”
Alanna also knew where.
When they first set up housekeeping in the clearing, wild creatures avoided it. Slowly, they drifted back in. Dawn and dusk, small roe deer browsed around Mary’s bower. Sir Edik suggested guarding the peas with a line of evil scent—filthy clothes, Percy-moss, even feces. Alanna shuddered. But Ivie took his advice. The stink worked, more or less.
Once a red fox appeared among the peas, pouncing here and there on dormice. He paused to watch Alanna and Ivie with interested, curious eyes, even as they watched him. Satisfied they were harmless, he went back to his hunting. “We’ll have more peas for that!” Alanna said happily. “Fewer mice, more peas! How can we lure him back here?” But they never saw him again.
Once a wildcat crept up on Percy where he lay in his basket in the shade. Ivie and Alanna had turned both their backs in the garden; but Percy’s roars brought them both running in time. The wildcat paused, hissed, then streaked away into a thicket.
Rocking Percy to sleep in her arms that night, Alanna whispered, “Ivie, have you thought? That cat might as well have been…”
“Lady! Shush!” Ivie swiveled frightened eyes toward the dusky bower entrance.
But Alanna could not shush. Whispers and murmurs spilled over from her rising fountain of fear. “You know, I have sometimes wondered if they might want to steal Percy. They do steal babes, that is known.”
Watching the doorway, Ivie agonized. “Lady! Hush!”
“And I have wondered if they might come in the night, any night, and cut our throats while we dream. But as yet we have seen no hair, no whisker—”
“I have!”
“What?” Alanna stared through deep, indoor dusk into Ivie’s wide, fear-glinting eyes. “What have you seen?”
“I think. Yesterday.”
“In Mary’s holy name! What?”
“As I brought water from the river…”
Alanna leaned nose to nose with Ivie. She breathed, “Speak, girl!”
“At the steep place in the trail…no breath left in me…I thought I saw…something…” Ivie made a graceful, bounding hand gesture. “Like that. Cross the trail ahead of me.”
Hopefully, “Squirrel? Hare?”
“Two legs.”
“Aaahh…”
“Brown breeches. Tunic. Cap.”
“How big?”
“Maybe like a…wolfhound.”
“Mary defend!”
A few days passed; then Alanna, standing carefully among prickly blackberry vines, felt…watched.
She had grown used to this feeling in the forest. Eyes watched, always and everywhere—bird eyes, mouse eyes. Maybe wolf eyes.
But this time, she paused in her work. With purple-stained, bleeding fingers she dropped three plump blackberries into the reed basket slung from her neck. Then she stood like wooden Holy Mary, feeling the forest around her.
Sunlight slanted down between giant oak trunks into the blackberry clearing. Birds chirped and hopped in branches high and low. A dormouse perched on a blackberry tip, still as herself, watching her. She looked back at it. Thought, It’s not you. Not you I feel…
The watching came from…she felt it most strongly on her left side.
Quickly, abruptly, she turned her head.
And saw only green and golden light; orange and brown oak trunks.
She looked lower.
There.
Alanna breathed in, and not out again.
Down among blackberry vines, knee-high to Alanna, brown eyes gazed up at her.
The eyes were set close together in a small, brown face; the curious, interested gaze reminded her of the fox in the peas.
Black braids poked from under a dun skin cap to brush frail shoulders. Mouth and chin were purple. With dried blood? No. Blackberry juice.
The mouth gaped briefly. Fox-sharp incisors peeked out.
Alanna struggled to breathe.
The face vanished.
No leaf moved.
Alanna let go her breath and gasped in huge, new breath.
The face was gone. But its image hung still in her eyes, branded upon her mind. Again she saw juice-dark mouth, foxy eyes and teeth.
Was only curious. Meant no harm. This time.
Alanna drew breath again. And remembered—
—Percy! Holy, blessed Mary!
Percy was back at the bower with Ivie. Probably in his basket. Probably outdoors. Probably cooing and gurgling so the woods around resounded. Ivie would be trying to work—scrape a skin? braid reeds? pull a weed? Ivie might turn her back!
Alanna crossed herself.
Frozen life flowed again up and down her body.
