SHE WAS SITTING ON THE ROCK, smiling to herself, her feet dangling in the stream, and he thought she was the loveliest sight he had ever seen. She leaned backward, bracing her feet on the rock, and arched her back so that a hand span or two of her long hair dipped into the water, where the current gently tugged at it. She closed her eyes against the brightness of the sun, but still she smiled. It was wonderful to see her, he thought, to see someone so obviously in love with life.
She straightened, laughing, and shook her head so that crystal beads of moisture flew in the afternoon light. Her hair was the color of the wheat ripening in the field he had inherited when his father had died.
The wheat... a little voice reminded him. It was time for harvesting the wheat. There was work to be done, which he had put off to visit his ailing grandmother, half a morning's walk away from home. He had stayed as long as he could but left because a harvest cannot wait. Though he was eighteen years old and though he had spent his entire life helping his father, or planting and harvesting on his own, at the moment he found it difficult to remember what it was he had to do.
This forest was said to be haunted by spirits eager to devour an unwary man's soul. But he was a Christian and he knew a man's soul was his own, so he stepped out from the trees and into the clearing.
Still smiling, she gazed directly into his eyes.
He had thought she might be startled. "Excuse me," he might have said then. "I didn't mean no harm," he could have said, and come forward to show that he was, in fact, harmless. Something—something—to get started. But she only sat there, her eyes as cool and green as the stream, the smile still on those pretty lips.
"Ahm," he said, and could go no further without shuffling his feet and twisting the cap he clutched in his sweaty hands—just like the time ten or eleven summers back when he'd been caught pitching pebbles at the swans in the baron's moat.
She tipped her head and looked at him quizzically. "Yes?" she asked, still smiling.
A lady. He could tell by the way she said just that one word. A lady, despite the unbound hair and the bare feet and the plain green dress trailing in the stream. And here he was coming up to her in the woods, bold as anything, and her people no doubt just a shout away, ready to come tearing out of wherever they were waiting for her and beat him for presumption.
"Uh," he said.
"Oh," she said. "I see. Ahm. Uh. That must be how you charm the girls—by telling them such sweet, pretty things."
He felt his face go red, despite the fact that she had still never stopped smiling. "No," he mumbled.
"No?" she repeated. "No, you don't charm girls, or no, you don't tell them sweet, pretty things?"
He had no idea how to answer in a way that wouldn't make him out to be a fool. "Ahm..."
"Oh, back to ahm." She leaned back, supporting her weight on her arms, stretching slowly and deliberately.
He forced his gaze back to her face and saw that she was well aware of where he had been looking. And was pleased by it, he realized with a jolt of surprise, just as she patted the rock and said, "Come and sit by me, boy, and tell me some more sweet, pretty things."
Boy. Even though he was a man by any standard, with his own holding, which he had farmed successfully for almost two years now. Even though they looked to be much of an age. For the briefest instant he was angry, but she was still smiling at him, and he was finding it hard to breathe.
Because of the way she was sitting, he would have to step into the stream to get around her to the other side of the rock. Should he take off his boots? It only made sense, but then she would see that his feet were dirty and callused. She whose feet were white and smooth and beautifully shaped. He tore his gaze from her feet and stepped—boots and all—into the water, which was colder than he had anticipated. There was an undercurrent, too, so he teetered out of balance and sat more quickly than he had intended.
"You're sitting on my hair, boy," she said.
"I'm sorry," he breathed, and stood long enough to brush away a long, golden strand. It was soft and smooth and fine and it smelled wonderful—she smelled wonderful: like the first day of spring after a hard winter.
She leaned forward to wring the edge of her dress, and her arm brushed against his. He didn't dare move. She looked back at him over her shoulder, then fanned the skirt of the dress, exposing long, shapely legs. Her skin was pale.
Like ivory, he thought. Not that he had ever seen ivory, but "skin like ivory" was what the ballad singers always said. So much more beautiful than the tanned legs of the girls in the village or those who worked their fathers' holdings.
She left the hem up near her knees. "You're shivering, boy," she pointed out. "The water's not that cold."
It wasn't. But he said nothing.
"What's your name?" she asked.
