It was a young man who spoke. Tuala’s skin broke out into goose bumps at his words; she could imagine what Donal or Bridei or even Broichan would have to say about her foolishness in coming all the way up here alone in winter without telling anyone. She held herself very still and tried to breathe slowly. She made herself observe, as Bridei had taught her to do. This was not a man, not exactly. He was not so very much taller than herself, and his wild, straggling hair had a mossy, greenish hue. Here and there his locks seemed to wander into the shape of tendrils and leaves, ivylike. The eyes were bog-brown and round as an owl’s. Definitely not a man, although the mischievous grin he turned on her as she assessed him reminded her painfully of Erip in his better days.
“You’re shivering.” The other spoke and Tuala felt, as she turned back, the soft weight of a cloak settling around her shoulders. It seemed a thing of thistledown, fragile and insubstantial, yet it rendered her instantly as warm as a cat curled up before a hearth fire. The girl met her gaze calmly. She was somewhat taller than the young man, if man he could be called, and her hair was long and silvery fair, plaited and knotted elaborately with glinting threads and skeleton leaves, cobwebs and tiny white berries threaded through the strands. Her hooded cape was of a blue-gray cloth that moved about her like wood smoke. She, too, seemed young; her skin was winter-white, as pale as Tuala’s, her figure slender, her bearing graceful. “You feel the cold; that is not so surprising. You have been raised among human folk; their tides are shorter and move with more violence. Already your body tunes to their patterns. You have come to us just in time.”
The words Tuala had prepared for such an occasion were abruptly gone. She had wanted this so badly, had rehearsed the questions: Who am I? Who was it abandoned me, and why? Now, afraid of the answers, she could not bring herself to ask. At length she said, “Why now? Why show yourselves now? I’ve been here over and over; I’ve seen visions in the Dark Mirror, I’ve been teased by others of your kind who would never quite reveal themselves. What has changed?” The answer was in her head even as she spoke, the same answer others had already given: You have changed.
“Those whom you encountered were not of our kind,” the leaf man said. “They are a lesser breed; many share our forest. Those others, they would not let you see their true form. Not while you still have one foot in a world of druids and heroes, kings and councillors.”
“One foot?” Tuala could not help asking. She did not think what she felt was fear, despite the utter strangeness of this appearance, only astonishment that at last they had decided to reveal themselves to her, and a wariness that was bred of her knowledge of tales. “I live at Pitnochie; I belong in Broichan’s house. Nobody really knows where I came from. I could be some poor lass’s by-blow. I could be an ordinary human girl.” She should ask them straight out. She wished she could make herself do so. Do you know who I am? The laughter that rang out now stopped these words before she spoke them aloud. The sound of their mirth echoed around the little glen like seeds rattling in a pod, making Tuala’s neck prickle with its strangeness.
“Ordinary?” the girl mocked. “You believe that no more than we do. You are ours, a child of the forest. You have magic in every hair of your head, in every touch of your fingertips. Tell us why you have come here today, Tuala. Tell us why you sought us out.”
The young man squatted down; his garments, like his hair, seemed an extension of the woodland foliage, mats of verdant, tangling growth. He smelled faintly of leaf mold. With long, knobbly fingers he patted the ground invitingly; the gray-cloaked girl was kneeling now on Tuala’s other side. Tuala sat down, cross-legged, every sense alert. If she needed to run, she wanted to be ready to do it instantly. Her heart was pounding; there were many possibilities here, and she must be ready for any of them.
“I came for answers,” she said. “And the questions are not the same I might once have asked you, had I had the chance. Folk have changed; those who were friends are suddenly afraid of me, wary and strange. My teachers said it’s because . . . because, as a woman, they see me as dangerous.” She swallowed. “Like Amna of the White Shawl,” she added reluctantly. “And now my old friend is dying and they won’t let me in to hold his hand and say good-bye.” She would not give way to tears; it was important to remain in control of the situation. There would be plenty of time for weeping before long.
“Amna, hmm,” the leaf man said. “Human women invent such tales to keep their men from straying, you know”
Tuala stared at him. His cheeks were as brown and shiny as ripe chestnuts. “Invent?” she echoed. “You mean it’s just a made-up story? What about the owl-wife, is that the same?”
