He had meant to be earlier. Indeed, he had meant to arrive at the sun’s height, with leisure to stop by his own small house to bathe and attire himself in what finery he possessed, so that he might come seemly before the headwoman.

  Well, and now he had more than ample leisure to bathe and make himself fine, for the headwoman would surely not rise for some hours yet, and if he was wise — which he could be — he would allow her time to break the night’s fast, and drink a bracing cup, or two, of thistle tea before he approached her with his topic.

  Thus occupied with his thoughts, he came to the main square; the village cistern a squat shadow against the night’s velvet; and the merrypole a dark lance driven upward toward the stars.

  Another shape, lithe, hesitant, and faintly limned in green detached from the greater bulk of the cistern.

  Her scent traveled to him on the breeze, but she was fleeter yet, hesitation flung to the stars, as she raced silent across the mossy square. His bow was slung; all he need do was open his arms, and catch her as she flew into them.

  "Cael!"

  They were much of a height; she stood on her toes to grasp another few inches, and brought her mouth down on his.

  Her kiss was a complex thing; demanding, angry, relieved; then nuance was lost as his blood heated and he returned her passion with his own.

  "Ah!"

  She pulled away first, settling onto flat feet, her hands on his shoulders, her gaze holding his, for she saw as sharply in the dark as in the day, did his Senaya; and he had a hound’s keen vision.

  "I looked for you earlier," she said; and, "I was worried."

  "I had looked to arrive earlier," he answered; and, "Never worry, love."

  "If you would stand away from desperate ventures, perhaps I would learn not to worry!"

  That was merely the last flames of a fiery temper, ignited by her fear. Senaya was bold; fearless on her own behalf. For him, though, she feared, as if he still had his milk teeth.

  "What happened?" she asked then; "to delay you?"

  "A old ram charged a young shepherd, after the dogs had done. We were called back, to mend the line, and bring the runaways home."

  She looked disbelieving, as well she might.

  "The ram took four ewes with him; and the four ewes each took a lamb. They led us a dance. After, the master would have it that I had mismanaged the thing and thought to withhold a portion of my wage."

  She stirred in his arms.

  "Never mind; he thought better of it."

  Senaya laughed.

  "Yes, I expect he did — and quickly, too!"

  Laughter lit her face, and this time it was he who kissed her.

  "Well, then," he said, eventually, and just as if herding goats from my lord Aeronymous’ honor to that of Lord Eredith was dangerous beyond reckoning. . .

  "My last chancy venture is complete. Tomorrow, I will offer myself to the headwoman and to Seafort."

  She relaxed against him and lay her head on his shoulder with a sigh.

  "And we may be married."

  Senaya was the headwoman’s third daughter. Her gift was herbalism, and healing, which placed her high in the village’s regard. He. . .was not of the village, though he had lived within it all his life. His mother, no one knew; nor his father. His foster mother had been a ranger, and one day had brought him back from the forest, with a tale of having found him in a wolf’s den, naked, and with gnawed bones all about him.

  It had been his foster mother who held shy of giving him to the village. Best, she had told him, that he make that decision, when he was old enough to know himself.

  Well. His foster mother had her own foibles, and there had some old matter that lay between her and the headwoman. Some seasons back, she had married, herself, and chose to go to her spouse’s village. He had been on his own by then, established in his own small house. He had helped her pack what few items she would take with her, and to unmake the house that had been hers. Together, they had sung the memories out of the ground, and sowed heart’s-ease and blanc-mallow, to freshen it for the next to build there.

  He might have offered himself to the village anytime after establishing his own residence, but there had been pride involved. He would not come as a pauper; and, when it came plain that Senaya returned his regard, he had determined to come to her as an equal, and not only as "the healer’s chosen."

  Pride was satisfied, now, and tomorrow all would be put to right. They had decided between them that their first act as bond-mates would be to take his house down and rebuild it as a part of hers, making the single dwelling, in truth, their house.

  He sighed.

  "Regrets?"

  "That it is not tomorrow evening, perhaps. No others."

  She laughed, and stirred in his arms.

  "Come," she said, standing back and catching his hand. "Let us see you to bed. For I will tell you plainly, my Cael, that, even should you miss the headwoman tomorrow day, you will in no way be safe from me, tomorrow night!"

  "That seems no threat at all," he protested, allowing her to pull him across the square.

  "You have not yet heard what I will do to you!" Senaya told him, and laughing, they skipped like children, under the stars.

  #

  The headwoman was the heart and the life of Seafort Village; she was the repository of the village’s combined power; their defender and their solace. This was the natural order of things, that the weaker ceded their power to the strongest, who conserved it for everyone and wielded it when necessary.

  Being a power, the headwoman glowed, even in the bright daylight, with the merrybells in full tongue. She glowed, and she frowned, and she continued to do both, even after he had said what was in his heart, and bowed to her honor. No word passed her lips, and he felt neither the thrill of her power passing through him, nor the ache of his, being drawn.

