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trailing shawls of fine grey lace. The path climbed past one old giant whose girth was so vast that a dozen men standing on its roots would not have been able to touch fingers, no matter how they stretched out their arms.
    It was quiet in the cool gloom, the only sound the occasional call of a bird or the subtle rustle of some creature in the undergrowth. Lewen walked swiftly, for the sun was already beginning to slant sideways through the tree trunks and it was a hike of an hour or more to the waterfall.
    Kalea came down to perch on his shoulder, taking hold of his ear and raising herself on tiptoe so she could speak into it. “Lewen tramp-stamp the green way, the forest way, Lewen sad-sorrowful?”
    Lewen smiled ruefully. The nisse knew him well. He put up his hand and lifted her off his shoulder, holding her before his face so he could speak directly to her. Her eyes were the colour of the green heart of a flame, shining in the gloom like a cat’s, and her face was triangular, with sharp-pointed ears poking through a mass of wild dark hair.
    “I do feel rather sad,” he admitted. “I’m going back to school, ye ken, and although I love the Theurgia and love being the Rìgh’s squire, I still miss ye, and my kin, and the forest.”
    “Why go? Stay-stop.”
    “I canna,” he answered.
    Her eyes blazed with fury. “Canna? Why canna? Canna-willna.”
    “I suppose that’s true,” he said. “I could stay, o‘ course. But I want to go to school, and learn; and I’m proud to serve my Rìgh and hope I’ll be knighted after I graduate and happen even be appointed a Blue Guard like my da was, if I do well enough…”
    Kalea reached out her tiny hand and seized his nose, tweaking it so hard tears sprang to his eyes. “Fool-school,” she said scornfully. “More learning-lore here, tree-wise, sky-wise, stone-wise, water-wise. No learning-lore at fool-school.”
    Lewen had dropped her the moment she tweaked his nose, crying out in surprise. Now, as he rubbed it furiously, she hovered before him, her diamond-bright wings whirring.
    “That hurt!” he said crossly.
    She trilled derisively, showing her fangs, and darted away as he tried to catch her again.
    “Canna catch me!” she called and buzzed about his head as exasperatingly as any mosquito. Every now and again she ducked closer to slap or pinch him. “Canna catch me!”
    “Stop it, Kalea!” Lewen cried. “What’s the matter with ye?”
    “No go,” she suddenly cried, swooping down to clasp his finger with both arms. “Lewen no go?”
    He cupped her gently. “I’ll miss ye too, Kalea, indeed I will. But I truly do have to go. I’ve missed enough school these last few months, and I do no‘ want to fall behind. I’ll come back when I can, though…”
    Without warning she sunk her sharp fangs into his hand. He yelped and shook her off, lifting his hand to suck at the blood leaking from the little puncture wounds.
    “Kalea weep-wail, Kalea sob-snivel,” she cried, scrubbing at her eyes with tiny fists. “Lewen go!” And she turned and flew away into the forest, swift and noisy as a hornet. Lewen stared after her, feeling angry and exasperated and a little bit guilty all at the same time. Kalea was the great-great-granddaughter of the nisse Elala whom Lilanthe had once rescued from children in a village square. Lewen’s father Niall said that was when he first began to love Lilanthe, seeing her standing alone against a gang of bullies with the poor battered nisse cradled in her hands. Although the garden and forest around the house were infested with the great-great-grandchildren of Elala, Kalea was the youngest and the boldest. She was rarely far from Lewen, having developed an abiding affection for him ever since the time he had scooped her out of a particularly deep puddle one stormy day when she had been little more than a baby. Although nisses were by nature impish and quarrelsome, delighting in spiteful tricks and teasing games, Kalea had