The Knight

“He knows me.”

“Have you kissed him?”

She laughed and shook her head.

“Bold Berthold told me the Aelf looked like ashes.”

“We are the Moss Aelf, Able, and we are of the wood and not the ash.” She was still smiling. “You call us Dryads, Skogsfru, Treebrides, and other names. You may make a name for us yourself. What would you like to call us?”

“Angels,” I whispered; but she pressed a finger to my lips. I blinked and looked away when she did that, and it seemed to me, when I glimpsed her from the corner of my eye, that she looked different from the girl I had been swimming with and all the girls I had just made love with.

“Shall I show you?”

I nodded—and felt muscles in my neck slithering like pythons. “Good lord!” I said, and heard a new voice, wild and deep. It was terribly strange; I knew I had changed, but I did not know how much, and for a long time after I thought I was going to change back. You need to remember that.

“You won’t hate me, Able?”

“I could never hate you,” I told her. It was the truth.

“We are loathsome in the eyes of those who do not worship us.”

I chuckled at that; the deep reverberations in my chest surprised me too. “My eyes are mine,” I said, “and they do what I tell them. I’ll close them before I kiss you, if we need more privacy.”

She sat up, dangling her legs in the clear, cold water. “Not in this light.” Her kick dashed water through a sunbeam and showered us with silver drops.

“You love the sunlight,” I said. I sensed it.

She nodded. “Because it is yours, your realm. The sun gave me you, and I love you. My kind love the night, and so I love them both.”

I shook my head. “I don’t understand. How can you?”

“Loving me, couldn’t you love some human woman?”

“No,” I said. “I never could.” I meant it.

She laughed, and this time it was a laugh that made fun of me. “Show me,” she said.

She kicked again. The slender little foot that rose from the shimmering water was as green as new leaves. Her face was sharper, green too, three-cornered, bold and sly. Berry lips pressed mine, and when we parted I found myself looking straight into eyes of yellow fire. Her hair floated above her head.

I embraced her, lifting and holding her, and kissed her again.

Chapter 8. Ulfa And Toug

When she had gone, I tried to find her cave again. It was not there, only my bow, my quiver, and my clothes lying on the grass. The spiny orange bow that had seemed very large to me was suddenly small, almost a toy, and I would have torn my shirt and pants if I had managed to put them on.

Throwing them aside, I drew my bow, pulling the string to my ear as I always had. The spiny orange did not break, although I bent it double; but the bowstring did. I flung it away, and got out the string Parka had bitten off for me from her spi

I could not draw that arrow to my ear, it was too short by two spans; yet it sped flat as a bullet and buried half its shaft in the bole of an oak.

Naked, I returned to Gle

“Then I can hope for no help from them,” I said. “I must have clothes just the same, and since you are here and they aren’t, you must provide them. How will you do it?”

“W-we have c-cloth.”

His teeth were chattering, so I was patient with him. “M-my w-wife will s-s-sew for you.”

We went to his house. He fetched out his daughter, and I promised not to harm her. Her name was Ulfa.

“A knight was here yesterday,” she told me when her father had gone. “A real knight in iron armor, with huge horses, and two boys to wait on him.”

“That’s interesting,” I said. I wanted to hear what she would say next.

“He’d a big helm hanging from his saddle, you know how they do, with plumes and a lion on it, and a lion on his big shield, too, a gold lion with blood on its claws where they raked the shield, like.”

“That was Sir Ravd,” I told her.

“Yes, that’s what they do say. We had to stand and wait his pleasure, and go in one by one when the boys said, only I didn’t. Papa was feared his pleasure might be his pleasure.” She giggled. “If you know what I mean, and I still a maid, so he hid me in the barn and pitched straw over me, only I got out and watched, and talked to some of them that had been in. Some of the women, I mean, for there was men, too, only I don’t think he would, with them. Hold still while I pin.”

Her pin was a long black thorn.

“They said he asked about the Free Companies, only they didn’t tell nothing, none of them did, even if they all had to swear. Are you sure you don’t want some mush? We’ve lard to fry in from the barrows Pa slaughtered last fall.”

“I’ll kill a deer for you,” I promised her, “in payment for these clothes.”

“That’ll be nice.” The black thorn was back between her teeth.

I drew my bow, reflecting that it had been all I could do to bring an arrow near my ear the day before. Talking to myself, I said, “A short arrow at that.”

“Hmmm?” Ulfa looked up from her work.

“In my quiver. Two arrows I made for myself from spiny orange, and two I took from a boy I fought.”

“One of the boys with him had splendid clothes,” she confided. “I got as close as I could to look. Red pants, I swear by Garsecg’s gullet!”

“That was Svon. What about the other boy?”

“Him? Oh, he was ordinary enough,” Ulfa said. “About like my brother, but might be good-looking in a year or two.”

“Didn’t he have a bow like mine?”

“Bigger’n yours, sir.” She had finished cutting her cloth and begun to sew, making long stitches with a big bone needle. “Too big for him was the look of it. Brother had one too, only it’s broke. Pa says when a bow’s not strung it oughta be bigger than the man that carries it, and most is smaller of what I’ve seen. Like yours is, sir.”

‘“I need longer arrows,” I told her. “Does your Pa have a rule for arrows, too?” Still plying her needle, she shook her head.

“In that case I’ll give you one I just made. An arrow ought to reach from the end of the owner’s left forefinger to his right ear. Mine are far shy of that.”

“You’ll have to find new ones.”

“I’ll have to make new ones, and I will. What if I were to tell you I was the boy with the big bow?”

The needle stopped in mid stab, and Ulfa looked up at me. “You, sir?” I nodded.

She laughed. “That boy that was here yesterday? I could’ve shut my hand “round his arm, almost. I doubt I could get both ’round yours, sir.”

Pushing the trousers she had been making for me to one side, she rose. “Can I try?”

“May I try. Yes, you may.”

Both her hands could not encircle my arm, but they could caress it. “You should be a knight yourself, sir.”

“I am.” My declaration surprised me, I think, much more than it surprised her; yet I recalled what Ravd had said—“We find this man to be a knight”—and it carried an i

Hidden by her shift, her nipples brushed my elbow. “Then you ought to have a sword.”

“Others have swords too,” I told her, “but you’re right just the same. I’ll get one. Go back to your sewing, Ulfa.”

When the trousers were finished and she had begun the shirt, I said, “Your father was afraid Sir Ravd would rape you. So you said.”

“Ravish me.” She nodded. “Only not because of his name. I don’t think he knew it then.”