nora
With Sarah in my care, the journey back took twice as long. Alone, I had been willing to forego meals and walk long miles, but I was determined that Sarah should not go hungry. At many places along the road I stopped and worked in the fields for hire, paying our way across the provinces. When I had done particularly well, we would sometimes even sleep in an inn. Although Sarah was given to wandering the moors alone at home, she did not like to be out at night. The world was too big for her then. She was accustomed to burrowing in her tunnels and cubby holes at night, and the open blackness frightened her. Whenever we slept out of doors, I would find a low-hanging branch—or else gather sticks and build a framework—and drape my cloak over it so that she had something between her and the night.
The result of our slow progress was that summer was half-spent by the time we reached the edge of the darkwood. It was now nearly the season in which I had lived in the woods under the Giant’s tutelage. The world under the canopy of leaves began to tantalize my senses the moment I stepped beneath the trees. Everything was thrillingly familiar and inexplicably strange; like entering a world one has known only in dreams—good dreams. Sarah’s eyes were wide as we followed the nearly invisible paths into the forest. She was searching it out, taking in every sound and movement and scent. This was a wilderness very different from the moors, and well I knew it.
The sun was just beginning to set as the trees thinned and I caught sight of the glimmer of white walls. “Look there,” I told Sarah. “There is the Castle.”
“I can’t see it,” she told me.
“Well then,” I said, and swooped her suddenly off her feet. I lifted her to my shoulder as she kicked and clutched at my head in shock and nervous fear. And then, in a beautiful moment that I would ever after remember, she laughed. It was a small laugh, born as much from relief that I was holding her securely as from surprise, but it was a laugh.
“Can you see it now?” I asked her.
There was silence. I turned my face up to see her. She was staring off through the trees, brown eyes deep, a small smile playing on her face. “Yes,” she said. “I can see it.”
With Sarah still on my shoulder, I started to walk toward the Castle. She tightened her hold with hands and knees, but made no protest. I stopped short when we stepped out of the trees. The Castle sat on its hill, glimmering all the colours of pearl in the light of the setting sun. Clouds heaped in the sky made the sunlight fall in beautiful golden waves over the lawns, and there a lone figure walked. Her hands were slightly outstretched, palms turned up, as though they would take in all the glory of the fading day.
It was Nora. She had let her hair down, as I had only seen it once before, and it fell in long tresses to her waist. Her skirts flowed out behind her. Sarah’s hands came around my forehead as she leaned forward. A warm breeze began to blow, as though it was running to Nora’s open hands. It pushed her hair away from her face and made the long strands dance.
Something alerted Nora to our presence. She turned, and even from such a distance I thought I could see the quickening blue of her eyes. For a moment she seemed confused—andand then she broke into a radiant smile and began to hurry across the grass toward us.
“Hawk?” she called when she was near, but her eyes were on Sarah.
I didn’t know what to say. There had never been much use in flowery words with Nora. “I’ve brought my sister,” I told her. “Sarah.”
Nora reached up and took Sarah’s hands with a smile. I knelt down, and Nora helped Sarah off my shoulder. “Welcome,” she told her, and impulsively put her arms around her and pressed Sarah’s motherless head to her breast.
I knew in that moment that my old dream of falling wildly and instantly in love with some exotic beauty would never be realized, for I loved Nora; and it had happened slowly and prosaically. The boy I had been almost regretted it—an adventure I had yearned for was forever beyond my grasp. But the man I was becoming knew that the deepest and truest things in the world are not often won in whirlwind adventures. Nora started toward the house with her arm around Sarah’s shoulders, and as I watched them go, I felt my heart straining—surely it was so full that it could never be small or petty again.
It seemed to me that there were eyes on me. I turned and saw a shadowy figure just beyond the treeline.
I smiled, for I knew there was a smile on the Angel’s face.