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# BOOK TWO

### The Sidhe

## NINE

### Midsummer and Meetings

Summer lay over the old forest, when leaves veiled the twisted trunks and graced the skeletal branches with a gray-green life. They were stubborn, the old trees, and clung tenaciously to their long existence on the ridge above the dale. There was anger here, and long memory. The trees whispered and leaned together like conspirators in their old age while the rains came and the quick mortal suns shone, and shadows slithered round their roots within the brambles and the thickets. No creatures from the New Forest ventured here without fear; and none stayed the night—not the furtive hare, which nibbled the flowers that stopped at the forest edge, not the deer, which drew the air into quivering black nostrils and bounded away to take her chances with human hunters. Not the wariest or the boldest of such creatures which grew up under the mortal sun might love the Ealdwood . . . but there were hares and deer which did wander here, shadowy wanderers with dark, fey eyes, swift to run, and not for hunting.

At rare times the forest seemed other than sullen and dreambound, and stirred and wakened somewhat, while the moon shone less white and terrible. Midsummer was such a time, when the phantom deer gathered by night, and birds flew which would never be seen by day, and for a brief hour the Ealdwood forgot its anger and dreamed of itself.

On this night, after many such nights, Arafel came, a motion of the heart, a desire which was enough to span seeming and being, to slip from the passage of her time and her sun and moon which shone with a cooler, greener light, and out of the memory of trees and woods as they might have been, or were, or had once been. She brought a bit of that otherwhere with her, a bright gleaming where she walked. Flowers bloomed this magic night which without her presence might never have waked from their buds, as most flowers did not, in the Ealdwood men saw. She looked about her, and touched the moongreen stone at her throat, which was much of her heart, and shivered a bit in the cool dankness of a world she had much forgot. The deer and the hares which, like her, wandered the shadow-ways twixt there and here, moved the more boldly for her presence.

Once there had been dancing on such a night, merry revels, but the harpers and the pipers were stilled, gone far across the gray cold sea. The stone at her throat echoed only the remembrance of songs. She came this night out of curiosity, now that she remembered to come. Mortal years fled swiftly past and how many of them might have passed since her grief and her anger had faded, she did not know. She was dismayed. It pained her heart to see this heart of the wood so changed, so choked with brambles. A great mound rose in this place, thorn-ringed now, about which her folk had once danced on green grass, among great and beautiful trees. This night she walked the old dancing-ring, laid a hand on an oak impossibly old, and strength drained from her, greening his old heart and making thin buds swell at his branch-tips. Such magics she had left, native as breathing.

But overhead the stars should have shone clear. Clouds drifted, wrack in heaven. She looked up, wished them gone, that this night be what it ought. The deer and the hares looked up with their huge dreaming eyes, as for a little time the sky was pure. But quickly a wisp of cloud formed again, and fingers of wind drew the taint back across the sky.

“It is long,” Death whispered.

She turned, startled, laid her hand on the stone at her throat, for near the ring had appeared a blot of shadow, a darkness which hovered next a tree the lightning had slain, and for a moment ugly whisperings attended it

“Long absent,” said Lord Death.

“Go from here,” she bade him. “It is not your night, and not your place.”

Death stirred. Deer, beside her, trembled, their shifting steps carrying them nearer and nearer her, and the air breathed with the dankness of most nights in this wood.

“Many years,” Lord Death said, “you have not come at all. I have walked here. Should I not? I have hunted here. Do I not have leave?”

“I care not what you do,” she said. But such was her loneliness that even this converse drew her. She regarded the shadow more calmly, watched it spread and settle on the riven stump as brush swayed. Something doglike settled too, a puddle of shadow at its master’s feet. It dipped its inky head and yawned, panting softly in the dark, while the deer and hares froze. “Do not settle to stay, Lord Death. I have told you.”

“Proud. Lady of cobwebs and tatters. The old oak is younger tonight. Do you not care to tend the others? Or can it be . . . that a little of you fades, each time you do?”

“He is rooted elsewhere, that old tree, and he is more than he seems. Do not set your hand to him. There are some things not healthy for you as well, Lord Death.”

“For many years, many summers, you have neglected this place. And now your eyes turn this way. Have you cause to come?”