Heedless of clinging prickles, she tore herself out of the vines. Ran straight into an oak where she expected a trail. Spun around. Found the trail. Bounded along it like a hare.
Wrong way. Wrong trail. Have to go back to the blackberry clearing with the little brown thing…
Mary and Martha, they’re all around! Makes no difference. They’re laughing at me now.
She clung to a birch, seeing this. Understanding. Accepting.
Breathless, she ran back up the trail to the blackberries.
Found the right trail. Trotted home gasping, hands pressed to aching breast and side.
Trees and shade gave way.
There stood the bower in full sunshine. Alone. Fearfully exposed. Its solid-woven back to Alanna.
She staggered out into the open. Across to the bower. Around the bower. Every labored breath now a loud agony.
Ivie sat cross-legged in the shadowed entrance. She had laid her reed-braiding aside to hold three-month-old Percy upright between her knees. They laughed together, Ivie softly, Percy crowing like a rooster. Alanna had not heard his crowing through her own rasping, tearing breath.
Now they heard her gasps. Two human faces turned to her. They were safe, alive. Both of them.
Alanna caught hold of the bower’s wicker frame and hung from it, panting.
Percy yelled joyful greetings and held out his arms.
Ivie’s jaw dropped. Blue eyes widened.
She said only, “Where’s your berry basket?”
Alanna could not yet speak to answer.
“You had a berry basket.” Ivie reminded her. “Hung on your neck. Percy and I, we were just talking about those berries.”
Percy jumped up and down in Ivie’s scarred, hardened hands.
Alanna looked at her own hands. Purple. Scummy. She must have been picking berries.
Aye. I was picking berries. And then…
She sank down beside Ivie. Took eager Percy into her lap. Bared breast for him.
She said, “I saw…I saw…”
Ivie’s eyes widened yet farther.
“Cap…fox eyes…”
Firmly, softly, Ivie said, “Hush.”
Again, a few days. Then Alanna led the way up the bank and home from the sunset-tinged river. They had bathed Percy. Alanna had wished to bathe, herself; but then she thought of the little brown fox-face in the blackberries and clutched her ragged gown close.
She went first, brave hand on the knife at her hip. Ivie followed with clean, wide-awake Percy in her arms. Shadows deepened ahead. Better get home fast…no dawdling…no being out in the woods at night…
Alanna slowed, and stopped in shadow. Ivie stopped behind her. Percy jumped impatiently in her arms.
It’s only my fear, showing itself. Only my shivers.
Red slanting sunlight pooled between two pines ahead. Did a quiet figure stand in that light?
Alanna gripped her knife hilt. It’s a trick of light. And my shivers.
Percy fussed louder.
Must get home!
Alanna stepped forward. Stopped again.
Holy Mary, it’s real!
The figure raised a greeting hand, palm forward, and took clear shape. A small, dark lady stood in the trail. From under a crown of wildflowers her long, black braid dropped down her long, embroidered gown. Black as her braid, her keen eyes met Alanna’s with a…kind…glance.
Behind Alanna, Ivie gasped.
Alanna planted herself like a tree between the small, kind lady and Percy.
The lady smiled—slowly, carefully, showing no tooth. But Alanna guessed at hidden, fox-sharp incisors. She drew her knife halfway from its sheath.
Haltingly, with strange inflections, the lady said, “I Lady of Lake. Nimway. All know I.” Her gentle, husky voice froze Alanna’s hand on the knife.
The lady said, “I let you come. Guard you. No harm. Yes.”
She moved from red light into shadow. Stepped closer. And close, raising her eyes to hold Alanna’s own.
Alanna tried to grip the knife hilt. I’m falling asleep! Can’t move!
Couldn’t fight, anyway. She’s not here alone! There’s little skin-capped men behind every tree, pointing poisoned darts at us.
Her numb fingers slept on the knife hilt.
The Lady of the Lake stopped before Alanna. Smiled up at her, close-mouthed. Looked past her.
Alarm tingled up Alanna’s spine as those deep, keen eyes fell on Percy behind her. If I could move! Must move!
Despairing. She doesn’t need men with poisoned darts. She is her own army.
Behind Alanna, Percy suddenly cooed and laughed.
Soft, friendly, the lady said, “Greetings, Percival. Never-Knight-To-Be.”