“Oh,
Kevin!”
Her pent-up emotions came flooding out. Alliathiune put her head on his shoulder and cried until it seemed that she was
a river and her tears the roaring waterfalls running down from the Well. When Alliathiune’s tears had abated and his handkerchief had become a sodden, useless rag, Kevin took her tiny hand and drew the Dryad to her feet.
“Walk with me,” he said.
“Where are we going?”
“Nowhere in particular. Isn’t it a beautiful night?”
“Darktime.”
His emotions were brittle.
Kevin felt like the final thread being woven into the pattern, completing it. He knew his part. But would he have the courage to play it to perfection?
“Darktime,” he agreed. “
Will you always correct me like that, Alliathiune?”
“Always?” She said it
softly. He could have bitten his tongue. But she drew breath, and surprised him. “Good Kevin, I’m ashamed to admit how little I believed that you would become Driadorn’s champion. When I first laid eyes upon you, I thought that the Seeing must have failed, for you were assuredly no warrior! How wrong I was! But remember last time we were here, at the Sacred Grove, how I withdrew to meditate between the Elliarana?”
Moonlight bathed the trees now. Though they were several hundred yards distant,
Kevin imagined he could clearly see where Alliathiune had sat that lighttime. They stood and looked for a moment, from within the shadows of the Forest, to the heart of the Forest. Elsewhere, the party continued unabated. But they were hidden here.
“Did I not make some
stupid comment about Seeing?”
“Be not bitter,” she replied, squeezing his hand. “Have we not both learned much since that lighttime? For Elliadora did speak, yet she would say but one thing. ‘Trust him,’ she said. ‘Trust the outlander to the very end’. I wish I had done better.
So nearly I undid your good work, and many times treated you harshly and unjustly. I have many regrets about our short time together.”
“I–”
“I mean not to dismay you, good Kevin,” she interrupted, gazing imploringly at him. “Do not misunderstand my meaning! Many were the times of laughter, good times, and where there is regret, it is I who is to blame.”
He whispered, “I forgive you.”
“Pardon?”
Kevin
laughed aloud, then quieted himself sheepishly. “Alliathiune, you taught me how to forgive. I am merely applying my learning to what is surely a misunderstanding on
your
part. For if there is to be blame, I must shoulder my fair portion. Walk with me.”
Alliathiune was caught slightly off-balance as they moved into the moonlight. She looked
quizzically at him. Too fast, he thought, trying to let the darktime’s peace steal into his heart. He must woo her wisely. As she glanced over to the party he studied her dress, shimmering like star-song reflected off gossamer, and her long tresses falling unsnarled at last to brush her waist; the way the soft moonlight delineated her Dryadic patterning in organic silvery brushstrokes. Why had he never before thought her beautiful?
“An acorn for your thoughts, noble outlander?”
Her hazel eyes were deep, as deep and mysterious as the Sacred Well itself. Wellsprings of sadness. He said, “I was thinking how beautiful you are, Alliathiune.”
“Truly? You are not just flattering me?”
“I was afraid of you before. You seemed alien, powerful and all-knowing, unkind and inhuman,” he replied, with such honesty that she gasped. “I was foolish and wrong. Those thoughts are among my deepest regrets. You are truly beautiful, Alliathiune. And I am not referring to the occasion, although your dress is splendid and you look radiant. Pretty dresses are in the end, just pretty dresses.”
“What do you mean?”
“I mean that your greatest beauty lies within, dear girl.”
She
said, “Romantic words borrowed from poets, good Kevin?”
“Pe
rhaps.” He shrugged. “I wouldn’t say it were I not sincere.”
The Dryad regarded him askance
.
“I have, after all, certain … uh, experience …”
“Within my underwear?”
Kevin coughed and felt his face turn a fine shade of purple. He spluttered, “I must thank you for catching me like that, Alliathiune. A lesser woman would not have succeeded.”