"Quinton." He cleared his throat and repeated it.
She laughed. "'Fifth-born,'" she said, which he already knew from the baron's chaplain. "Are you?"
It took a moment for the question to sink in. He nodded.
"How delightful." She laughed, and he ached from the beauty of the sound, though he had no idea why she laughed. He had never met anyone who talked like this, who acted like this.
"What's your name?" he asked.
Her green eyes sparkled as she looked him over. She waited just long enough for him to regret his brashness before she answered, "You may call me Salina."
"Salina," he murmured, trying out the sound of it.
"Do you like it?" she asked. "I just made it up." She put her hands around the back of her neck and lifted the mass of her hair so that it brushed against his arm. "It was very wicked of you to sit on my hair, Quinton," she said.
"It was an accident." Don't be angry, he begged mentally. "I didn't mean it."
"Of course you did, you wicked boy. You wanted to touch my hair."
"I didn't," he protested. "I swear."
"You didn't?" She looked at him soberly. "Don't you like my hair?"
"I..." Was she angry or not? "Yes," he whispered. Oh, definitely yes.
"Then you may touch it again." She turned her back to him, so that he was bedazzled by the sunlit goldenness of the hair. A waterfall of silken threads. She wasn't angry after all.
His hand shook, touching her shoulder.
"Now, Quinton." She looked back at him. "I said my hair."
He didn't know whether to say Yes, Salina, or Yes, my lady. So he only said, "Yes," and combed his fingers through her hair and was grateful that she couldn't see his rough, sun-browned hands.
She made soft, throaty sounds of approval and after a long while, leaned back against him, her hand resting lightly on his leg. He couldn't believe his good fortune, that this was happening to him. Her breathing was slow and regular, while his came faster and he had to concentrate to remember to keep his mouth closed. She was a lady, he reminded himself; he could lose everything by trying to go too fast. He worked his fingers upward, then let his hands linger on the back of her head, massaging. And when she seemed to like that, he strayed forward, to rub her temples. She settled more firmly against him, rubbing her shoulders against his chest, so he moved his hands down once more to her shoulders.
She whirled around and slapped him. "That's enough now," she said.
He sat back, surprised and dismayed. Had he been too rough? Or had she suddenly discerned what was on his mind? She had to have known, he thought. She had to have known what effect she was having on him.
She was shaking her hair out and rearranging her dress. He couldn't tell what she was thinking.
"Please," he whispered.
She didn't seem to hear him.
He looked away and saw that the sun was low in the sky. Almost dusk—where had the time gone?—and he was only halfway home. When he had first sat down, he had brought his feet up onto the side of the rock, but somehow, without his having noticed, they had ended up back in the water. They felt numb with the chill.
"Well?" Salina said.
He looked up.
"Will you be my gallant champion and carry me back to dry land?" She held her arms open, and very, very gently he picked her up. The current tugged even more strongly than he remembered, but she held tightly to his neck, which almost sent him into a panic of ecstasy.
Once back on the grassy shore, she asked, "Are you going to set me down, or will you hold me all night long?"
"Do I have a choice?" he asked.
"Silly boy. You can talk sweetly. Put me down."
He did, ache though he did to do so.
"Will you be back tomorrow?" she asked.
His heart thudded so hard he was sure it was about to burst. "Yes," he said. "Oh yes. Will you?"
"Perhaps," she said, "Quinton. You'll just have to come back and see." She turned quickly and walked into the woods.
"Wait." He took several steps, but already she was gone.
She didn't appear to have taken the path toward Woodrow, where his grandmother lived, nor the path toward his own Dunderry.
"Salina," he called into the darkening woods. She could be anywhere and he wouldn't see her in this light. "Lady Salina."
But all he saw was the dark bulk of the trees, and all he heard was the whisper of leaves.
It was dark by the time he reached his cottage on the forest side of Dunderry, but somebody had gotten a fire going: He could see the light around the edges of the door. Who? he wondered. Both his parents were dead, and the two sisters who had survived childhood had husbands and children of their own and wouldn't be here.
Salina, he thought, beyond all reason.