“Maybe yes,” the man said. “Maybe no.”
“That’s not very useful,” Tuala retorted. “I need some answers. I need to be able to show people that I’m no threat to them. I need to convince them that . . .” Her voice tailed off; this was just too embarrassing to put into words.
“That you’ve no desire for a man?” The girl slipped back her hood and folded her hands in her lap; there were many rings on her long fingers, intricate silver constructions in branching shapes studded with pale stones. “That’s of no import, Tuala. The danger, as they see it, is that a man should desire you. They avoid you because they believe it perilous, from now on, to look or to touch. They think that to allow you too close may become a death sentence. We know your story. Bridei took you in. He was a child then and quite innocent of what it meant. The druid saw how it would be, but he saw it too late. He cannot allow you to stay at Pitnochie. To do so would indeed bring death: the death of his vision. So he believes.”
Tuala’s heart was cold. “But you said Amna was a made-up story. Anyway. I’m not like that. I’ve been brought up like a human girl, I will just live my life as an ordinary girl does. I won’t harm anyone.” The future she wanted contained herself and Bridei and Pitnochie all together; how could she bear anything else?
Neither of her companions spoke. In the lengthy silence, Tuala heard the echo of her speech and recognized how childish it sounded, how simple. It was too late for such easy solutions. She could never be a child again. “How do you know all this, anyway?” she challenged eventually, although the answer to this was here before her, in the still water of the Dark Mirror. “What is it to you?”
The forest girl smiled. It was an odd smile, in which sorrow and resignation were tempered by a kindness that seemed almost reluctant. “You surprise me, Tuala,” she said. “You do not ask the one question that most troubles you. Is not that question the answer to this one?”
Tuala did not respond. These people were Other; they were as unlike her as wild creatures were. If they were her kin, she would almost rather not know.
“Ah, well,” the girl said on a sigh, “you have not yet earned the right to such an answer, so I could not give it even if I knew it. That truth is for later, when you have shown that we can trust you. The time will come when you need us so badly you will do anything to know As for the source of our knowledge, we watch you and we watch Bridei. Our patterns are longer than those of the humankind, but that does not mean we have no interest in kings and druids, in battles and struggles and the governing of Fortriu. There’s great change coming. Your friend is at the center of it, or will be. You are aware of that, we suspect.”
Tuala nodded, though she would not put an answer into words. Even as a small child she had understood the kind of future Broichan had mapped out for his foster son.
“What part do you expect to play in such grand and momentous events?” the leaf man asked with brutal bluntness. “That is the question you must ask yourself, for it may not be long before Pitnochie is closed to you forever.”
“Stop it,” Tuala muttered, putting her fingers in her ears, but she went on listening; after all, she had come for answers, and that was what these were, for all they were not those she wanted.
“Broichan faces a dilemma,” the forest girl said. “He can’t simply abandon you. Bridei’s
good opinion means a lot more to him than he’d ever let anyone know. The king’s druid has one weak spot, and that’s his affection for the boy. Besides, Broichan is nothing if not loyal to the gods; he would not wish to fall foul of the Shining One by casting out her daughter. Fortunately for him, there’s a solution. If I were Broichan, and my mind worked in the way of a mortal man’s, I would be glad you have reached childbearing years. Now he has only to find you a husband and he can be rid of you quite respectably, without offending anyone.”
“Don’t look so horrified,” the leaf man said, licking his lips with a long, greenish tongue. The sight of it made Tuala’s flesh crawl. “It’s the usual thing for human girls once they’ve begun their bleeding. Haven’t you been trying to convince us you are just like a human girl? Of course, a suitor for such as yourself could be tricky to find. Any man who knew the story of Amna of the White Shawl would be a fool to take you. But a lonely widower, an older fellow perhaps, might well be persuaded by a glimpse of that delicate flesh, that fresh little figure. And Broichan’s a man of means; he can offer a solid sort of dowry. I’ll wager you’ll be off his hands by Midsummer. That’s if you don’t take the other option, the one we can offer you.”
