The Knight. Part 5

"Is he tall?"

"Taller than I am." She held her hands a foot apart to indicate the amount.

"A dark beard?"

"Red."

"One eye? Crooked nose? Club foot?" She shook her head to all of them.

"What else can you tell us about him?"

"He's fat," she said thoughtfully, "and he walks like this." She stood up and demonstrated, her toes turned in.

"I see. Able, does this square with your recollection? Fat. The red beard? The walk?"

It did.

"When we spoke earlier, you did not name Seaxneat's wife. Was that because you didn't know her name, or because you were too prudent to voice it?"

"Because I didn't know it, sir. I'm not afraid to say Disira."

"Then it would be wise for you not to say it too often. Do you know what she looks like?"

I nodded. "She's small, with black hair, and her skin's very white. I didn't think her a specially pretty woman when Seaxneat was cheating Bold Berthold and me, but I've seen worse."

"Brega? Does he know her?"

"I think he does." The woman, who had been wiping her eyes, wiped them again.

"Very well. Pay attention, Able. If you will not listen to me about that woman's name, listen to this at least. I want you to search the village for these people. When you find either, or both, bring them to me if you can. If you can't, come back and tell me where they are. Brega will be gone by then, but I'll be talking to others, as likely as not. Don't hesitate to interrupt."

"Yes, sir."

"I want Seaxneat, of course. But I want his wife almost as much. She probably knows less, but she may tell us more. Since she has a new child, it's quite possible she's still here. Now go."

At the outskirts of Glennidam, I halted to search its sprouting fields with my 56.eyes. I had looked into every room of every one of the village's houses, and into every barn and shed as well, all without seeing either Seaxneat or his wife. Ravd had said I was to interrupt him if I found them, but I did not think he would like being interrupted to hear that I had not.

And Ravd had been right, I told myself. A woman with a newborn would not willingly travel far. There was every chance that when she heard a knight had come to Glennidam she had fled no farther than the nearest trees, where she could sit in the shade to nurse her baby. If I left the village to look there . . . Trying to settle the matter in my own mind, I called softly, "Disira? Disira?" At once it seemed to me that I glimpsed her face among the crowding leaves where the forest began. On one level I felt sure it had been some green joke of sunlight and shadow; on another I knew that I had seen her.

Or at least that I had seen something.

I took a few steps, stopped a minute, still unsure, and hurried forward.

CHAPTER 7.

DISIRI.

H elp . . ." It was not so much a cry as a moan like that of the wind, and like a moaning wind it seemed to fill the forest. I pushed through the brush that crowded the forest's edge, trotted among close-set saplings, then sprinted among mature trees that grew larger and larger and more and more widely s.p.a.ced as I advanced. "Please help me. Please . . ." I paused to catch my breath, cupped my hands around my mouth, and called, "I'm coming!" as loudly as I could. Even as I did it, I wondered how she had known there was anyone to hear her while I was still walking down the rows of sprouting grain. Possibly she had not. Possibly she had been calling like that, at intervals, for hours.

I trotted again, then ran. Up a steep ridge crowned with dreary hemlocks, and along the ridgeline until it dipped and swerved in oaks. Always it seemed to me that the woman who called could not be more than a hundred strides away. The woman I felt perfectly certain had to be Seaxneat's wife Disira. Soon I reached a little river that must surely have been the Griffin. I forded 58.it by the simple expedient of wading in where I was. I had to hold my bow, my quiver, and the little bag I tied to my belt over my head before I was done; but I got through and scrambled up the long sloping bank of rounded stones on the other side.

There, mighty beeches robed with moss lifted proud heads into that fair world called Skai; and there the woman who called to me sounded nearer still, no more (I thought) than a few strides off. In a dark dell full of mushrooms and last year's leaves, I felt certain I would find her. She was only on the other side of the beaver-meadow, beyond all question; and after that, up on the rocky outcrop I glimpsed beyond it. Except that when I got there I could hear her calling still, calling in the dis tance. I shouted then, gasping for breath between the repet.i.tions of her name: "Disira? . . . Disira? . . . Disira?"

"Here! Here at the blasted tree!"

The seconds pa.s.sed like sighs, then I saw it down the shallow valley on the farther side of the outcrop--the shattered trunk, the broken limbs, and the raddled leaves that clung to them not quite concealing something green as spring.