  Perhaps, he thought, he had mis-done the thing. Perhaps, she waited to learn if he was fully and wholly set upon this path.

  Reasoning thus, he called his own meager power, shivering, though it rose hot, as always; breathed in to center himself before opening —

  "Hold."

  The word was spoken quietly; the headwoman rarely raised her voice. Rarely, too, did she speak a Word, unless it was truly needed. He did not think she spoke such now, though he felt a little sting, as if she had lashed his pride.

  Straightening, he allowed his power to fall back to its nesting place at the base of his spine, and met the headwoman’s emerald eyes full on.

  She smiled, then, and nodded; for she had ever been one to admire boldness.

  "You would have the thing done, and quickly," she said. "I understand your impatience. And yet I must ask you, Cael Sojourner, if you have thought this matter through." Her smile came again.

  "With your head, understand me. I do not often advise others to discount Senaya, but I counsel you, if you find it possible, to set her to one side of your considerations."

  He paused for three long breaths, that he not seem over-hasty in his reply, then made answer.

  "Mother, I would have offered myself any time these last six seasons. I have lived here for all of my life that I recall. Who else would I come to, save the folk, and the place, that has sheltered me so long?"

  "And yet you did not offer yourself until now," she said; "what held you away?"

  He sighed.

  "Pride. I would not come a beggar, with nothing, in fact, to give to the commonweal, save my weakness and my need."

  "And now you stand before me possessed of a respectable store of power, and none may say that Cael took more than he gave. I understand. And yet, there is this matter of your. . .other attributes, which are warp and woof of Cael — power, surely! But not as we measure or know it."

  "Mother, I –"

  "Peace," she said mildly, and pointed at the stool near her feet. "Sit. My neck is cricked with staring up at you."

  He sat, arranging his legs about the little stool, and gazed up into her face as fair and round as the moon.

  "Your foster mother and I too often saw past each other, but in this instance, I agreed with her. You will recall that she did not give you to the village, but maintained that the choice be yours, when you came to know yourself fully."

  She looked at him sharply and he bowed his head.

  "I recall it," he said, and pressed his lips together before he uttered but. . .

  "You know that this village looks to my Lord Aeronymous; that we live within his honor and under his protection?"

  He stared at her. Of course, he knew this; how could he not? Still, it seemed she waited for his answer, so he gave it, soft-voiced and patient as he might be.

  "Yes, Mother, I know these things."

  "Then have you taken thought — have you taken counsel of — this other power of yours, which is beyond us, and so much a part of you that you scarce understand it for power? Do you wish to place that power — whatever it is — in the service of my Lord Aeronymous, Cael Sorjourner?"

  "Mother –"

  "Stay a moment and think! You might remain among us as always you have been — a guest, surrounded by our goodwill, giving to your host of yourself, as a good guest will, but. . .unremarked by my Lord; strange as they are, your powers would thus be protected by your solitary nature."

  Such a solitary nature would mean that he could not share himself with. . .anyone.

  Senaya.

  Pain lanced through him, that they might not, that they never could complete their bonding. For what did he preserve himself, if his life thus became ashes and dust?

  He raised his face to say this to the headwoman — and saw resignation in her face.

  "I feared it would be thus. As the conscience and the protector of the village, I cannot but accept your gift freely given. My daughter has made her wishes plain; there is no one and nothing that might gainsay her. Certainly not her mother, who will be proud to welcome so able a son into her house — and a man of power into her village."

  She extended her hands, palms up.

  Cael placed his palms against hers, and felt his power rise. He gasped when a tithe of it left him, to bond with the headwoman’s power. . .

  And gasped again as her power flowed back, accepting; and tying him to the village.

  "It is done" she said, then, lifting her hands away. "Go and be happy, Cael of Seafort."

  #

  Happy he was, and fortunate, too. He and Senaya brought their houses together as they had planned, and all the village joined to sing them into harmony.

  As for the bond he shared with Senaya — he could not imagine life without that deep and certain source of love and strength. He wondered that he could have stood solitaire for so long. Surely, had he known the fullness of what he would share with Senaya, his pride would have melted before the knowledge.

  Senaya, of course, served the village as healer and herbalist, just as before. He, having foresworn dangerous employment that took him beyond the ken of Seafort Village, cast about him for a needed service that met his skills.

  He was able, and trained by his foster mother, thus he took up the jacket and the duties of a ranger. The forest of younger trees close to the village was generally safe enough, though willie wisps and other vermin would sometime venture near. Stranger things tended to arise beneath the elder trees, though, and it was the duty of the rangers to scout those territories and turn the strangest aside, far before they should endanger peaceful Seafort.

  Indeed, he was precisely at the margin between the tame forest, hard by, but not within, the feral shadow of the elder trees, one fine mid-day. There had been market-day rumors regarding a child of the elder trees that perhaps had become over-bold, and approached the roads and outlying farmsteads too nearly.

  He might have discounted such tales as boredom-bred, but the dogs of the village confided to him certain exotic scents, and unlikely sounds heard inside the night, at dawn-time, and sunset.

