It was not that they cursed him. They had been affectionate in their pleading, their wish that he too take the gift of an immortal soul. It was not even that they were utterly changed, flesh once delightful now housing an alienness greater than that which sun-dered him from the tribe of Adam. It was that-he thought, some-where in his staggering mind-that they were carriers of doom. In them was the future, which held no room for Faerie. When he sprinted, he did not only seek to work out some of the despair wherein his quest had ended. He fled the unseen, while stars looked down and hissed, “There he is, there he goes, that’s his track to follow.”
The breath heaved raw in his throat before he found shelter.
This was below an oak, for it spread darkness and upheld mistletoe. At last he moved on into the wilderness, toward the lake he could sense afar. He would bathe in yon waters, fill his lungs with their cleanliness, maybe catch a fish and devour it raw like a seal or a killer whale. Thus he would regain strength for returning to the castle and whatever was going to happen there.
Trees gloomed, underbrush entangled a heavier murk, on either side of the game trail he took. Moonlight filtered in streaks through the crowns, to glimmer off vapors which streamed or eddied low above the earth. It was a touch warmer here than out in the open, damp, smelling of growth a-drowse. Rustlings went faint, a breeze, an owl ghosting by, the scutter of tiny feet. Once a wildcat squalled, remotely, noise blurred into music by all the leaves around.
A measure of peace lifted within Tauno. Here was a remnanl of his world, the wildworld, which lived wholly within itself. loved, slew, begot, suffered, died, was born, knew delirious mag-ics but never would probe and tame the mysteries behind them nor peer into a stark eternity. Here were spoor of Faerie. . . the spirit bone brought names into his awareness, as if he had always known them. . . Leshy, Kikimora, also flitting restless, shy of him but—
But what else was it he winded? No, he caught this one sen-sation otherwise, in his blood, part fear and part unutterable yearn-ing. His pulse thuttered, he quickened his footsteps.
The trail swung around a canebrake, and they met.
For a time outside of time, both halted. In their sight, where
a human would have been well-nigh blind, each stood forth white I against enclosing many-layered shadows, as if having risen from the fog that smoked about their feet. She was much the paler; it was as though the fugitive moonlight streamed through thinly carved alabaster, save that when she did move it was like a ripple across water. Very fair she was in her nakedness, with the slim, unscarred curves of waist, thighs, breasts which bespoke a maiden, with delicately carven face and enormous, luminous eyes. Her hair made a cloud about her, afloat on the air. She had no color except the faintest flushes of blue and rose, as upon snow beneath a false dawn.
“Oh,” she whispered. Terror snatched her. “Oh, but I mustn’t!
And for his part, recalling what he had heard that day, and
earlier from his father, he shouted, “Rausa/ka!” and whipped out his knife. Hc darcd not turn his back.
She vanished behind the underbrush. He stood tensed and snarl-ing, until he decided she was gone and sheathed the blade. The intimations of her drifted everywhere around, maddeningly gentle, fresh, girlish, but he knew little of such beings; their traces might well linger. . . .
Would they?
Why, he had the talisman to ask. He need but ease himself,
think in Hrvatskan about what he had seen, and let knowledge flow upward. Muscle by muscle, he summoned calm, until he could know and could call: “Vilja. Stay. Please.”
She peered around the brake; he barely glimpsed an eye, the gleam of a cheek, the delicacy of an elbow. “Are you Christian?” she fluted timidly. “I’m forbidden to come near Christians.”
So she was no menace; she was merely beautiful. “I’m nOt even a mortal man,” said Tauno against a rattle of laughter.