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Still, the imagined sight of him raised heart and head till Alanna looked Sir Edik in the eye again.
    He was saying, “Fear rules you, Alanna. Love would bid you send Percy forth to be a man. Give him the tools, give him the knowledge he will need and let him go.”
    â€œBut…” Aha! “I have no tools to give him.”
    Sir Edik’s brown eyes rose slightly to the shelf he had built over her doorway. Sir Ogden’s rusted sword lay there, pushed back and shrouded. Hidden.
    Alanna almost gloated. “One sword…one dull old sword he has never seen or touched, let alone learned…Sir Edik, your wits have taken leave of you. You would have me send my only living child away into that terrible world with nothing but an old sword…”
    But lo! Over Sir Edik’s shoulder, through a rent in the deerskin curtain, Alanna saw Percy enter the clearing. He came brighter, sturdier, happier, than she had just imagined him. The cloud of sullen misery had lifted from his face.
    He had not gone yet. She still had this one chance.
    With a cry she sprang up, started forward, stumbled over Sir Edik, and fell into his lap.
    He tried to hold her.
    She struggled and flailed. She rolled away and up and out the door to Percy.
    ***
    Once when we were young, Percy tried to show me that Alanna’s Goddess Mary was harmless.
    He said, “Stand right here.” And he set me firmly before Her. “Get used to Her. You’ll see She’s just wood.”
    I knew She was wood! But I also saw the blue cloud of Her aura flame toward me, that aura Percy never saw.
    He had to hold on to my hand to keep me there. That first moment I was gut-anxious. Next, my hair started to rise. Shudders scrambled up and down me. My heart began to pound like a Flowering Moon drum. I tore my hand from Percy’s and ran. I did not see Percy again for many days.
    A foolishly well-worn trail leads straight up from West River to Alanna’s bower. As you enter the clearing you feel Mary’s Power. You stop and look about, and then you see Mary.
    She stands under Her own bower, which looks like a Fey-built shelter; except that it stands clear and visible and isolated as the Counsel Oak King Tree.
    Mary Herself is my size, and mostly gray; though traces of blue and red color cling to Her gown. A tiny man stands upright on Her left palm. He wears a long robe and a rayed reed sunhat, such as Humans wear when haying. His face is sad and severe. Percy says that He is Mary’s “Babe.”
    Mary’s right hand stretches out toward you. Percy says it offers you protection and comfort. I feel it seeks to grab me and make me as small as Her Son. Then I could stand on Her right palm forever, a stiff warning to passing Fey.
    Mary’s face is grim as Alanna’s. She wears a tall, pointed crown because, Percy says, She is Queen of Heaven. Her figure and hair are lost in heavy, draping robes.
    If Mary’s Babe is a severe man She holds on one hand, what must Mary be, Herself?
    Spirit lives in Her. Her blue aura drifts about Her, undimmed by sunshine. It says She is more than alive. Fey who do not see auras at all can still feel the presence of this one. Come close to Mary, and you feel someone breathing. Stand before Her and Her empty wooden eyes look at you. Step right or left, and they seem to follow you.
    Seeing all this, if you are Fey, you turn back. We call the clearing “Mary’s Clearing.”
    No one wants to pass anywhere near Mary. I have never seen fairies, ghosts, or any kind of spirit near Mary but Her own blue aura. And I have spent much time, over the years, spying from this high yew on the edge of Her clearing!
    Right now as I look down at Her, Mary’s aura prickles and turns toward me, watches me. Even “safe” and high in my yew tree, I shiver.
    Animals and Humans do not fear Mary. Right now, sparrows are building a nest in Her thatched roof. Several times a day Ivie comes by