  Those reports, he took seriously; much more so than the whispered tales of a shadow glimpsed by a farm-hedge, or the print of an unnatural foot in the clay by the edge of the river.

  That morning, he had found the scent the dogs had given him at the village ward-stones, when he had crossed into the forest. It was fresh, and he followed, thinking to catch his quarry well before they came to the elder trees.

  But the quarry’s wood-lore was superior to his own; it gained the safety of its parent trees before Cael caught more than one troubling glimpse of it. Whereupon, he stood at the edge of the old forest, home of dangerous trees who held no love for his kind, and wondered whether he ought to follow. . .within.

  Ultimately, the matter would need to be dealt with. Senaya gathered here, as did others, though most were wary of the old trees. Senaya, though — she feared nothing, and had told him, when he asked, that certain herbs gathered from beneath the shadow of the elder trees had more virtue than those found in the tamer part of the forest.

  Still, the question remained him — was today the day that Cael alone would enter the dark and silent wood, in pursuit of the trees’ child? Or ought he return tomorrow, with a brace of his fellow rangers in support?

  The scent was strong, feeding his hesitation. It was as if his quarry tarried in the shadows, watching him.

  Taunting him? he wondered. Judging? There was no taint of fear upon the air, and that. . .was troubling.

  Cautiously, curiously, he moved along the edge of the trees, just beyond the shadows’ cold touch, and he came by that way to a small dug-out place, half-concealed by vegetation, and a small tumble of stone. He paused, for wolves often went to earth in such places to give birth.

  Testing the air, he scented rock, and green things, and dust. If the place had once been a den, it was a den no longer.

  He approached, and knelt at the opening to look within. The small space was empty, save for brittle bones, long gnawed clean and sifted over with silver sand. He sat back on his heels, then, looking up into the canopy, seeing how close the shadow of the elder trees fell, to this spot; this abandoned wolf’s den.

  "I found you alone, in the den, with bones about, and no need upon you," he recalled his foster mother’s tale of his discovery. "You made no protest when I lifted you up and wrapped you in my sash to bear away."

  His throat closed; it was hard to breathe; impossible to scent. Here? She had found him here, so near the elder wood that the shadow might well have fallen across the entry-way? And she had never told him?

  But wait.

  He felt Senaya’s cool common sense rise in his blood, banishing panic. He had breath again, and the breeze brought him the information that the one he pursued had retreated further beneath the trees.

  His foster mother had not shown him the spot where he had been found, though she had showed him much else among the tame trees. There were, after all, countless wolf-dens and fox-holes in the forest. To think that he had today stumbled upon the one where he — and so close — No.

  No.

  He was unsettled by the chase, disturbed by the strangeness of the quarry. So, there was one thing decided. He would pursue no further, alone, but return tomorrow, with comrades.

  Having taken his decision, he rose, and walked a little further along the shadows’ edge, all his senses on alert, seeking anything. . .else that might be amiss.

  Satisfied at last that there was no other mischief lurking at the edge of the elder trees, and that the one he had followed here had, indeed, gone away, he turned back, toward the tame wood, and Seafort Village.

  #

  He had told Senaya about the den, and the wherefore of his fear. She would have felt his distress though their bond, but he wished her to know the process of his thought, especially in light of her mother’s assertion that he held some power other than that which they all shared, and used, and — sometimes — plundered.

  She heard him out, his Senaya, as they sat together on the bench in their garden, with the evening stealing up, the air cool and damp and tasting of the sea. When he had said all that was in his mind, she put him some few questions, then, setting her arms around him, drew his head down to her breast.

  They rested thus while dusk grew into darkness. He was content enough to lie where she had put him; he might, indeed, have fallen quite asleep, save that he felt her thinking, through their bond, and it made him uneasy, that she need think so long, and so hard, upon the matter.

  "Cael," she said, at last, and her felt her lips brush his forehead. "You know that you are my heart and that I love you beyond all else."

  These were words that ought to have warmed; instead, they chilled him, and he would have sat up, so that he could look into her face, but her arms tightened, and he lay obedient, opening himself as much as possible to her through their bond; his nose bringing him the scent of her determination.

  "I know that you love more than I love myself," he murmured. He felt a shiver along their bond; a flash of brilliant heat — and then he did sit up, breaking her grip without effort, and catching her hands in his when she would have embraced him again.

  "Cael?"

  "Your power rises," he said, looking down into her face. The glow suffused her, illuminating her from within, so that her face became like a moon, indeed, and brightened their little garden.

  "Do you fear me?" she asked.

  "No," he said, tasting truth on the back of his tongue.

  "What do you think that I plan to do?" came the next question, and to that he could only shake his head.

  What could his Senaya not do, once her will was roused? He could only marvel upon her, and love her the more.

  "You are beyond me," he told her, and kissed her glowing cheek, feeling her skin warm against his lips.

  "Not that," she said. "Never that, my heart. I raise my power in order to properly ask a boon."

  "A boon? We are one, Senaya; there is no need for asking between us!"

 

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