He flung the door open, and a dark-haired peasant jumped up from the pot she was tending over the fire. "Quinton!" she cried. "Are you all right?" She threw her arms around his neck, and for the longest time he couldn't think who this young woman might be.
"Ada," he said finally, pulling the name from a far corner of his memory. She smelled of stale earth and was suffocating him. He pulled away.
"Quinton?" Her voice grated despite the concern in its tone. "Did your grandmother ... You were gone so long. She didn't ... What happened?"
Did she know how ignorant she sounded? Did she know how stupid she looked with that worried expression? But that wasn't fair; she was only trying to be helpful. It wasn't her fault she was so dark and ugly and common.
"My grandmother?" he repeated.
"Quinton? Your poor sick grandmother, she didn't ... die, did she?"
"No." Quinton looked into the pot of stew Ada had made for him. Beans and onions. Salina wouldn't have made him a supper of beans and onions.
"What?" He looked up at her. "My grandmother is fine."
"Then where were you? We were expecting you back by midafternoon. Where are the baron's draft horses?"
The horses. Now Quinton remembered. He was supposed to have brought the horses for the harvest tomorrow. He, Ada's father, and several others with holdings in the baron's northern lands were going to work together. "I forgot."
She gave him that dull, uncomprehending look again.
"I'll get them tomorrow."
Would she ever close her mouth?
"I forgot!" he screamed at her. "I'll get them tomorrow. I can't very well go now." Did he have to pick her up and throw her out the door to get her to leave? He remembered the feel of Salina in his arms and moaned.
"Quinton?" Ada sounded scared.
He got into the bed in the corner without even taking off his boots. He pulled the cover up to his chin although the night was warm enough to go without, and turned his back to her. "I'm all right," he said, to get her to leave. "I'll get the damn horses tomorrow."
He heard her hesitate, then take the pot off the fire, then leave. He clutched the blanket and thought of Salina.
At first daylight he set out without breakfast. He saw Ada's father cutting through the wheat field but didn't pause. "I'm getting the horses," he shouted, waving, not stopping.
"Quinton!" he heard Hakon call, but he kept on walking. The baron's castle was to the east, but so was the stream where he had seen Salina. He'd go there first, then on to the castle afterward.
He didn't know how he had made it through the night without her. He hadn't slept at all. He had to see her again. Had to smell her. To touch her. Please be there, he thought. Please be there.
She wasn't.
It was still early. Perhaps he should have gotten the horses first. Maybe she would come only in the afternoon. He watched the sunlight sparkle on the stream and didn't dare leave for fear he'd miss her.
He lay down in the grass, torn between enjoying and being afraid of the sweet ache of thinking of Salina. She'll come back, he thought, and I'll see that she's not all that I remember. Pretty, but there are a lot of pretty girls.
He'd get over it. He'd get her out of his mind. Nobody, nobody could look that beautiful. Skin could not be that soft, that pale and radiant. Eyes could not be that green and deep. Hair, lips, throat could not be that perfect, that inviting. To touch her just once, just once...
He woke with a start.
His face was pressed against the grass, but he could see that the moon was out, pale and low, sharing the late-afternoon sky with the sun. He lifted his head, turned to face the stream.
Salina was there, though he had never heard her come. She was sitting on the rock, in the same green dress, watching him with that day-brightening smile.
"Sleepy Quinton," she called. She stretched, standing on tiptoe, so that her tight-fitting dress seemed to cling to every curve of her body. Then she stepped onto the grass, standing close enough that he could have touched her. "I could easily grow to love you," she whispered. "In fact, I may love you already."
Before he could catch his breath, she disappeared into the trees.
"Salina!" He jumped to his feet. But she was already gone.
He had waited so long, to see her for such a short time. It wasn't fair. It wasn't fair.
He waded out into the stream, to the rock upon which she'd been sitting. It was still warm. He thought he could still smell the fresh scent of her there. He sank to his knees so that the cold water came up to his chest, and he put his cheek against her warmth on the rock.
By the time he got back to the cottage, night had once again fallen. Ada was waiting there for him, again, but this time so was her father.
"Quinton," Hakon said, putting a big hand on his shoulder and shaking him with a little less friendliness than his tone indicated. "Quinton, lad. What ails you?"
