Still he went on.
And then he heard Edgewood Dirk.
It was the voice of the prism cat that slowed him, aware suddenly of how frantic his search for Willow had be come. He stopped, his breath ragged in his ears, his chest pounding. He stood within a forest glade that was cool and solitary, a mix of shadows and light, of boughs canopied overhead and moss grown thick underfoot. Dirk sat upon a knoll within that glade, prim and sleek and inscrutable.
“Why do you run so, High Lord Ben Holiday?” Dirk asked quietly.
“I must find Willow,” he replied.
“Why must you find her?” Dirk pressed.
“Because danger threatens her,” he answered.
“And is that all?”
He paused. “Because she needs me.”
“And is that all?”
“Because there is no one else.”
“And is that all?”
“Because…”
But the words he searched for would not come, as elusive as the sylph herself. There were words to be spoken, he sensed. What were those words?
“You work so hard to orchestrate your life,” Dirk declared almost sadly. “You work so hard to fit all the pieces together, a vast puzzle you must master. But you fail to understand the reason for your need to do so. Life is not simply form, High Lord; life is feeling, too.”
“I feel,” he said.
“You govern,” Dirk corrected. “You govern your kingdom, your subjects, your work, and your life. You organize here as you once organized there. You command. You command as King as you commanded as lawyer. Court-of-law stagecraft or royal-court politics — you are no different now than you were then. You act and you react with quickness and skill. But you do not feel.”
“I try.”
“The heart of the magic lies in feeling, High Lord. Life is born of feeling, and the magic is born of life. How can you understand either life or magic if you do not feel? You search for Willow, but how can you recognize her when you fail to understand what she is? You search with your eyes for something they cannot see. You search with your senses and your body for what they cannot find. You must search instead with your heart. Try now. Try, and tell me what you see.”
He did, but there was a darkness all about him that would not let him see. He drew deep inside himself and found passages through which he could not travel. Obstructions blocked his way, shapeless things that lacked clear definition. He tried furiously to push past them, groping, reaching…
Then Willow was before him, a misty vision suddenly remembered. She was lithe and quicksilver as she passed, her face stunning in its beauty, her body a whisper of his need. Forest green hair tumbled down about her slender shoulders and fell to her waist. White silk draped and clung like a second skin. Her eyes met his, and he found his breath drawn from him with a sharpness that hurt. She smiled, warm and tender, and her whisper was soundless in his mind. There was no danger that threatened her, no sense of urgency about her. She was at peace with herself. She was at rest.
“Why do you run so, High Lord Ben Holiday?” Dirk repeated from somewhere within the shadows.
“I must find Willow,” he answered again.
“Why must you find her?”
“Because…”
Again, he could not find the words. The shadows began to tighten. Willow began to fade back into them.
“Because…”
She faded further, a memory disappearing. He struggled frantically to find the words he needed to say, but they eluded him still. The sense of urgency returned, quick and hard. The danger to the sylph became real once more, as if somehow resurrected by his indecision. He tried to reach out to her with his hands, but she was too far away, and he was too rooted in place.
“Because…”
The shadows were all about, cloaking him now in their blackness, smothering him in their endless dark. He was drawing back out of himself. Dirk was gone. Willow was little more than a patch of light and color against the black, fading, fading…
“Because…”
Willow!
He came awake with a start, jerking upright from his place of rest, his underarms and back damp with sweat. Night shrouded the eastern wastelands in silence. Clouds masked the skies, though the rain had ceased to fall. Ben’s companions slept undisturbed all about him — all except Bunion. Bunion was already gone, his search for Willow begun.