"It fell," she told me when I reached her. "I wanted to see if I could move it just a little, and it fell on my foot. I cannot get my foot out." I put my bow under the fallen trunk and pried; I never felt it move, but she was able to work her foot free. By the time she got it out, I had noticed something so strange that I was certain I could not really be seeing it, and so hard to describe that I may never make it clear. The afternoon sun shone brightly just then, and the leaves of the fallen tree (which I think must have been hit by lightning), and those of the trees all around it, cast a dappled shade. Mostly we were in the shade, but there were a few splashes of brilliant sunshine here and there. I should have seen her most clearly when one fell on her. But it was the other way: I could see her very clearly in the shade, but when the sun shone on her face, her legs, her shoulders, or her arms, it almost seemed that she was not there at all. At school Mr. Potash showed us a hologram. He pulled the blinds and explained that the darker it was in the room the more real the hologram would look. So when we had all looked at it, I moved one of the blinds to let in light, and he was right. It got dim, but it was stronger again as soon as I let the blind fall back.

59."I don't think I should walk on this." She was rubbing her foot. "It does not feel right. There is a cave a few steps that way. Do you think you could carry me there?"

I did not, but I was not going to say so until I tried. I picked her up. I have held little kids who weighed more than she did, but she felt warm and real in my arms, and she kissed me.

"In there we will be out of the rain," she told me. She kept her eyes down as if she were shy, but I knew she was not really shy.

I started off, hoping I was going toward the cave she knew about, and I said that it was not going to rain.

"Yes, it is. Haven't you noticed how cool the air has gotten? Listen to the beds. To your left a trifle, and look behind the big stump." It was a nice little cave, just high enough for me to stand up in, and there was a sort of bed made of deerskins and furs, with a green velvet blanket on top.

"Put me on that," she said, "please."

When I did, she kissed me again; and when she let me go, I sat down on the smooth, sandy floor of the cave to get my breath. She laughed at me, but she did not say anything.

For quite a while, I did not say anything either. I was thinking a lot, but I had no control of the things I thought, and I was so excited about her that I thought something was going to happen any minute that I would be ashamed of for the rest of my life. She was the most beautiful woman I had ever seen in my life (she still is) and I had to shut my eyes, which made her laugh again. Her laugh was like nothing on earth. It was as if there were golden bells hanging among the flowers through a forest of the loveliest trees that could ever be, and a wind sighing there was ringing all the bells. When I could open my eyes again, I whispered, "Who are you? Really?"

"She you called." She smiled, not trying to hide her eyes anymore. Maybe a leopard would have eyes like those, but I kind of doubt it.

"I called Seaxneat's wife Disira. You aren't her."

"I am Disiri the Mossmaiden, and I have kissed you." I could still feel her kiss, and her hair smelled of new-turned earth and sweet smoke.

"Men I have kissed cannot leave until I send them away." I wanted to stand 60.up then, but I knew I could never leave her. I said, "I'm not a man, Disiri, just a kid."

"You are! You are! Let me have one drop of blood, and I will show you."

By morning the rain had stopped. She and I swam side by side in the river, and lay together like two snakes on a big shady rock, only an inch above the water. I knew I was all different, but I did not know how different. I think it was the way a caterpillar feels after it has turned into a b.u.t.terfly and is still drying its wings.

"Tell me," I said, "if another man came, would he see you like I see you now?"

"No other man will come. Did not your brother teach you about me?" I did not know whether she meant you or Bold Berthold, Ben, but I shook my head.

"He knows me."

"Have you kissed him?"

She laughed and shook her head.

"Bold Berthold told me the Aelf looked like ashes."

"We are the Moss Aelf, Able, and we are of the wood and not the ash." She was still smiling. "You call us Dryads, Skogsfru, Treebrides, and other names. You may make a name for us yourself. What would you like to call us?"

"Angels," I whispered; but she pressed a finger to my lips. I blinked and looked away when she did that, and it seemed to me, when I glimpsed her from the corner of my eye, that she looked different from the girl I had been swimming with and all the girls I had just made love with.

"Shall I show you?"

I nodded--and felt muscles in my neck slithering like pythons. "Good lord!" I said, and heard a new voice, wild and deep. It was terribly strange; I knew I had changed, but I did not know how much, and for a long time after I thought I was going to change back. You need to remember that.

"You won't hate me, Able?"

"I could never hate you," I told her. It was the truth.

"We are loathsome in the eyes of those who do not worship us." I chuckled at that; the deep reverberations in my chest surprised me too.

"My eyes are mine," I said, "and they do what I tell them. I'll close them before I kiss you, if we need more privacy."

61.She sat up, dangling her legs in the clear, cold water. "Not in this light." Her kick dashed water through a sunbeam and showered us with silver drops.

"You love the sunlight," I said. I sensed it.

She nodded. "Because it is yours, your realm. The sun gave me you, and I love you. My kind love the night, and so I love them both." I shook my head. "I don't understand. How can you?"

