But who was that second creature?
Aron returned quickly to his cottage and, first thing,
checked Petal’s room. He saw, to his relief, that she was
indeed there, curled up in her bed. So he went to bed
himself and slept more peacefully than he had in a long
time.
The next morning he awoke and went directly to his
loom, waiting for Petal to rise and make him some
breakfast. But she slept late that morning. Finally, his
stomach rumbling, Aron called out, “Petal! Come on! Make
your old father some breakfast.”
She didn’t answer.
Perhaps she knows what I did and is being spiteful,
thought Aron. “Come on, girl! Up!”
She didn’t answer.
Aron went to her room and found her still lying in her
bed, curled up. Naturally, there were no puddles this
morning, a fact that gave Aron much satisfaction.
“Up, my girl!” he called, walking over to her and
brashly pulling away the covers.
His eyes nearly popped out of his head. It was not Petal at
all but pillows set up to mimic her form.
Without a moment’s hesitation, Aron dashed from the
room, grabbed one of Petal’s large gardening shovels, and
ran to the dried pond.
When he got there, he saw what, in his eagerness, he
had missed the night before: his daughter’s gown, lying
rumpled on the bank. He immediately stepped into the mud
to get to the center, but the farther he went, the deeper his
legs went into the mud. At one point the mud came nearly
up to his knees, and he could hardly walk. But he pressed
on, thinking only of his darling Petal lying buried in the
mud.
Then, as he neared the center of the pond, Aron noticed
something odd. There, right where he meant to dig, was a
tiny green plant shoot. Or rather two tiny green plant shoots.
They were entwined delicately about each other. And before
Aron could pull his right leg from the mud, those two green
shoots, right before his eyes, began to grow.
In a matter of moments, they transformed into long,
elegant tree saplings, both still entwined about each other.
But they didn’t stop there.
They continued to grow toward the sun, their trunks
thickening as they grew. And as they did so, they encircled
each other. They put out ever more branches, tiny leaves,
and even some reddish fruit that hung in clusters.
Soon, what had been two delicate shoots only moments
before were now two sturdy trees in full-grown glory, their
thick, nearly merged trunks coiled around each other, their
roots bulging from the mud, their lofty crowns meshed and
arching over the entire width of what had been the pond.
Aron pulled himself out of the mud by one of the roots.
He gazed at the two entwining trunks and at the leaves
overhead, which now filtered out the sun. “Petal,” he
whimpered, “forgive me. I believed my love was enough.”
And there, in the shade of the two trees, Aron Dewweb
sat and wept. By the time the sun had set and the moon had
risen, sending its sprinkles of silver light through the two
trees’ crowns, Aron died of a broken heart, and little green
leaves fell gently to cover him. . . .
So ended Barryn Warrex’s tale.
When Aril Witherwind looked up from his book, he
detected in one of the old man’s eyes a solitary tear. The
half-elf himself sighed from sadness and had to brush away
from his page a teardrop or two that threatened to make his
ink run. “Well, I must say, that is not a story I expected
from a knight,” he said.
Barryn Warrex stirred, his eyes and ears once more
seeing and hearing what was before him. And when he
spoke, it was once more with his own deep but tired voice.
“I warned you,” he said. “It is what has been in my heart.”
With a creaking of his armor and bones, he slowly rose to
his feet.
“Well, now it’s in my book, as well,” said the half-elf,
blotting the page and shaking off his own sadness. “But as
to the title. How about, ‘A Tale of Eternal Love’? – no, no,