So she mocked him, to make him afraid before his men. “Evald of Caer Wiell,” he said back in spite of what he had seen, no hesitating, with all contempt for her. “And yours, witch?”

“Call me what you like, lord.” Never in human ages had she showed herself for what she was, but her anger rose. “And take warning, that these woods are not for human hunting and your harper is not yours anymore. Go away and be grateful. Men have Caerdale. If it does not please you, shape it until it does. The Ealdwood’s not for trespass.”

The lord gnawed at his mustaches and gripped his sword the tighter, but about him the drawn bows had begun to sag and the loosened arrows to aim at the dirt. Fear was in the bowmen’s eyes, and the riders who had come first and farthest up the slope hung back, free men and less constrained than the archers.

“You have what’s mine,” the lord insisted, though his horse fought to be away.

“And so I do. Go on, Fionn. Do go, quietly.”

“You’ve what’s mine,” the valley lord shouted. “Are you thief then, as well as witch? You owe me a price for it.”

She drew in a sharp breath and yet did not waver in or out of the shadow. It was so, if his claim was true. “Then do not name too high, lord-of-Men. I may hear you, if that will quit us. And likewise I will warn you: things of Eald are always in Eald. Wisest of all if what you ask is my leave to go.”

His eyes roved harshly about her, full of hate and yet of wariness as well. Arafel felt cold at that look, especially where it centered, above her heart, and her hand stole to that moon-green stone which hung uncloaked at her throat.

“I take leave of no witch,” said the lord. “This land is mine—and for my leave to go—The stone will be enough,” he said. “ That.”

“I have told you,” she said. “You are not wise.”

The Man showed no sign of yielding. So she drew it off, and still held it dangling on its chain, insubstantial as she was at present—for she had the measure of them and it was small. “Go, Fionn,” she bade the harper; and when he lingered yet: “ Go!” she shouted. At the last he ran, fled, raced away like a mad thing, clutching the harp to him.

And when the woods all about were still again, hushed but for the shifting and stamp of the horses on the stones and the whining complaint of the hounds, she let fall the stone. “Be paid,” she said, and walked away.

She heard the hooves racing at her back and turned to face treachery, fading even then, felt Evald’s insubstantial sword like a stab of ice into her heart. She recoiled elsewhere, bowed with the pain of it that took her breath away.

In time she could stand again, and had taken from the iron no lasting hurt. Yet it had been close: she had stepped otherwhere only narrowly in time, and the feeling of cold lingered even in the warm winds. She cast about her, found the clearing empty of Men and beasts, only trampled bracken marking the place. So he had gone with his prize.

And the boy—She went striding through the shades and shadows in greatest anxiety until she had found him, where he huddled hurt and lost in a thicket deep in Eald.

“Are you well?” she asked lightly, concealing afl concern. She dropped to her heels beside him. For a moment she feared he might be hurt more than the scratches she saw, so tightly he was bowed over the harp; but he lifted his pale face to her in shock, seeing her so noiselessly by him. “You will stay while you wish,” she said, out of a solitude so long it spanned the age of the trees about them, of a stillness so deep the leaves of them never moved. “You will harp for me.” And when he still looked at her in fear: “You’d not like the New Forest. They’ve no ear for harpers there.”

Perhaps she was too sudden with him. Perhaps it wanted time. Perhaps Men had truly forgotten what she was. But his look achieved a perilous sanity, a will to trust.

“Perhaps not,” he said.

“Then you will stay here, and be welcome. It is a rare offer. Believe me that it is.”

“What is your name, lady?”

“What do you see of me? Am I fair?”

Fionn looked swiftly at the ground, so that she reckoned he could not say the truth without offending her. And she mustered a laugh at that in the darkness.

“Then call me Feochadan,” she said. “ Thistleis one of my names and has its truth—for rough I am, and have my sting. Fm afraid it’s very much the truth you see of me.—But you’ll stay. You’ll harp for me.” This last she spoke full of earnestness.

“Yes.” He hugged the harp closer. “But I’ll not go with you, understand, any farther than this. Please don’t ask. I’ve no wish to find the years passed in a night and all the world grown old.”

“Ah.” She leaned back, crouching near him with her arms about her knees. “Then you doknow me.—But what harm could it do you for years to pass? What do you care for this age of yours? The times hardly seem kind to you. I should think you would be glad to see them pass.”

“I am a Man,” he said ever so quietly. “I serve my King. And it’s myage, isn’t it?”

It was so. She could never force him. One entered otherwhere only by wishing it. He did not wish, and that was the end of it. More, she sensed about him and in his heart a deep bitterness, the taint of iron.

She might still have fled away, deserting him in his stubbornness. She had given a price beyond all counting and yet there was retreat and some recovery, even if she spent human years in waiting. In the harper she sensed disaster. He offended her hopes. She sensed mortality and dread and all too much of humanness.

But she settled in the sinking moonlight, and watched beside him, choosing instead to stay. He leaned against the side of an aged tree, gazed at her and watched her watching him, eyes darting to the least movement in the leaves, and back again to her, who was the focus of all ancientness in the wood, of dangers to more than life. And at last for all his caution his eyes began to dim, and the whispers had power over him, the sibilance of leaves and the warmth of dreaming Eald.

FIVE

The Hunter

Fionn slept, and waked at last by sunrise, blinking and looking about him in plain fear that trees might have grown and died of old age while he slept. His eyes fixed on Arafel last of all and she laughed in elvish humor, which was gentle if sometimes cruel. She knew her own look by daylight, which was indeed as rough as the weed she had named herself. She seemed tanned and thin and hard-handed, her gray-and-green all cobweb patchwork, and only the sword stayed true. She sat plaiting her hair to a single silver braid and smiling sidelong at the harper, who gave her back a sidelong and anxious glance.

All the earth had grown warm in that morning. The sun did come here, unclouded on this day. Fionn rubbed the sleep from his eyes and opening his wallet, began looking for his breakfast.

There seemed very little in it: he shook out a bit of jerky, looked at it ruefully, then split off a bit of it with his knife and offered half his breakfast to her—so small a morsel that, halved, was not enough for a Man, and a haggard and hungry one at that.

“No,” she said. She had been offended at once by the smell of it, having no appetite for man-taint, or the flesh of any poor forest creature. But the offering of it, the desperate courtesy, had thawed her heart. She brought out food of her own store, a gift of trees and bees and whatsoever things felt no hurt at sharing. She gave him a share, and he took it with a desperate dread and hunger.

“It’s good,” he pronounced quickly and laughed a little, and finished it all. He licked the very last from his fingers, and now there was relief in his eyes, of hunger, of fear, of so many burdens. He gave a great sigh and she smiled a warmer smile than she was wont, remembrance of a brighter world.