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his chair. "Will you tell it to me?"
    "Sure!"
    Brynn's half-smile made him ache to reach out and take her into his arms. She was so young, so innocent, and yet whenever she smiled he saw behind her beautiful face the intelligence that had made him first fall in love with her. She settled back and her voice took on a deeper tone.
    "Orpheus was half-man, half-god."
    "Isn't this supposed to start out with 'Once upon a time?'" Eliot asked.
    "This isn't a fairy tale," Brynn said. "It's a legend. Now don't interrupt the story."
    Eliot grinned.
    "Sorry."
    Brynn continued, her face becoming more animated as she went on.
    "Orpheus could play music like no other, and animals would flock around him whenever he played his lyre. He enchanted Eurydice with his playing, and she fell in love with him. Remind you of anyone?" The teasing look on Brynn's face twisted his heart. It was so good to see her in a joking mood.
    "Are you saying I enchanted you?" he asked.
    "Maybe. But this story doesn't end happily. Just after their wedding, Eurydice was bitten by a snake, and died instantly," she said.
    "That is a tragedy. He must have been heartbroken."
    "More than that. He traveled to the underworld, the land of the dead, to get her back." Brynn's voice dropped into a lower register as she spoke.
    "To bring her back from the dead?"
    "Yes. He played a song lamenting her death and Hades, the god of the underworld, was moved by his music so much that he let Eurydice go. On one condition."
    "There's always a catch," Eliot said.
    "This one wasn't so bad. He told Orpheus that he must lead Eurydice back up to the world of the living, but that he could not look back at her until they were both out of the underworld. If he looked back, she would be gone forever."
    "I can imagine what comes next," Eliot said.
    "Can you?" Brynn asked, her eyes wide, lost in the story. "Can you imagine walking through a dark tunnel for hours, tormented souls wailing at every turn? Your lover is supposed to be following you, but is she really there? Has she really come back with you? He would have done the impossible, brought the dead back to life, if he had only walked bravely out of the underworld into the light without looking back."
    "But he didn't," Eliot said
    "He didn't." Brynn's voice swelled into the tone of a storyteller, her hands moving in the air dramatically to demonstrate the action. "At the last moment, as he stepped out of the underworld into the light of day, he spun around to see his beloved. But she was just inside the tunnel. He reached out to grasp her hand, and she vanished in his arms. He heard the ghost of a voice calling Farewell and nothing else. Hades would not let him return to the underworld a second time."
    "The end?" Eliot asked.
    "The end," Brynn said.
    "It was his own fault," Eliot said, crossing his arms.
    "You think so?"
    "If he had trusted her, if he hadn't been so impatient, it might have been a happy ending. Wouldn't it?"
    "Would you have been able to keep yourself from looking back?" Brynn asked.
    Instantly Eliot saw Clare's face in his mind, and he winced in pain. Brynn saw and the realization on her face made him wish that he was better at hiding his emotion. She should not have to think about his dead wife, no matter how much it clouded his own mind.
    "I'm sorry," Brynn said.
    "No, don't. It's not—"
    "It's just a story," Brynn said, closing the book.
    "A legend ," Eliot corrected solemnly. Brynn smiled at his didactic tone, and he squeezed her hand, trying to fix the connection between them that had strained at the mention of Clare.
    "It's beautiful here," Brynn said, looking out at the forest.
    "Do you want to stay?" Eliot asked before thinking.
    "With you?" Brynn asked. Her eyebrow lifted in a slight question.
    "In Hungary. Would you want to stay here?"
    "Yes! It's so pretty, and I'm really happy I have the chance to study at the Academy."
    "It's an excellent program," Eliot said, trying to hide the disappointment that had suddenly