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words.
    A great groan escaped Alanna. “I am alone!” Alone for all mortal time. And now, despite all training and practice, tears dimmed her sight. The homely curved bower-wall faded, melted, and dribbled down before her eyes.
    â€œNot so, dear. You have Ivie with you.”
    Mortified, Alanna wiped her eyes on her patched gown. “Hah!” Ivie, indeed! “Without Percy—”
    â€œYou have me.”
    â€œYou, Sir Edik?”
    â€œGladly would I stay beside you forever, even here in this bower, though I like not to sleep two nights in the same den.”
    She stared into his small, brown face; his steadfast, mild gaze. “You…”
    â€œYou know I love you.”
    Well, surely you do!
    Alanna had always known that. It was easier not to know it, better to forget it. But underneath, in her secret heart, she had known it since…
    He told her. “I have loved you since Sir Ogden brought you home as his bride.”
    I remember. Too well I remember! (Smoky torches; stamping, blowing horses; Sir Ogden’s gloved hand hard on her horse’s rein; and Edik’s face—small and brown as now—at her knee. He gave her a long glance before he bowed.)— I knew it even then.
    â€œBut…You dance with the Fey to the Flowering Moon.”
    (Flowering Moon times, Alanna closed herself and Percy in the bower, and young Ivie. But Ivie had been missing, lately. Alanna and Percy now huddled alone, listening to three threatening drums throb from three directions, and the occasional shriek of a pipe.
    â€œI have seen you on your way to dance!” (Once she had met him on a narrow trail. He was hurrying toward the Flowering Moon drum as she hurried away from it. She had been grieved and shocked to see him decked out like an amorous Fey in crisp, new-stolen shirt, and flowers flopping in his gray curls. Safe inside, she had murmured to Percy, “I thought Sir Edik was Christian, and our friend. But he dances to the Moon.” Sullenly, Percy had murmured, “He always did. You didn’t want to know it.”)
    Now, patiently, Sir Edik asked her, “Do you wish me not to dance because you do not?”
    Ah! We can quarrel a bit. Forget this other matter… “By now, you must have lain with every woman in the forest!”
    â€œAlas, no.”
    Alanna blushed hot.
    â€œBut if I had, what of it? I do not love every woman in the forest. I love you. I love you as I did when you were Percy’s age, working with your women in Sir Ogden’s castle garden. Alanna, you were a woman, then. You bore Sir Ogden’s first son in your body. Now Percy is a man. But you will not let him go forward into manhood.”
    Alanna bowed her head down, not to meet Sir Edik’s reproachful brown gaze.
    â€œNow, in the way of nature, take me into your bower. Let Percy go. Alanna, if the Lady of the Lake, a heartless Fey, will let him go, surely your mother’s heart must do the same! For he must go, or the life in him will die like an unhatched bird.”
    â€œSir Edik, if Percy goes away from me, my heart will break in two.” Alanna folded protective hands over it.
    â€œMy dear, you think that love breaks your heart.” Sir Edik’s hand stole onto Alanna’s knee. She sat bowed, looking down at this small, brown hand. “It is not love, but fear. You think of yourself being alone, and fear burns your heart and ribs.”
    â€œIf I did not see Percy coming to me…” She imagined him bumbling toward her across her small clearing, swinging a hare for the fire. Like her dead husband he strode, strong and direct, caring not a pinecone that his footfalls echoed in earth. (Not like the maddening little Fey, flitting about like ghosts!) His broad shoulders were thrown back. His golden hair—Sir Ogden’s hair, before it grayed—flamed sunshine. True, a cloud lay across his dear face, which should look fresh, honest, and open.