“A
lesser
woman?” She smacked his arm sharply. “Are you implying that I’m fat?”
“Oh, for heaven’s sake!” he nearly shouted. “Do we have to bring up that old chestnut again? I saw you naked at Shilliabär, may I remind you, and I have
personally
undertaken an exploration of your … of your … oh dear, oh dear!”
Alliathiune’s
rich laughter bubbled over the sound of the river. “An exploration of what exactly, good Kevin?”
Kevin wished Amberthurn had gobbled him up rather than face this humiliation. It did not help that she was wearing such a blasted beautiful dress! Or that the Dryad Queen had practically pushed him into Alliathiune’s arms. Do anything to protect the Forest indeed! A hint as subtle as a charging Lurk, that was.
He wished he had drunk more wine. Maybe it would have given him the courage–and the lack of inhibition–to do what he had to do next.
He wrenched his thoughts away from the ample delights of her bosom and bit his lip until he found some measure o
f self-control. The walking helped.
“
You were right about the Forest, Alliathiune,” he said. “You were always right. I have come to love your Forest. It is a strange thing, for as an outlander I have hardly spent an eye-blink here compared to a Dryad like you, but somehow I feel that I am part of it all. Especially now. I would give anything to see the Elliarana restored. I would give anything to see the Forest whole again.”
Was this too much?
He tried to gauge her reaction, but the Dryad kept silent. “Does it hurt you to look upon the Sacred Grove as it is, Alliathiune? It is incomplete, broken …”
“I have Seen it
rise again,” she whispered. “A Seedling must be born.”
“I understand.”
But he felt Alliathiune tremble. She must know she would have to die to have that Seedling. How her heart must be warring within her, he thought. How melancholy, that on a darktime like this, he should have to help the Dryad Seer over the precipice of this most needful sacrifice. Did she understand how it tore him apart, too? How his heart bled?
“Are you cold, Alliathiune?”
“Just an ill thought,” she replied quickly, drawing closer to him. “We have seen so many terrible deeds; it is hard to remember that we are free of the Dark Wizard’s evil.”
“My brother’s evil
.”
“Do not brood over that connection, good
Kevin. You are not Brian.”
He let a long sigh hiss between his teeth.
“I am glad I am with this brother and not the other,” she said brightly. “When I saw you emerge from that flying machine, Kevin, I cannot tell you how my heart leaped within my breast. Hope sprang afresh.”
“When I saw you hanging there, I was terrified!”
“You poor man. Did my maiden plight cause you great distress?”
“Distress? Yes.” He flashed a grin at her. “And jealousy. Great, green, galloping jealousy. I wanted nothing more than to kill the Dark Apprentice
right there and then!”
Alliathiune threw back her head and laughed gaily. “Were you insanely jealous, good
Kevin?”
“Of course! My dear Dryad, I will not stand by i
dly while some empire-building Dark Wizard, least of all my late brother, may he rot forever–” his lip twisted bitterly as he spat out these words “–puts one of my friends through what he had planned for you. You do know what he intended, don’t you?”
“Don’t remind me!”
“Sorry.”
“You do know what I have planned for you, don’t you?”
A muscular shock made his body jerk. What she had planned for him? “No,” he said, carefully neutral. “Tell me more.”
“Nothing ominous,” she said sweetly. “I merely wanted to find a way to thank you
, for everything.”
“A kiss rather than a slap?”
“A kiss.”
His world sway
ed as though pressing against ocean swells. In the instant before instinct moved his lips to touch hers, Kevin experienced an exquisite juxtaposition of feelings. On the one hand there was a kiss, freely offered by the woman he loved, and the liquid heat coursing through his body and the sudden pounding of his heart. The knowledge that he had crossed some invisible line from which there was no turning back coupled with the joy of abandonment to desire. On the other hand a chilling spear of misgiving froze his mind.
She was afraid for him. She was saying her farewells.
