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beginning to swell with flower buds, past pale stars of narcissus to the glimmering water of the loch. The forest lay beyond, green and deep and secret, with the grey, cloud-capped mountains brooding darkly beyond.
    The knowledge that he would soon be leaving his parents’ farm to travel back to the city only sharpened his acute sense of kinship with the wild, lovely landscape around him. Although he was looking forward to returning to his studies at the Tower of Two Moons, he knew he would miss his family and his home, this little glade of serenity surrounded on all sides by a dark snarl of wilderness.
    I’ll go out tramping this afternoon , he thought. Take my dinner and walk up to the waterfall. Mam will understand .
    His mother looked up and smiled. She was a slender woman with eyes as green as the new leaves unfurling on the beech tree and a great mass of twiggy brown hair that was also just beginning to bud with leaves. Her bare feet were broad, brown and gnarled like tree roots.
    “Sure, o‘ course ye can,” Lilanthe said. “I’ll keep Merry from following ye and teasing ye. I ken it’s some peace ye be wanting.” She took a deep breath. “Soil smells good.” Gracefully she lifted her brown homespun skirt and stepped into the dirt, her toes spreading and digging in. “Mmm, tastes good too.”
    Lewen grinned. “Merry can sow her seeds now, if she wants.”
    “Meriel!” Lilanthe called. “Merry! Where are you?”
    The branches of an apple tree at the far end of the garden shook violently and a girl dropped down, landing on hands and knees. She was only eleven years old, nine years younger than Lewen, for their mother had trouble carrying children to term. Three had died in her womb between Lewen and Meriel, and one had lived only a scant few hours before failing to take another breath. Their deaths had grieved Lilanthe deeply, and so she treasured this last child of hers all the more, keeping her close to home and teaching Meriel’s lessons herself. The little girl was a bright, winsome child, as much at home in the forest as a squirrel, and with a deep connection to all growing things. Like her mother, she was small and slight, with long, twiggy brown hair and green eyes. Around her head darted a tiny nisse, her iridescent wings whirring so fast they were merely a blur of light.
    “Here I am, Mam,” Meriel sang out.
    “Lewen has finish digging over the vegetable patch if you want to start planting,” Lilanthe said. “Come and taste the soil, it’s delicious!”
    Meriel came bounding across the lawn, the nisse swooping ahead of her. When she came to the edge of the dug-over garden bed, she leapt in joyfully, squelching the damp earth between her bare toes. “Yum, it is good,” she said. “I’ll go get my bags of seeds. Will ye help me, Lewen?”
    “No‘ a chance,” he said. “I’ve done my work for the day. I’m going to have a swim to get all this muck off me. Then I’m going up the waterfall one last time.”
    “I want to go too!” Meriel cried.
    “Nay, it’ll be late afore ye finish planting out those seeds, Merry,” Lilanthe said firmly. “Ye can go into the forest anytime, but ye ken Nina will be here tomorrow and so this may be Lewen’s last chance to go wandering in the forest afore he leaves for Lucescere.”
    “No, I want to go,” Meriel wheedled. “Oh, Lewen, must ye be going without me? Canna ye wait for me? I won’t be long, I promise.”
    “Aye, ye will, young lady. That’s our vegetables for the summer ye’ve got rattling in that box o‘ yours, and I willna have ye spoil our harvest by being hasty in the planting. Leave Lewen be. He’s worked hard this morning while ye were playing about and climbing trees and he deserves a few hours off.”
    “Oh but Mam…”
    “No buts about it, missy. Remember, I’m trusting ye to sow the seeds by yourself. Plant too deep or too shallow or too close together, and ye’ve lost your seed.”
    “Aye, I ken that, Mam.