“Need I cause . . . in my wood?”

“The Ealdwood is smaller this year.”

“It is always smaller,” she said, and looked more closely at the shadow, in which for the first time she could see the least distinction, a suspicion of an arm, a, hand, but never, never a face.

“Old friend,” he said, “come walk with me.”

She smiled, mocking him, and the smile faded, for the hand reached out to her. “Upstart youth,” she said, “what have I to do with you?”

“You have given me souls to hunt, Arafel. And they are with me when I have taken them, but there is no sense in them. No gratitude. And less pleasure. Why do I come? What do you see in your side of Eald? What is there, that I can never see?” The shadow drew itself up, and the hound rose too. The likeness of the hand was still extended. “Walk with me,” Lord Death asked softly. “Is it not a night for fellowship? I beg you—walk with me.”

The deer fled away, bounding this way and that; the hares darted for cover in panic. The hound stayed, a breathing in the shadow. Suddenly there seemed others of them, a shadowy pack, and the shuffle and stamp of hooves sounded where the darkness was deepest.

A wind started through the trees. Where stars had shone, the blight in heaven had become a dark edge of cloud. Arafel glanced from sky to trees, where the shadow flowed, where small chitterings disturbed the peace.

“Send them away,” she said, and the other shadows slunk away, and the wind fell. There was only the greater Darkness, and a chill sense of presence.

She walked with him, from out the ring and more and more solidly within this world where Men lived—incongruous companionship, elven-kind and one of Men’s less-reputed gods. He said little. That was his wont, and hers. She had no deep fear of him, for elven-kind had never been subject to him; when their wounds took them, they simply faded, and where they went, Death was not, nor ever had been. All had faded now, but she had not; they had gone away beyond the sea, but she had not been willing. She was last, loving the woods too well to go when the despair came on others. It was perhaps habit kept her now; or pride—her kind had ever been proud; or perhaps her heart was bound here. Death had never known the motives of the elves.

She did not walk the shadow-ways, that path which was mostly under her moon. Death could not reach to that other place, and she meant that he never should. She stayed companionable with him, her Huntsman, guardian of her forest what time she was absent, who had come to the land when Men came, and who haunted this forest most of all places on the earth. He showed her the land he had had in care, the great old trees with roots well sunk in her own Eald, that could not easily die. She saw their other selves, their aspect beneath this moon, and now and again she found one dangerously fading, and gave her strength to heal.

“You undo my work,” he reproached her.

“Only where you trespass,” she said, and looked again at the darkness, wherein two soft gleams seemed to shine. “If I do not go where the others have gone, at the last I shall have drawn all Eald-that-was to heal this blight that Men make; and where shall I be then, Lord Death, having used my strength up so? Is that what you wait for? Do you think my kind can die?”

“I wait to see,” he said, and his voice was soft and still. A shadow-sleeve rippled in wide gesture. “All of this you might restore, drive out Men, claim it all, and rule—”

“And die, as it did.”

“And die,” Lord Death said softer still.

She smiled, perceiving wistfulness. “Merest youth.”

“Invite me with you,” Death wished her. “Let me once see what you see. Let me see you as you are. Show me . . . that other land.”

“No,” she said, shuddering, and felt the brush of a touch upon her cheek.

“Do not,” Death pleaded. “Do not hate me. Do not fear me. All do . . . but you.”

“Banish hope. My land fades from wounds.”

“But there is none can wound you,” he said. “None, Arafel. So you are bound here, to share the fate of Eald.”

“There are many who can wound me,” she said, looking placidly toward that place where she judged a face might be. “But not you.”

“Save when the woods are gone. Save when all that gives you strength has gone. And you live long, my lady of the fading trees, but not forever.”

“Yet I shall cheat you all the same.”

“Perhaps you will.” The whisper wavered, trembled. “Do you know where your kindred has gone? Do you know that that place is good? No. But me you know. I am familiar and easy. We are old companions, you and I.”

“Companions without fellowship.”

“Do you not know loneliness? That, we share.”

“But you are all darkness,” she said. “And cold.”

“Do all see you the same?”

“No,” she confessed.

“Perhaps,” he said, “you will come to see me as I am.”