Her whole manner spoke of a kind of parting. Why now? It could not be immediately, for her body would not have time to produce a seed. There had to be time–moons, or even seasons–for that to happen, surely? If a seed was even produced within her body. His assumptions, the careful constructs of his logic, might be fatally flawed.
But her
lips were like sweet wine to his senses, sweeping away rational thought in a tide that rose within him until it became a roaring in his ears. His body moved of its own accord to mould her to him within their embrace. Her gasp of wonder seemed mingled with a roll of distant thunder.
For a timeless moment they were a man and a woman, nothing more.
What was he thinking? She couldn’t ever love a man like him! One so tainted and twisted, so wrapped up in his own world; a worthless invalid who had wasted his years sitting in the Library avoiding his father and brother; a shrivelled-up coward through and through, who had to be dragged kicking and screaming to Feynard and be pressed into service for the Forest against his will.
He
shook his head.
Alliathiune drew away. “
Kevin? Good Kevin? Is ought amiss?”
Moonlight glistened in the corners of her eyes.
Her pupils were huge in the semidarkness. His gaze sought to penetrate their depths, divine her secrets, and grasp the mystery of her nature. He wished a lightning bolt of understanding would strike from the heavens and make it all clear.
“Did I do wrong?”
She breathed rapidly, as taken with the moment as he was.
Kevin, to his everlasting surprise,
blurted out, “Can we do that again?”
“Excuse me?”
His smile crinkled his eyes at the corners, but his heart quivered within his chest. “I’m not sure I got it quite right the first time, dear Alliathiune. Has the world stop spinning for you? Is it only the two of us, in all Driadorn, for whom the stars sing?”
“You are a
very silly man,” she said, closing her eyes and tilting her head upward. “Kiss me again and I’ll let you know.”
* * * *
Softly they trod through the darktime, hearing the sounds of celebration behind them slowly become swallowed up in ambient noise of the great waterfalls that leaped down from the heights of Elliadora’s Well to form Driadorn’s seven great rivers. For a time they stood within the Sacred Grove, not speaking, simply being together.
The heart of every Dryad was compassion, he thought. Where was the compassion in an act that required
her death? A blackmail and an attempted suicide; a mystery hidden for five thousand Leaven seasons! Why? This would take courage of a league far greater than facing Dark Wizards and Elemental Dragons. Was he ready to help her die? Maybe he should just stand her at the edge of a cliff and push–that would be easier. Not this reverse seduction, him pretending not to know what was happening and she, the enchantress, slowly reeling in her willing accomplice.
The Dryad began to sing.
Alliathiune’s low humming blended with the darktime sounds at first, so that it was some moments before Kevin perceived the enchantment melodiously woven about him, a silken-threaded caress of magic that drew him into her song, and from there into her dance. Suddenly her tiny bare feet were skipping across the grass, twirling them about the Elliarana in a crescendo of breathless passion, before spinning them out into the open once more. Kevin danced as he had never danced before. The song lured him on, lifted him, made anything and everything possible. The magic quickened primal parts of his being. His feet tapped from place to place with fey lightness, his heart tripped, and his entire world narrowed to her laughing lips and deep hazel eyes, fixed on him as she sang her ancient Dryadsong–a celebration of life, of the Forest, of the longing whisper of wind amongst leafy boughs and the joys of roots digging deep into loam, drawing nutrients from the soil, of the timeless rhythms of budding and growing, aging and dying. The deep, brooding, immutable magic of Driadorn’s Mother Forest pervaded it all, sung into being by words older than the most ancient of its trees.
Kevin’s joy was immense
. He was lost in the wonder of it all. If this were his last living memory, he thought hazily, then he would sink untraceably in a torrent of ecstasy the like of which he had never imagined. Curiously, the implicit surrender gave him a breathtaking freedom. He was released from the old demons–this was so different, so soft and intimate, so right! He was released into love, knowing at last the power to love Alliathiune unconditionally, to love her with every fibre of his being.