"Nothing," Quinton said. His clothes had not dried in the night air and he was shivering.
"You're fevered, lad."
Quinton pushed the older man's hand away.
"Where've you been?"
Quinton shrugged and turned his face from Ada and her father.
Hakon wouldn't be stopped. "I went to the castle," he said.
The horses. Quinton had forgotten yet again.
"I saw nary a sign of you along the way, and the second stable master said they'd not seen you either."
"No," Quinton said. He started to get undressed, hoping that would get them to leave. He kicked his boots off, then pulled his shirt up over his head.
Ada turned her back.
"I brung the horses," Hakon said.
Quinton took his pants off and crawled into bed, and still Hakon stood there staring at him.
"We done Rankin's holding in what was left of the day. We're doing Durward's tomorrow morning. And Osborn's and Halsey's, if we have the time. If you want yours done the day after, you'll be at Durward's with the rest of us."
Quinton didn't answer, and eventually the two of them left.
She wasn't there the next day, though Quinton got to the stream early and didn't leave at all. He spent the night out in the open, sleeping on the grass where she had stepped on her way from the rock to the forest. The next day dawned misty and rainy, and by late afternoon he was too cold and hungry to wait any longer.
At home he found a pot simmering over the fire. Ada. Wouldn't that girl leave him alone? As a matter of principle, he wanted not to eat what she had prepared; but principles don't ward off a chill. He ate the soup and the bread and crawled into bed.
"Salina." He said the name out loud, as though that would have more effect than just thinking it. "I hate you," he whispered into the night. "Come back. Come back." Tears ran down his face, and he was too tired to wipe them away.
The next morning Hakon was there before Quinton had a chance to leave. "Quinton," he said. "We're willing to give you another chance."
Chance? Quinton thought, fastening his boot. Chance?
"You having some kind of woman trouble?"
Quinton snorted, shifted to his other boot.
"Ada—Ada, she been outside your door last night. She said to her mother she heard you calling some woman's name."
"It's none of your business, old man."
Hakon grabbed his arm. "See here," he said, all pretense of concern, of friendliness, gone. "You done made promises to my girl. Certain things are expected of you."
"Leave me alone."
Hakon held on to him.
I could easily grow to love you, Salina had said. In fact, I may love you already. She was no doubt waiting for him even now. And this old fool was keeping him from her.
"Let go of me," he cried.
"You're not going nowhere," Hakon said. "You're going to stay here and work your father's holding and do right by my girl."
Quinton snatched up the heavy pot in which Ada had cooked the soup. "I don't want your ugly little daughter," he said, shoving the pot at Hakon. "Take this and get out of here."
"You damn well better want her," Hakon said. "I'll go to the baron. Ill tell him what you promised, and he'll see to it you marry her proper or lose your rights to this land."
Quinton didn't care about the land. He didn't care about anything except getting out of there, of getting to Salina. But Hakon wouldn't let go. Quinton swung the pot and hit him across the side of the head.
The old man dropped.
Quinton straightened his shirt, which had gotten pulled down over his shoulder. Salina, he thought. Salina was waiting.
Shortly before he reached the edge of the forest, he heard footsteps running up behind him. "Quinton," a female voice called. He turned and faced her: a dark girl, unlike his Salina of the sunlight. She had dark eyes, dark hair, even her skin was darkened by years of toiling under the sun. Soon, another few years, it would be wrinkled and cracked and sagging—youth did not last long in the northern holdings. He couldn't put a name to the girl who clutched at him and begged him to return.
"Who is she?" this ugly walnut of a girl demanded. "Nobody lives in the forest, Quinton. Not real people. You've found some wood sprite or a naiad, one of the old folk."
He kept on walking, though she pulled his sleeve loose at the shoulder.
"Quinton, she'll steal your soul away."
That was ridiculous. A soul was a soul. How could it be stolen away, like a loaf of bread or a pair of boots? He didn't bother to tell this girl that. He told her: "Look to your father."
"Quinton?" She stood there with that vacant expression on her homely face, looking from him to his cottage, back to him.
Once he saw that she wasn't following him into the woods, he didn't look back.
