He would be alone in the village.

That was a depressing thought. He hated being alone.

If he was going to be alone, he decided, he might as well be alone out in the open. Having other people around him would only make it worse. He turned eastward again and marched on.

Only hours later, when the last light had died and he had trampled himself a bed in the tall grass for the sleeping dark, did he suddenly decide where he was going.

Not far to the east stood the so-called Forbidden Grove. He knew the place was reputed to be the territory of one of the Powers, a female Power, called Lady Sunlight of the Meadows. She was by far the closest of the Powers-excluding the wanderers like Rawl and Geste, of course, who could be anywhere. She was more or less the patron deity of the area, as much as there was one. He could not remember any tales about her, or at least none of the details-he had never taken any interest in the stories Atheron and Kithen told-but she was said to be an important Power all the same. Somewhere in the grove, or just beyond it, she was supposed to have her personal demesne, her place of power, a place called, naturally, The Meadows, where she had a great glittering palace.

Bredon's uncle Taredon had pointed the grove out to him once, when a hunt brought them this way, so he knew where it was. He should, he thought, be able to reach it by the next wake's second sunrise.

He would go there, he told himself, go right into the grove, taboo or not. He had survived an encounter with one Power already, but had lost his self-respect in doing it. Maybe if he trespassed fearlessly on the lands of another he could regain a little of his pride, show himself that it had been surprise, more than fear, that had let the Trickster get the better of him.

Of course, that assumed he would survive trespassing in the grove. He could not be sure of that.

Before meeting Geste he had never paid any attention to the Powers. No one else in the village had ever met one-at least, no one still alive, though tales were told about various ancestors. The Powers had been nothing to him but stories for children, and he had not considered them relevant to the real, everyday world around him.

He now saw that he had been wrong. The Powers were real and relevant, and if he wanted to understand the world he needed to know how to deal with them, whether to ignore them as he always had, or to actively avoid them, or to seek them out. This mysterious Lady Sunlight was close at hand-if she actually existed-and as good a subject for investigation as any.

He would not embarrass himself again.

With that thought circling through his mind he fell asleep.

Chapter Three

“…Lady Sunlight of the Meadows is among the most shy and retiring of all the Powers, at least as far as mortals are concerned. She takes no interest in worldly matters, and in fact barely lives in our world at all-her glittering palace is almost impossible to find, for the paths in the Forbidden Grove twist and turn beneath mortal feet, always leading away from the Meadows. When one perseveres and finally, by charm or luck, does reach the place where her palace stands, one might not even see it, for it is not always there. And no one can enter it, for there are no doors. Lady Sunlight wants no guests. Her interests lie in the sparkle of sunlight on a dewdrop, or the shape of a flower's petals, not in the mundane affairs of everyday people. She has no desire to speak with mortals-if, in fact, she can speak at all, for no mortal has ever heard her voice. Those who wander near the Forbidden Grove sometimes glimpse her, as a flash of movement in the corner of the eye, or a reflection in a stream, or a shadow in the sun, but none has ever heard her speak. Those who dare venture into the Grove, perhaps to the boundaries of the Meadows, can sometimes catch sight of her briefly, as she runs laughing through the fields, or tenderly cares for her flowers, or combs the golden hair that reaches to her ankles. Of these who glimpse her, those who return to their villages-and not all of them do, for some pine away for love of her, spending their lives watching for another glimpse or waiting in hope of hearing her speak-but those who do return to their are never quite the same. They speak often of her beauty, though they can never describe any details, and they spend much of their time staring off into space, in the general direction of the Meadows…"

– from the tales of Atheron the Storyteller

The grove made him uneasy. He moved forward cautiously, the rich, earthy smell filling his nostrils with every step.

Bredon had rarely seen trees except at a distance. Few trees grew on the grasslands around the village, and he, like all his people, almost never ventured away from the open plain. The plain was big enough for anyone. Besides, other lands belonged to other tribes, or to the Powers, and one did not intrude uninvited.

At least, not without a good reason. Bredon was very aware that he was intruding uninvited.

The presence of not one, or two, but four or five hundred trees in a single place was almost overwhelmingly alien. He had seen the forests cloaking the distant mountainsides, but to be among the trees, close enough to touch them, to smell them, to see the individual leaves, was very different. Despite his bold intentions, Bredon had entered the Forbidden Grove very slowly and cautiously, moving as silently as he could and staring up uneasily at the strange, towering plants on every side.

Something felt wrong almost immediately; he paused to try and identify it.

When he had stopped moving, when his feet no longer rasped against the underbrush and his clothes no longer rustled as they slid across his body, he realized what it was. The woods sounded wrong.

Every hour of his life, every wake, every sleep, every light and dark, ever since his birth, whenever he had been outside solid walls, he had heard the wind in the grass. In the spring the wind hissed through the green young shoots. In summer the grass was tall and whispered in the wind. In autumn the brown stalks rubbed and chattered, until at last came the winter, coating the grass in ice, knocking the blades to the ground and sometimes burying them in snow, but not quieting them as they tinkled together or crunched underfoot. The sound had been faint when the wind was gentle, a harsh howling when the winter winds ripped down from the mountains, but always present. The air on the plain was never still, and the grass was never still. When a man walked anywhere beyond the village, he walked through rustling grass.

Here in the Forbidden Grove the grass did not grow and the wind could not reach. Overhead leaves rustled, but that was a different sound, an alien sound, a wrong sound. His feet moved silently, moving aside nothing but air, and the air around him was calm-not dead, because it still stirred faintly, but calm and quiet.

A bird chirped, loud in the closed-in stillness.

He was hungry, he decided. After all, he had not intended to make so long a journey, and had come away with nothing but a pocket full of corn chips. He had reached the grove, he had entered it; now it was time to go home and get something solid to eat.

He was actually starting to turn when he caught himself.

He was not Mardon, he thought scornfully, to be terrified by anything that was at all out of the ordinary. There was nothing unnatural in the grove's stillness. He had experienced similar quiet in his parents’ house, he told himself.

That was not strictly true, he immediately corrected himself. Houses did not have leaves that rustled overhead. Houses were built, not grown. Houses had distinct walls and small rooms, not great ill-defined spaces that seemed to wind on forever. Houses were lit by lamps or straight-edged windows, not by dapples of sunlight that spilled randomly through a myriad of leaves, all shifting in the breeze.