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his need for heirs, will not be checked by the mage’s blanched and barren offering. He is, I fear, of a lustier mind.
    And I? I am no one, a singer of songs, a teller of tales. But I am the one to be wary of, for I remake the past and call it truth. I leave others to the rote of history, which is dry, dull, and unbelievable. Who is to say which mouth’s outpourings will lift the soul higher—that which is or that which could be? Did it really flood, or did Noah have a fine storymaker living in his house? I care not either way. It is enough for me to sing.
    But stay. It is my turn on the boards. Watch. I stride to the room’s center, where the song’s echo will linger longest. I lift my hands toward the young king, toward the old mage, toward the gwynhfar swaddled in silk who waits, as she waits for everything else. I bow my head and raise my voice.
    â€œListen,” I say, my voice low and cozening. “Listen, lords and ladies, as I sing of the coming days. I sing of the time when the kingdom will be one. And I call my song, the lay of the dark King Artos and of Guinevere the Fair.”

The Sleep of Trees
    Never invoke the gods unless
    you really want them to appear .
    It annoys them very much .
    â€”G. K. C HESTERTON
    It had been a long winter. Arrhiza had counted every line and blister on the inside of the bark. Even the terrible binding power of the heartwood rings could not contain her longings. She desperately wanted spring to come so she could dance free, once again, of her tree. At night she looked up and, through the spiky winter branches, counted the shadows of early birds crossing the moon. She listened to the mewling of buds making their slow, painful passage to the light. She felt the sap veins pulse sluggishly around her. All the signs were there: spring was coming, spring was near, yet still there was no spring.
    She knew that one morning, without warning, the rings would loosen and she would burst through the bark into her glade. It had happened every year of her life. But the painful wait, as winter slouched toward its dismal close, was becoming harder and harder to bear.
    When Arrhiza had been younger, she had always slept the peaceful, uncaring sleep of trees. She would tumble, half-awake, through the bark and onto the soft, fuzzy green earth with the other young dryads, their arms and legs tangling in that first sleepy release. She had wondered then that the older trees released their burdens with such stately grace, the dryads and the meliades sending slow green praises into the air before the real Dance began. But she wondered no longer. Younglings simply slept the whole winter dreaming of what they knew best: roots and bark and the untroubling dark. But aging conferred knowledge; dreams change. Arrhiza now slept little, and her waking, as her sleep, was filled with sky.
    She even found herself dreaming of birds. Knowing trees were the honored daughters of the All Mother, allowed to root themselves deep into her flesh; knowing trees were the treasured sisters of the Huntress, allowed to unburden themselves into her sacred groves, Arrhiza envied birds. She wondered what it would be like to live apart from the land, to travel at will beyond the confines of the glade. Silly creatures though birds were, going from egg to earth without a thought, singing the same messages to one another throughout their short lives, Arrhiza longed to fly with one, passengered within its breast. A bird lived but a moment, but what a moment that must be.
    Suddenly realizing her heresy, Arrhiza closed down her mind lest she share thoughts with her tree. She concentrated on the blessings to the All Mother and the Huntress, turning her mind from sky to soil, from flight to the solidity of roots.
    And in the middle of her prayer. Arrhiza fell out into spring, as surprised as if she were still young. She tumbled against one of the birch, her nearest neighbor, Phyla of the white face. Their legs touched,