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that she wasn't going to be
a beautiful maiden anyway. She was a plain little thing, scrawny and a
bit dirty, with clothes that were too small for her. It gradually dawned on
Seylin that he was enjoying her company because she reminded him of Emily. This
depressed him, and he remembered that he hadn't had any sleep.
    "I need to leave now," he
said. The little girl looked crushed.
    "Don't leave," she implored
him. "I can't bear to say good-bye. You
haven't told me anything about your enchantment yet, or what it's like
to be a cat. I still don't know if you eat mice, and I don't know how to find your kingdom. I don't know why you put
a curse on your, self, and why your
eyes would hurt if you didn't. You can't just go!"
    Seylin was tired from walking night
after night, and he hadn't met any other human who seemed to care for magic.
Perhaps this little girl could help him, or
perhaps her father could. He would rest up for a day or two. He'd
probably have to walk for months yet.
    "I really
do need to leave," he said, "but maybe you'll see me again. Don't tell anyone about me, or I won't be able to
come back."
    "Oh, I won't," she promised
solemnly. "Just like the lovely golden-haired princess who couldn't speak,
and the witch smeared blood on her face, and
her husband the king came and said, 'Where's our baby?' and she couldn't
say a single solitary word."
    "Something like that,"
agreed Seylin. What little he'd learned about
the local human kings had sounded rather grim, but he'd had no idea that their lives involved so many strange,
magical misadventures.
    That night, Seylin came down to the
house in order to look through the windows. He had been taught to shun human
magic as evil, but the little girl's stories
didn't seem evil. Perhaps her father was like the goblin scholars, a man
who knew all about the history of human magic without actually practicing it
himself Such a scholar of magic would
surely have some idea whether or not elves lived in the area.
    But Seylin found his investigations
very disappointing. The dilapidated house was a mess inside, and Jane's father
didn't appear to be either handsome or
wise. He sat at a dirty table, unwashed and unshaved, his clothes
rumpled and threadbare, drinking one mug of beer after another until his
unhappy face took on a dreamy, stupid look. Seylin watched him for a long time,
remembering Jane's odd stories. One thing,
at least, was clear to him now: heartache was not the disease keeping
this human in bed in the morning.
    The
next day, Seylin studied the whole area before coming out of the
forest. He saw no one stirring, however, except the little girl herself She
was thrilled to see him again and asked scores of questions. Some Seylin
answered, but many others he didn't. He refused to tell her any, thing
about his kingdom or his King. He did tell her, however, that he was
looking for elves. Jane was very interested in this, but, unfortu nately, she didn't
know where any might be.
    "Why do you have to look for
them?" she asked. "Don't you know where they live?"
    "Not
anymore," Seylin answered. "I hope I can find some of the ones
who moved away during the elf harrowing. That was the last war with the
goblins," he explained.
    "Goblins?"
asked Jane eagerly. "Do you know any stories about goblins?
Tell me a story about an elf and a goblin."
    Seylin loved
history and knew dozens of stories. He thought for a
minute or two.
    "Here's something that happened
during the reign of Marak Redeye and Aganir
Immir, the elf King named Storm Wind," he said. "One night,
the young sister of a great elf lord, the lord of the Third Belt Star Camp, went
out with her maidens to dance beneath the moon. She loved more than anything in
the world to dance, and she wanted to go to a certain hill where she could
dance so high above the quiet forest that
she felt as if she were in the sky itself. But the goblins had watched
this camp, and they knew her habit. When she and her maidens were far from
home, they