"Loving me, couldn't you love some human woman?"

"No," I said. "I never could." I meant it. She laughed, and this time it was a laugh that made fun of me. "Show me," she said.

She kicked again. The slender little foot that rose from the shimmering water was as green as new leaves. Her face was sharper, green too, three-cornered, bold and sly. Berry lips pressed mine, and when we parted I found myself looking straight into eyes of yellow fire. Her hair floated above her head. I embraced her, lifting and holding her, and kissed her again.

CHAPTER 8.

ULFA AND TOUG.

W hen she had gone, I tried to find her cave again. It was not there, only my bow, my quiver, and my clothes lying on the gra.s.s. The spiny orange bow that had seemed very large to me was suddenly small, almost a toy, and I would have torn my shirt and pants if I had managed to put them on.

Throwing them aside, I drew my bow, pulling the string to my ear as I always had. The spiny orange did not break, although I bent it double; but the bowstring did. I flung it away, and got out the string Parka had bitten off for me from her spinning, the string whose murmuring voices and myriad strange lives had disturbed my dreams for so many nights. I tied loops in its ends and put it on my bow, and it sang there when I drew it to my ear, and sang again--a mighty chorus far away--when I sent an arrow flying up the slope. I could not draw that arrow to my ear, it was too short by two spans; yet it sped flat as a bullet and buried half its shaft in the bole of an oak. Naked, I returned to Glennidam at twilight, and struck the little, 63.black-bearded man because he laughed at me, and laid him flat. When he could stand and speak again, he told me Ravd and Svon had left that morning.

"Then I can hope for no help from them," I said. "I must have clothes just the same, and since you are here and they aren't, you must provide them. How will you do it?"

"W-we have c-cloth."

His teeth were chattering, so I was patient with him. "M-my w-wife will s-s-sew for you."

We went to his house. He fetched out his daughter, and I promised not to harm her. Her name was Ulfa.

"A knight was here yesterday," she told me when her father had gone. "A real knight in iron armor, with huge horses, and two boys to wait on him."

"That's interesting," I said. I wanted to hear what she would say next.

"He'd a big helm hanging from his saddle, you know how they do, with plumes and a lion on it, and a lion on his big shield, too, a gold lion with blood on its claws where they raked the shield, like."

"That was Sir Ravd," I told her.

"Yes, that's what they do say. We had to stand and wait his pleasure, and go in one by one when the boys said, only I didn't. Papa was feared his pleasure might be his pleasure." She giggled. "If you know what I mean, and I still a maid, so he hid me in the barn and pitched straw over me, only I got out and watched, and talked to some of them that had been in. Some of the women, I mean, for there was men, too, only I don't think he would, with them. Hold still while I pin."

Her pin was a long black thorn.

"They said he asked about the Free Companies, only they didn't tell nothing, none of them did, even if they all had to swear. Are you sure you don't want some mush? We've lard to fry in from the barrows Pa slaughtered last fall."

"I'll kill a deer for you," I promised her, "in payment for these clothes."

"That'll be nice." The black thorn was back between her teeth. I drew my bow, reflecting that it had been all I could do to bring an arrow near my ear the day before. Talking to myself, I said, "A short arrow at that."

"Hmmm?" Ulfa looked up from her work.

"In my quiver. Two arrows I made for myself from spiny orange, and two I 64.took from a boy I fought."

"One of the boys with him had splendid clothes," she confided. "I got as close as I could to look. Red pants, I swear by Ga.r.s.ecg's gullet!"

"That was Svon. What about the other boy?"

"Him? Oh, he was ordinary enough," Ulfa said. "About like my brother, but might be good-looking in a year or two."

"Didn't he have a bow like mine?"

"Bigger'n yours, sir." She had finished cutting her cloth and begun to sew, making long st.i.tches with a big bone needle. "Too big for him was the look of it. Brother had one too, only it's broke. Pa says when a bow's not strung it oughta be bigger than the man that carries it, and most is smaller of what I've seen. Like foois is, sir."

'"I need longer arrows," I told her. "Does your Pa have a rule for arrows, too?" Still plying her needle, she shook her head.

"In that case I'll give you one I just made. An arrow ought to reach from the end of the owner's left forefinger to his right ear. Mine are far shy of that."

"You'll have to find new ones."

"I'll have to make new ones, and I will. What if I were to tell you I was the boy with the big bow?"

The needle stopped in mid stab, and Ulfa looked up at me. "You, sir?" I nodded.

She laughed. "That boy that was here yesterday? I could've shut my hand "round his arm, almost. I doubt I could get both 'round yours, sir." Pushing the trousers she had been making for me to one side, she rose. "Can I try?"