Eyjan was silent.
“What are your plans?” he inquired.
Unhappiness freighted her words: “I know not, the less when
Tauno keeps apart from me. We promised our Danish friends we’ll rejoin them when we’re able. Thereafter-Greenland?”
“No fit place for you, who have seen far better.” Andrei hes-itated. “Luka Subitj would be a forbearing husband.”
Eyjan grew taut. “I’ll never wear the bonds they lay on women here!”
“Aye, you’d be freer in Denmark, and I like what you’ve told me of that Niels Jonsen. Get christened, wed him, be joyous.”
“Christened. Become. . . your sort?”
“Yes, age and die in a handful of years, and meanwhile live
chaste and pious. But you will live in the blessing of God, and afterward in His very presence. Not until you’ve taken this bargain Christ offers, can you know how measurelessly generous it is.”
With eyes as well as tongue, Andrei pursued: “I understand. You dread the loss of your wild liberty, you think you’d liefer cease to be. I give you my oath-not by the Most High: not yet-by the love I bore for your mother and bear for you, Eyjan Ag-netesdatter, I swear that in humanness you will win release. It will be like coming alone out of winter night into a fire lit room where those whom you hold dearest are feasting.”
“And where I see no more stars, feel no more wind,” she protested.
“Faerie has had its splendors,” he replied. “But are you not wisest to give them up while they are in some part as you’ve known them? Dh, Eyjan, child, spare yourself the anguish of , ~eeing the halfworld go d~wn. in. wreck an~ feel.ing ~at same ruin In your o,,:~ breast. For It WIll Indeed pensh, It will. What hap- pened to Lm was but a foretaste of what must happen to all Faene. Magic is dying out of Creation. A sage man showed me that, and I’d fain show you it, though each word scourges me too, if you’ll stay here till I must return to the fleet.
“Do what is kindest, to those who care for you as well as yourself. Lea~e Faerie where you can find no happiness, what-ever you do, wherever you range. Accept the divine love of Christ, the honest love of Niels and of the children you bear him; and one day we will all meet again in Heaven.”
His tone sank, he stared beyond h~r and every wall. “Agnete also,” he ended.
How much like Tauno he is, she thought
In summer, when trees gave shade against the sun, a vilja could move about by day. Nada danced through the forest in a swirl of tossing hair. Among shrubs she dodged, overleaped logs, sprang on high to grab a bough and swing from it for a moment before she sped onward. Her laughter chimed, “Come, come along, slug-gard!” Her slenderness vanished into the green. Tauno stopped to pant and squint around after tracks of her. Suddenly her palms’ clapped over his eyes from behind, she kissed him between the shoulderblades, and was off again. Cooiethough her touch had been, it burned a long while in his awareness. He blundered on. Unseen, she sent breezes to fan him.
At last he could go no more. At a dark-brown, moss-lined pool he halted. Trees crowded around, huge oak, slim beech, murky juniper. They roofed off the sky, they made a verdant dusk be-speckled with sunflecks. Butterflies winged between them. It was warm here, the air heavy with odors of ripeness. A squirrel chat-tered and streaked aloft, then he was gone and the mighty silence of summer brooded anew.
“Hallo-o!” Tauno shouted. “You’ve galloped the breath out of me. “ Leafy arches swallowed up his cry. He wiped off the sweat that stung his eyes and salted his lips, cast himself belly down, and drank. The pool was cold, iron-tinged.
He heard a giggle. “You have a shapely bottom,” Nada called. He rolled over and saw her perched on a limb above him, kicking her legs to and fro. They would catch a beam of light, which made them blaze gold, then return to being white in the shadows.
“Come here if you dare and I’ll paddle yours for that,” he challenged.