And Other Stories (31 page)

The man stopped just short of them,
open-mouthed, his face a study in hope, and fear that hope will be
yanked away. “Your Highness?”

Robin nodded.

The round woman had come up beside
the man. Tears coursed down her face. She said calmly, “Teazle,
don’t keep ‘em standing in the yard. Look like they’ve been dragged
backwards through the blackthorn, both of them, and probably hungry
as cats.” But she stepped forward and touched one tentative hand to
the prince’s cheek. “You’re back,” she whispered.

“I’m
back.”

They were fed hugely, and Robin was
decently clothed in linen and leather belonging to Teazle’s eldest
son. “We should be going,” the prince said at last,
regretfully.

“Of course,” Teazle
agreed. “Oh, they’ll be that glad to see you at the
palace.”

Moon saw the shadow of pain pass
quickly over Robin’s face again.

They tramped through the new ferns,
the setting sun at their backs. “I’d as soon . . .” Robin faltered
and began again. “I’d as soon not reach the palace tonight. Do you
mind?”

Moon searched his face. “Would you
rather be alone?”

“No! I’ve been alone
for—how long? A year? That’s enough. Unless you don’t want to stay
out overnight.”

“It would be silly to
stop now, just when I’m getting good at it,” Moon said
cheerfully.

They made camp under the lee of a
hill near a creek, as the sky darkened and the stars came out like
frost. They didn’t need to cook, but Moon built a fire anyway. She
was aware of his gaze; she knew when he was watching, and wondered
that she felt it so. When it was full dark and Robin lay staring
into the flames, Moon said, “You know, then?”

“How I was...? Yes.
Just before...there was a moment when I knew what had been done,
and who’d done it.” He laced his brown fingers over his mouth and
was silent for a while; then he said, “Would it be better if I
didn’t go back?”

“You’d do
that?”

“If it would be
better.”

“What would you do
instead?”

He sighed. “Go off somewhere and
grow apples.”

“Well, it wouldn’t be
better,” Moon said desperately. “You have to go back. I don’t know
what you’ll find when you get there, though. I called down curse
and banishment on your mother and father, and I don’t really know
what they’ll do about it.”

He looked up, the fire bright in
his eyes. “You did that? To the king and queen of Hark
End?”

“Do you think they
didn’t deserve it?”

“I wish they didn’t
deserve it.” He closed his eyes and dropped his chin onto his
folded hands.

“I think you are the
heart of the land,” Moon said in surprise.

His eyes flew open again. “Who said
that?”

“A guard at the front
palace gate. He’ll probably fall on his knees when he sees
you.”

“Great grief and
ashes,” said the prince. “Maybe I can sneak in the back
way.”

They parted the next day in sight
of the walls of Great Hark. “You can’t leave me to do this alone,”
Robin protested.

“How would I help? I
know less about it than you do, even if you are a year out of
date.”

“A lot happens in a
year,” he said softly.

“And a lot doesn’t.
You’ll be all right. Remember that everyone loves you and needs
you. Think about them and you won’t worry about you.”

“Are you speaking
from experience?”

“A little.” Moon
swallowed the lump in her throat. “But I’m a country witch and my
place is in the country. Two weeks to the east by foot, just across
the Blacksmith River. If you ever make a King’s Progress, stop by
for tea.”

She turned and strode away before
he could say or do anything silly, or she could.

Moon wondered, in the next weeks,
how the journey could have seemed so strange. If the Seawood was
full of ghosts, none of them belonged to her. The plain of grass
was impressive, but just grass, and hot work to cross. In Little
Hark she stopped for the night, and the blond boy remembered
her.

“Did you find your
teacher?” he asked.

“No. She died. But I
needed to know that. It wasn’t for nothing.”

He already knew the prince had come
back; everyone knew it, as if the knowledge had blown across the
kingdom like milkweed fluff. She didn’t mention it.

She came home and began to set
things to rights. It didn’t take long. The garden wouldn’t be much
this year, but it would be sufficient; it was full of volunteers
from last year’s fallen seed. She threw herself into work; it was
balm for the heart. She kept her mind on her neighbors’ needs, to
keep it off her own. And now she knew that her theory was right,
that earth and air and fire and water were all a part of each
other, all connected, like silver and gold. Like joy and
pain.

“You’re grown,” Tansy
Broadwater said to her, but speculatively, as if she meant
something other than height, that might not be an unalloyed
joy.

The year climbed to Midsummer and
sumptuous life. Moon went to the village for the Midsummer’s Eve
dance and watched the horseplay for an hour before she found
herself tramping back up the hill. She felt remarkably old. On
Midsummer’s Day she put on her apron and went out to dig the weeds
from between the flagstones.

She felt the rhythm in the earth
before she heard it. Hoofbeats, coming up the hill. She got to her
feet.

The horse was chestnut and the
rider was honey-haired. He drew rein at the gate and slipped down
from the saddle, and looked at her with a question in his eyes. She
wasn’t quite sure what it was, but she knew it was a
question.

She found her voice. “King’s
Progress?”

“Not a bit.” He
sounded just as she’d remembered, whenever she hadn’t had the sense
to make enough noise to drown the memory out. “May I have some tea
anyway?”

Her hands were cold, and knotted in
her apron. “Mint?”

“That would be nice.”
He tethered his horse to the fence and came in through the
gate.

“How have things
turned out?” She breathed deeply and cursed her mouth for being so
dry.

“Badly, in the part
that couldn’t help but be. My parents chose exile. I miss them—or I
miss them as they were once. Everything else is doing pretty well.
It’s always been a nice, sensible kingdom.” Now that he was closer,
Moon could see his throat move when he swallowed, see his thumb
turn and turn at a ring on his middle finger.

“Moon,” he said
suddenly, softly, as if it were the first word he’d spoken. He
plucked something out of the inside of his doublet and held it out
to her. “This is for you.” He added quickly, in a lighter tone,
“You’d be amazed how hard it is to find when you want it. I thought
I’d better pick it while I could and give it to you pressed and
dried, or I’d be here empty-handed after all.”

She stared at the the straight
green stem, the cluster of inky-blue flowers still full of color,
the sweet ghost of vanilla scent. Her fingers closed hard on her
apron. “It’s heliotrope,” she managed to say.

“Yes, I
know.”

“Do...do you know
what it means?”

“Yes.”

“It means
‘devotion.‘”

“I know,” Robin said.
He looked into her eyes, as he had since he’d said her name, but
something faltered slightly in his face. “A little pressed and
dried, but yours, if you’ll have it.”

“I’m a country
witch,” Moon said with more force than she’d planned. “I don’t mean
to stop being one.”

Robin smiled a little, an odd sad
smile. “I didn’t say you ought to. But the flower is yours whether
you want it or not. And I wish you’d take it, because my arm’s
getting tired.”

“Oh!” Moon flung her
hands out of her apron. “Oh! Isn’t there a plant in this whole
wretched garden that means ‘I love you, too?’ Bother!”

She hurtled into his arms, and he
closed them tight around her.

Once upon a time there ruled in the
Kingdom of Hark End a king who was young and fair, good and wise,
and responsible for the breeding of no fewer than six new varieties
of apple. Once upon the same time there was a queen in Hark End who
understood the riddle of the rings of silver and gold: that all
things are joined together without beginning or end, and that there
can be no understanding until all things divided are joined. They
didn’t live happily ever after, for nothing lives forever; but they
lived as long as was right, then passed together into the land
where trees bear blossom and fruit both at once, and where the
flowers of spring never fade.