She said nothing to that, for she was not as cruel as some of her kind, having felt pain.

“I also,” he said, “heal.”

Still she said nothing.

“Come,” he said. “I shall show you my other face.”

She stopped at his touch, for the way to another, third Ealdwood lay in his power and the wind from it was chill, that place of his making. “No,” she said. “Not there, my lord, never there.”

“What I take,” he said, “most oft I return. What comes into the cauldron comes out again. I have a fairer face, Arafel, which you do not know how to see, having no experience of me. You judge me amiss.”

“You have done me service,” she said, “in defending Eald from Men. Why?”

And now Death was still, giving her no answer.

“Perhaps,” she said, “I shall misjudge my time. Perhaps I shall delay in this woods too long. Only that must you hope for. I give you no hope of my consent.”

“I have no hope,” said Lord Death. Wind tugged at her, drew her farther. “But come, if not to the one place, to the other. I am anxious that you think well of me. See . . . that I can heal.”

His voice was gentle, promising no ill, and in truth there was none that he could do her. Because she had committed herself the once, she yielded, and walked where he would, as mortals walked, their common ground.

And then she wavered, because she knew where he would lead.

“Trust,” he begged of her, and the wind tugged more strongly, insistent and cold.

They walked slowly through the brambles and the thickets, mortal-wise and sometimes painfully; and at the last edge of night they came to that grove he sought, a part of the New Forest, that verge of Eald grown up on the edge of the old, nearest Men. Great trees had died, scarred with axes that she had not forgot The wanton destruction oppressed her heart, for an edge of her own Eald had died that day these trees had perished, truly died, into that gray haze which bordered all her world and bound her sight.

“See,” said Lord Death, and the shadow rippled toward a bank of bracken, lush ferns beneath the dimming stars. Man-tall saplings were springing up through it, straight and new. “See my handiwork. Can we be enemies?”

She saw, and shivered, remembering the place as it had been, when the fallen trees had stood tall and beautiful; and their counterparts in her own Eald had bloomed with stars and sheltered her with their white branches. “It is only more New Forest,” she said, “and mine is the smaller for it. They have no roots in Eald.”

“You do not see beauty here?”

“There is beauty,” she admitted, walking farther, and knelt with a pang of memory, for there were bones and shattered wood beneath the bracken, and she touched a long-broken skull. “The trees, you restored. Canst mend this, Lord Death?”

“In time, even that,” he said, twisting yet again at her heart. “Do you care for them?”

“I have my own cares,” she said; but when she had risen, an old curiosity tugged at her heart, and she walked farther with him, to the flat rock which overlooked the dale, upon a dark sea of trees. She recalled the stone keep the other side of the dale—oh, far too well, among villages and fields and tame beasts and all such business as Men cared for. It was all beyond their sight. Below them the Caerbourne rolled its dark flood seaward, a black snake dividing the wood; and that flow toward the sea made her think of endings, and partings from her kindred, and made her sad.

“Men fare as always,” said Death. “Borning and birthing and dying. There is no ending of it.”

“Yet they end.”

“Not forever. That is the nature of them. You will not look on my new woods; it does not please you.”

“Not while mine dies.”

“Dies and does not fade?”

She looked at him with cold in her heart. “Go away,” she wished him. “I am weary of your company.”

“You wound me.”

“You, spoiler of all you touch? You are beyond wounding. Begone from me.”

“You are wrong,” said Lord Death. “Wrong about my wounding. There is loneliness, Arafel; and heartlessness; I am never heartless. Beware of pride, Arafel.”

“Go hence,” she said. “I weary of you.”

There was a snuffling in the shadows at her back, a breathing, a chuckling. She frowned and laid her hand on the jewel that she wore at her throat. The sounds diminished. “You do not fright me, godling. You never did and never shall. Begone!”

The shadow fled, not without a touch, a chill which achieved wistfulness. She waved it away, and knew him truly fled. There was only the hillside, and the spoiled night, and the wind.

She walked along the ridge, having come this far. All the dale was dark before her, mortals still asleep in this their night and her day. She remembered what of hurt and of fairness Men had brought her . . . how many of their years ago she did not know. She lingered a time, and a curious longing possessed her, to know what passed there, what manner of thing their lives had become.

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