Tuala felt she might be sick. “Bridei wouldn’t let him do it,” she whispered. “He would stop it.”
The man smiled again. “Bridei is much occupied with other matters,” he said, and gestured toward the pool, where images sprang up in an instant shimmer of movement. “Life and death matters whose course will influence not just his own future, but the future of Fortriu. Should all unfold in accordance with Broichan’s plan, Bridei’s destiny will take him far from you. See for yourself.”
“I won’t look,” Tuala said, and heard the tremor in her voice. “You can manipulate these images, you’ll only show what you want me to see. You can’t make me look.”
“Why do you come here, if not to see him?” the girl asked softly. “Why linger in this lonely place, if not to be close to him when he is far away? When these waters show you his face, you cannot but look.”
Tuala bowed her head. They were right: to come here in the cold, all this way, and not to see Bridei when she knew his image waited there on the surface of the Dark Mirror was indeed beyond her. Yet she felt awkward as she bent over the pool once more. It was not so long since her own naked form had gleamed pale and strange there in the water, and it unsettled her to be searching that same still surface for a picture of the dear friend of her childhood. There was something not right about it. She did not believe for a moment that her Otherworld companions would not change and distort the message of the Dark Mirror to their own ends. Still, she must look.
They were little glimpses, each gone almost before she had time to absorb it: Bridei riding with Gartnait beside him, the two of them pushing their horses fast in unspoken rivalry. That did not surprise Tuala. There had been plenty of opportunity to observe Talorgen’s laughing, red-haired son during the summers Gartnait had spent at Pitnochie. Behind his clownish facade Tuala had seen something else: a passionate striving to be Bridei’s match in feats of strength and skill, since he knew he could never come close in matters of learning. She had recognized the desperation with which Gartnait sought to prove himself before his father, and understood what Bridei did not: that his easy-going, jocular companion had fierce ambition in his heart. To a boy such as Gartnait, perhaps it might seem that things came too easily for Bridei. Gartnait knew nothing of the long times of loneliness, the patient hours of self-discipline. He did not understand what it meant to be sent away when you were too small to understand why.
The image changed, and Tuala saw Bridei wrestling with another man, a life or death struggle with knives. It was only a moment. Then Bridei alone at night, staring into the dark, a solitary candle showing his shadowed eyes, the little crease between his brows, the tight set of his mouth.
“He needs me,” Tuala whispered.
Then it was not night but day, and he was sitting on a bench beside a fish pond, and there was a girl. The girl had red hair like Gartnait’s and freckles sprinkled becomingly across her delicate nose. She was dressed in a way that marked her as a lady, the hair held back by an embroidered band with a single artful wisp allowed to escape over one ear, the gown a soft red-brown embroidered in the same green and blue as the headband. Her feet were shod in soft kidskin. The girl was seated beside Bridei; she seemed as solemn as he was, and she was listening attentively as he talked. Bridei bent his head courteously and she said a few words, raising her face to him. In a sharp-featured way she was very pretty, a little like a vixen. Tuala could see in Bridei’s eyes that he admired her.
“Highly suitable,” the leaf man observed drily as this image fractured and dispersed. “The daughter of a family friend, of royal connections, healthy and presentable in every way and but a year or two his junior. He must go to battle first, of course; this spring he must prove himself in the field. But it can be seen how this will unfold. Already he confides in her.”
“He needs me.” Tuala was shivering, for all the warmth of the strange cloak they had wrapped her in. “He needs to come home.” No elegant girl of royal connections knew how to listen as she did, how to coax a smile to that solemn face, how to be there beside him as he wrestled with the great questions that beset him, and would do more and more. No dazzling vision could convince her otherwise. All that it meant was that nobody understood the bond between them; nobody but herself and Bridei.
“No, Tuala,” the forest girl said. “Already he flies far from your grasp; would you seek to clip an eagle’s wings?”
“Even the eagle cannot fly without his times of stillness.” Tuala worked to keep her voice confident. “He needs rest, so he can go on with courage. For that, he needs me.”
