distract me?”
“I could try.” The king tilted his head back in pain as he
inhaled, and sang in a quavering voice:
“FOR EVERY WRAITH WHO BREAKS HIS FAITH
MUST WANDER WITHOUT CEASE
AND, COLD, PERFORM WHAT HE DID, WARM,
AND NEVER REST IN PEACE.
He coughed, and a hairline of blood ran from the corner
of his mouth. The stag, looking up through filmy eyes, took
up the song for him:
SO, EVERY NIGHT THE STAG BETRAYS
THE LOVE HE COULD NOT KEEP
AND KING AND HOST DESERT THEIR POST
TO HUNT AND NEVER SLEEP.
They finished, singing together. It took them a long
time, since one or the other often stopped to gasp for air,
and it seemed important to them that they finish as one:
AND SO THEY SHALL BETRAY AND HUNT,
UNTIL THE DAY THEY SHOW
THAT THEY SOMEHOW FULFILL THE VOW
THEY BROKE SO LONG AGO.”
Done, they collapsed against each other. “Not a bad
song, really,” the king said. “Needs a little tightening here
and there, perhaps, fewer cousin-rhymes, but at least it’s
something of us left behind.”
“True. Many have died with less fame and with worse
poetry.” The stag’s antlers shuddered painfully back into
place. The stag, eyes upward, lay his head on the king’s lap
and stared at the draconian. “Who would have thought that I
should be hunted by such as this? Or that you should hunt
them?”
The king’s voice was low and halting. “True. They are
vile, and we were proud. But for once, we both have died
for something besides ourselves. And when you have been
dead as long as I – ” he wavered, and said in a last breath –
“a little variety in one’s chosen way of dying is not such a
bad thing.”
And as the stag joined the king in final death, he
thought sleepily that after a thousand years of nightly
betrayal, transformation, pursuit by the dead, painful death
and more painful rebirth, almost any change was pleasant.
He cradled his head against King Peris’s stomach, and the
two accepted death as, long ago, it had accepted them.
No one but Time removed the bodies; eventually they
disappeared. The stone draconians became overgrown and
powdered under the pressure of weather and vines; time’s
best warriors. Only the one draconian, wearing an ancient
crown and scarred on its breast with a cloven hoof, remains.
For reasons no one living knows, it does not crumble. Go to
the wood, no longer called Darken, and you may see it yet.
Once, not long ago, the Forestmaster came into the glade
and stood before the single draconian. The crown was
tarnished, the sword rusted; only the hoof-print was still
sharp and clear. The Forestmaster stared at the print, then
looked thoughtfully around the glade. There was not so
much as a mound to show that anyone had died here, and
even the memory of the draconians was fading from those
who lived in Shadow Wood.
The unicorn tipped her head up and quietly sang two
stanzas she had heard recently, added onto a very old
ballad:
“THE SHADOWS IN THE WOODS ARE PLAIN
AND MINGLE NOW WITH LIGHT;
THEY FLOW AND PLAY WITH SUN BY DAY
AND DANCE WITH MOON BY NIGHT.
FROM DARKEN WOOD HAS SHADOW WOOD
BEEN GRANTED ITS RELEASE,
THOSE WHO WERE KILLED IN VOWS FULFILLED
HAVE THERE BEEN GRANTED PEACE.”
She strode to the edge of the woods and thrust her horn
in among the vines, circling it quickly. Walking back to the
statue, she lifted her horn to the stone and slid a floral
wreath onto it. It slid down too far; she moved parallel to
the sword and adjusted it. For a moment, sword and horn
both pointed to the north star, faintly visible in the
darkening sky.
She stepped back. “Sleep well, beloved” She turned and
was gone.
The wreath of Paladine’s Tears stayed fresh a long time.
Hide and Go Seek
Nancy Varian Berberick
For a long time Keli did not know where he was.
Sometimes he smelled the forest and the river, sometimes
only dirt and rocks. Once the boy thought he heard thunder
rumbling far, far away. Then, on the tenuous bridge