Ben gripped her hand. “I’ll do better than that. I’ll send them both. Questor will keep Mistaya in line, and Abernathy will counsel Questor against any rash use of his magic. And I’ll send an escort of King’s Guards to keep them all safe.”
Willow pressed herself against him wordlessly, and Ben hugged her back. They stood holding each other in the midday sunlight. “I have to tell you that I don’t like letting her go,” Ben murmured finally.
“Nor I,” Willow whispered back. He could feel her heart beat against his chest. “I spoke with Mistaya earlier. I asked her what she was doing on the wall, staring down at Rydall.” She paused. “Mistaya said that she knows him.”
Ben stiffened. “Knows him?”
“I asked her how, but she said she wasn’t sure.” Willow shook her head. “I think she was as confused as we are.”
They were quiet then, still holding each other, staring off into the gardens, listening to the sounds of the insects and the birds against the more distant backdrop of the castle’s bustle. A connection between Mistaya and Rydall? Ben felt something cold settle into the pit of his stomach.
“We’ll send her away at first light,” he whispered, and felt Willow’s arms tighten about him in response.
Haltwhistle
Mistaya’s parents told her that evening that they had decided she should visit her grandfather in the lake country and would be leaving in the morning. In typically straightforward fashion she asked if anything was wrong, and they said no. But the way they said it told her there most definitely was.
Still, she was astute enough in the ways of parents to know better than to contradict them by asking what it was—even though she was quite certain it had something to do with the man who had come to the gates that morning—and she was content to let the matter lie until she could speak to one or the other of them alone. It would be her mother most likely, because her mother was more honest with her than her father was. It wasn’t that her father wanted to deceive her. It was that he persisted in viewing her as a child and sought continually to protect her from what he considered life’s harsh realities. It was an annoying habit, but Mistaya tolerated it as best she could. Her father had trouble understanding her in any event, certainly more than her mother did. He measured her against a standard with which she was not familiar, a standard conceived and developed in his old world, the world called Earth, where magic was practically unheard of and fairy creatures were considered a myth. He loved her, of course, and he would do anything for her. But love and understanding did not necessarily go hand in hand in real life, and such was the case here.
Her father was not alone in his puzzlement. Most of those who lived in the castle found her a bit odd for one reason or another. She had been aware of it almost from the beginning, but it did not bother her. Her confidence and self-reliance were such that what others thought mattered almost not at all. Her mother was comfortable with her, and her father, if bewildered, was supportive. Abernathy let her do things to him that would have cost another child a quick trip to its room for prolonged consideration of what good manners entailed. Bunion and Parsnip were as odd as she, all ears and teeth and bristly hair, chittering their mysterious language that they thought she couldn’t really understand when, of course, she could.
Best of all, there was Questor Thews. She loved that old man the way a child does a special grandparent or a favorite aunt or uncle, the two of them mysteriously linked as if born into the world with a shared view of life. Questor never talked down to her. He never begrudged her a question or opinion. He listened when she talked and answered her right back. He was distracted, and he fumbled a bit when showing her his magic, but that seemed to make him all the more endearing. She sensed that Questor truly found her to be a wondrous person—a person, not a child—and that he believed she was capable of anything. Oh, he chided and corrected her now and then, but he did it in such a way that she was never offended; she was touched by his concern. He lacked her mother’s fierce love and her father’s iron determination and probably their sense of commitment to her as well, but he made up for it with his friendship, the kind you find only rarely in life.
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