“How can you be certain of that?” asked the leaf man. “Would you not be better to make your own path and use your own talents? You have barely begun to discover what you are.”
“Bridei no longer needs you.” The girl’s voice was soothing as honey mead, gentle as a mother’s. “This was a friendship of children and it did you both some service. Those times are over now. He moves ahead on his own journey. It is time you gave thought to yours.”
“You seem to fear Broichan’s plan for you,” the man said. “You need not do as he wishes. Choose the other way. That is why you came here to us. Don’t try to deny it. You know there is a path for you here in the forest. We will show you how to find it. We will open the gateway so you can step across.”
“We will bring you home.” Now the girl’s voice was like the chime of a sweet, unearthly instrument, ringing across the dark waters. Tuala’s scalp prickled. A charm, that was what this was, a spell, a trap; she had been wary of the leaf man with his sly smiles and his salacious looks, but it was the other, the seeming fair and sounding kindly, who was the more dangerous. She had been foolish to let this go so far, to let that soft voice, those taunting visions influence her. Her hands scrabbled to push the cobweb garment from her shoulders. Her body tensed itself, ready for flight. All she needed to do was get up and run, she knew the way, up the path, along the rim of the vale, down under birch and oak and holly, back to the borders of Broichan’s land and safety. They would not follow, not once she passed the white stones at the entry to the Vale of the Fallen. At least, she hoped they would not follow.
But if she fled, they would know their barbs had hit their mark. They would know they had managed, at last, to frighten her. She would not allow them that small victory, not after they had hurt her with their cruel comments. They were not the only ones who could twist and turn the images of the seer to illustrate a particular point. Tuala took a deep breath and looked again into the waters of the Dark Mirror. She fixed her mind on the Shining One; she imagined the silver orb of the Lady’s fullness, conjured a picture of a woman tall and lovely, bearing a tiny fur-swathed infant in her arms. The water shimmered, rippled, grew still again. There on its reflective surface was the child Bride
i, small bare feet blue with cold below the hem of his nightrobe, standing on the doorstep at midnight. He looked down. The mirror did not show what he saw, only the wondrous change in his face, a face too solemn, too wary for such a child, whose mind should surely have been all on sunny days and games and family. In the water, he knelt and looked and his eyes were suddenly filled with light, his somber, small countenance suffused with joy. He rose to his feet and gazed up, and the Shining One looked down at him, touching his face with unearthly silver. Tuala could not hear what he said, but she recognized its meaning in her heart; it was a promise deep and binding, an affirmation of responsibility. He bent to gather up what lay at his feet; he smiled. Now there was a different look in his eyes, a look that was just for her. The image faded and was gone.
It was suddenly very quiet in the Vale of the Fallen, so quiet it was as if time had stopped while this image inhabited the Dark Mirror. Tuala blinked and rubbed her eyes, looking to right and to left. She was alone. As subtly and silently as they had arrived, her Otherworld companions were gone. Her chosen vision had displeased them, that much was certain. She did not entirely understand that; were not they themselves loyal to the Shining One? Perhaps it was her own stubbornness that had driven them away. Perhaps they had expected that she would take their hands and walk off into the forest this very day, never to return to the mortal realm. She had not even asked them for their names.
Rain began to fall, increasing with alarming swiftness to a drenching downpour that soaked her through cloak and shawl and tunic. She put up her hood and kept on going. Her boots were soon thick with mud. She had long wished the Good Folk might manifest themselves and begin to give her answers. Now at last they had done so, but she had learned little. Perhaps there was a kind of home for her among such folk. We will open the gateway so you can step across, they had said. She would like to find out what that meant, but only if she had a guarantee she could step back again. And Tuala had heard too many old tales to believe such a course would be possible. Cross into that other realm and you’d be trapped there forever, or you’d stay for a day’s feasting and dancing, then come home to discover your family had been dead for a hundred years. Besides, she would not step across to anywhere without Bridei, and Bridei’s path most certainly lay in the world of human affairs, of druids, kings, and battles. And she would not believe, however many charming fox girls she was shown, that anyone could fill her own place in his life. The two of them belonged together; it was as simple as that.