He found Salina where he'd first seen her: on the rock by the stream. But this time she wasn't alone.
There was a young boy with her, sitting on her rock in what should have been Quinton's place. A peasant, he saw. An ugly, dirty little peasant. He was an overgrown child of perhaps thirteen or fourteen, and he was finger-combing Salina's beautiful golden hair.
"Salina!" Quinton cried.
She turned, languorously, to look over her shoulder at him and smile. "Quinton," she said, her voice as empty as her eyes and her smile. "My pretty-speeched young sleeper. Have you dreamt of me lately?"
Quinton strode into the water, fighting the pull of the current. The peasant boy didn't even have the decency to appear frightened of him. His eyes were dull and unresponsive, and he continued to comb his fingers through Salina's hair as though unaware of anything else. Quinton's gaze went from Salina's lovely face, past her shoulder, down the length of her arm, to her hand resting on the boy's thigh. Apparently she wasn't concerned that he was ugly or little more than a child.
Quinton grabbed him by the collar and hauled him off the rock, staggering against the pull of the current. He flung the young peasant into the water in the general direction of the shore. At least the boy had wit enough to scramble to his feet.
"Tomorrow," Salina called to him. "Come back tomorrow."
The boy ran off into the forest.
Quinton looked from his retreating back to Salina and saw his life collapse in front of him. "You said you loved me," he said.
"I lied," she told him.
"But I love you."
"I know."
"Please—"
"Don't beg," she snapped. "Begging is for cripples and dogs."
"Salina..." He trailed off at the look on her face.
"Boy?" she said, laughing.
"I gave up everything for you."
"And I have nothing to give you in return." She held her arms open. "Did I ask you for everything?"
"Don't laugh at me," he said, and she laughed at him again. "Don't you laugh!" he screamed. And still she laughed.
He grabbed her by the hair and dragged her into the water. She didn't even struggle, she was laughing so hard. He pushed her backward and held her down so that her face was under the water, and even that didn't get the smile off her face. Her hair streamed out, looking green and feathery. And the smile never left her face, even long after she had to have been dead.
He staggered to the shore, repulsed by what he had done, repulsed because of the sense of exhilaration he felt, repulsed because he didn't know if that had come from being pressed against her or from killing her.
I'll go back to Dunderry, he thought. He remembered Ada's sweet face and thought with honor of the way he had treated her. He'd tell her ... He remembered her father and sank to his knees. Had he struck the old man hard enough to kill him? There was no way of telling. Not without going back to see.
"Hey!" a voice called.
He jerked up his head to see two men on horseback. The baron's guards, judging by their chain mail.
"You Quinton Redmonson?" one of them asked.
"No." He shook his head and backed away. Hakon must be dead. Ada must have gone to the castle and told them what had happened. "No," he repeated. He felt the incline of the ground where it dipped down to the stream.
The man pointed a finger at him. "You. Get back here."
Could they see Salina's body? he wondered. He couldn't. Had the current carried her away already? He could argue that killing Hakon had been an accident. But would they believe two accidents in one day? The cold water lapped at his ankles, his knees.
"I said—"
But he missed the last of what the baron's man said, because his foot slipped in the muck at the bottom of the stream and he fell. For an instant he came up sputtering, then the water closed over his head again.
It isn't this deep, he thought. It isn't this deep. He was facing upward. He could see the sunlight hitting the surface of the stream, but he couldn't get to it.
The water roared in his ears, pressed down against his face. Salina, he thought. Salina was holding him down. But that was foolishness. There was nothing there. All he had to do was sit up. It was only the water pressing down on him. Water no deeper than Salina's hair was long. Water that pressed down on him until he didn't want to sit up after all.
He stopped struggling. He let the water in. Up above, the sunlight danced a golden green dance. The last thing he saw was her; the last thing he thought of was her.
She was sitting on the rock, smiling to herself, her feet dangling in the stream, and he thought she was the loveliest sight he had ever seen. She leaned backward, bracing her feet on the rock, and arched her back so that a hand span or two of her long hair dipped into the water, where the current gently tugged at it. She closed her eyes against the brightness of the sun, but still she smiled. It was wonderful to see her, he thought, to see someone so obviously in love with life.