Ben shook his head quickly. “Willow, I cannot ask for…”
“You are the High Lord, and your request cannot be refused.” She hushed him, a finger resting on his lips. “I am but one of my father’s many children, one whose mother will not even live with the man she lay with to give me birth, one whose favor in her father’s eyes varies with his moods. But you must ask for me, Ben.”
Annie’s face flashed in his mind, a counterpoint to the fire that this girl kindled within his body. “I can’t do that.”
“You do not understand the magic of the fairy people, Ben. I see that in your eyes; I hear it in your voice. But Landover is the heart of that magic, and you must accept what that means.”
She released his hand and stepped softly away. “I must go now. I must nourish in the soil that my mother has graced. Leave me, Ben. Go back through the forest; the way will open up to you.”
“No, wait. Willow…”
“Ask for me, Ben. My father must give me up.” Her delicate face lifted to the colored streamers of moonlight that bathed the clearing. “Oh, Ben, it is as if my mother were all about me, wrapping me close, drawing me to her. I can feel her still. The essence of her reaches to me from the soil. This night I can be with her. Leave now, Ben. Hurry away.”
But he stood rooted before her, stubbornly refusing to do as she asked. Why was she insisting that she belonged to him? Why couldn’t she see that what she was seeking was impossible?
She spun in the clearing’s center, beautiful, sensuous, delicate. He wanted her so badly in that instant that tears came to his eyes.
“Willow!” he cried out, starting forward.
She came out of her spin and faced him, feet planted firmly in the clearing’s earth, arms raised skyward, face lifted. Ben stopped. A sudden radiance began to emanate from the sylph, the same radiance that her mother had given off while dancing. Willow shimmered, turned transparent in the light and began to swell and distort. Ben shielded his eyes, dropping to one knee in shock. Willow was changing before him, turning into something different entirely, arms and legs darkening and turning gnarled, sweeping outward like a canopy, splitting and lengthening…
He blinked, and Willow was gone. A tree had taken her place. It was the tree from which she took her name. She had become that tree.
Ben stared. He felt a wave of shock and repulsion wash through him. He fought to deny it, but it would not give way. She had said she would nourish in the soil. She had said she could feel her mother reaching up to her. My God, what manner of being was she?
He waited for the answer to come to him, a solitary figure in the mist and shadows of the forest. He waited, but the answer would not come.
He might have waited there all night if Bunion had not appeared, stepping suddenly from the trees to take his arm and lead him away like a disobedient child. He went with the kobold without argument, too stunned to do anything else. Conflicting emotions raged through him, battering him. Willow was so beautiful and vibrant, and the need for her within him was impossibly strong. Yet at the same time he was repulsed by her, a creature who gave every appearance of being amorphous, who could become a tree as easily as a human.
He did not look back as he left the clearing; he could not bear to. He was too ashamed of what he was feeling. He pushed his way through the ancient pines, trailing after Bunion in silence. The kobold must have followed after him, he realized. Questor or Abernathy must have sent him. They were taking no chances after his disappearance at the Irrylyn.
He wished suddenly that they had not found him that night. He wished that he had disappeared. He wished a thousand other things that might have happened and now never would.
The journey back was a short one. The others were waiting for him at the cottage, anxious looks on their faces. They sat him down and gathered around him.