ranger Arvid if he lays down his work?
“‘So wreak your spells, you Outling, and east your wrath on me. Though
maybe you can slay me, you’ll not make me unfree.’
“The Queen of Air and Darkness stood wrapped about with fear and
northlight flares and beauty he dared not look too near.
“Until she laughed like harpsong `
and said to him in scorn:
‘I do not need a magic
to make you always mourn.
“‘I send you home with nothing except your memory of moonlight,
Outling music, night breezes, dew and me.
“‘And that will run behind you, a shadow on the sun, and that will lie
beside you when every clay is done.
“‘In work and play and friendship your grief will strike you dumb for
thinking what you are-and-what you might have become.
“‘Your dull and foolish woman treat kindly as you can. Go home now,
ranger Arvid, set free to be a man!’
“In flickering and laughter
‘ the Outling folk were gone.
He stood alone by moonlight
and wept until the dawn.
The dance weaves under the firethorn.”
She laid the lyre aside. A wind rustled leaves. After a long quietness
Sherrinford said, “And tales of this kind are part of everyone’s life in
the outway?”
“Well, you could put it thus,” Barbro replied. “Though they’re not all
full of supernatural doings. Some are about love or heroism.
Traditional themes.”
“I don’t think your particular tradition has arisen of itself.” His tone
was bleak. “In fact, I think many of your songs and stories were not
composed by human beings.”
He snapped his lips shut and would say no more on the subject. They
went early to bed.
Hours later, an alarm roused them.
The buzzing was soft, but it brought them instantly alert. They slept
in gripsuits, to be prepared for emergencies. Sky-glow lit them through
the canopy. Sherrinford swung out of his bunk, slipped shoes on feet
and clipped gun holster to belt. “Stay inside,” he commanded.
“What’s here?” Her pulse thuttered.
He squinted at the dials of his instruments and checked them against
the luminous telltale on his wrist. “Three animals,” he counted. “Not
wild ones happening by. A large one, homeothermic, to judge from the
infrared, holding still a short ways off. Another . . . hm, low
temperature, diffuse and unstable emission, as if it were more like a . . .
a swarm of cells coordinated somehow . . . pheromonally?. . .
hovering, also at a distance. But the third’s practically next to us,
moving around in the brush; and that pattern looks human.”
She saw him quiver with eagerness, no longer seeming a professor. “I’m
going to try to make a capture,” he said. “When we have a subject for
interrogation-Stand ready to let me back in again fast. But don’t risk
yourself, whatever happens. And keep this cocked.” He handed her a
loaded big-game rifle.
His tall frame poised by the door, opened it a crack. Air blew in, cool,
damp, full of fragrances and murmurings. The moon Oliver was now
also aloft, the radiance of both unreally brilliant, and the aurora
seethed in whiteness and ice-blue.
Sherrinford peered afresh at his telltale. It must indicate the directions
of the watchers, among those dappled leaves. Abruptly he sprang out.
He sprinted past the ashes of the campfire and vanished under trees.
Barbro’s hand strained on the butt of her weapon.
Racket exploded. Two in combat burst onto the meadow. Sherrinford
had clapped a grip on a smaller human figure. She could make out by
streaming silver and rainbow flicker that the other was nude, male,
long-haired, lithe and young. He fought demoniacally, seeking to use
teeth and feet and raking nails, and meanwhile he ululated like a satan.
The identification shot through her: A changeling, stolen in babyhood
and raised by the Old Folk. This creature was what they would make
Jimmy into.
“Ha!” Sherrinford forced his opponent around and drove stiffened
fingers into the solar plexus. The boy gasped and sagged. Sherrinford
manhandled him toward the car.
Out from the woods came a giant. It might itself have been a tree,
black and rugose, bearing four great gnarly boughs; but earth