Changing the World: All-New Tales of Valdemar

about it. When she could, she visited it just to sit and be, to listen to the wind in the leaves and breathe the sweetness of the flowers that bloomed in the grass.

Today she had grievances to nurse. She was not sure she wanted the calm the grove could give. Still, the day had grown warm, and the shade under the trees would be blessedly cool.

She wandered in, nibbling a handful of sweet berries. The cool green smell and the soft shade wrapped around her. She yawned, suddenly and powerfully sleepy.

Under her drooping eyelids, in sight blurred by warmth and sleepiness, she saw that some of the sheep had taken refuge in the grove: a moving cloud of whiteness. It drifted toward her; she braced for the jostle of woolly bodies around her knees.

Warm breath blew in her face, sweet with the scents of grass and flowers. She looked down at silver hooves—single, not cloven—and up into the deepest, bluest, most breathtakingly beautiful eyes that had ever been.

:Hello,: the shimmering white creature said.

The voice Nerys heard in her head was warm and deep, with a faint, musical lilt. It was the most beautiful voice she had ever heard, with her ears or otherwise.

“Hello,” she answered politely, as her mother had taught her. “My name is Nerys.”

:Mine is Coryn,: the Companion said. Of course that was what he was. He could not possibly have been anything else.

Part of Nerys was dancing wildly, and part was telling itself to calm down, stop being an idiot, she was only dreaming. But it felt as real as it could possibly be.

She stretched out a hand. She was prepared for the vision to vanish, or for her fingers to tangle in sheep’s wool.

His neck was as smooth as water. His mane was long and waving and as fine and soft as the fringe of her mother’s prized silk shawl. He was warm and solid and very much alive. He had a smell, sweet like his breath, but with a hint underneath of the horse smell she loved.

He was real. He was talking to her. She was Chosen. She looked at him, asking permission. He dipped his beautiful white head.

He was much taller than her pony, but he lowered himself to his knees for her. She gripped that silken mane and swung her leg over his broad back.

When she was settled and comfortable, he rose smoothly erect, tossed his mane and pawed. Her heart fluttered a little. Companion or no, Chosen or no, he was a tall and powerful stallion, and she was used to riding an opinionated but thoroughly safe pony gelding.

She felt as much as heard his snort of amusement. :At least you can ride,: he said, :more or less.:

That stung her pride. She forgot her fear and dug her heels into his sides—remembering just a fraction too late that a Companion was not, all appearances to the contrary, a horse.

He was kind. He bucked her into a bush instead of hard ground or stony creek or the thicket of brambles that was covered with green fruit.

The second time she mounted, she was moving stiffly, but she was not about to back off. “Please,” she said. “Will you walk?”

:Simple intention will do,: he replied, :and a little encouragement from your seat.:

He had not moved while he spoke to her. It dawned on her that she was supposed to follow instructions.

“Companions, nothing,” she muttered. “They ought to call you Tyrants.”

His amusement was all the answer she got. She glowered at him. Then she willed him to walk and bumped with her backside.

:Not exactly,: he said, :but just this once, I’ll accept it.:

His walk was huge. It was as big and swooping as her pony’s best canter. It made her clutch his mane and try her best not to clutch his sides. It was alarming, and exhilarating, and more than she could ever have imagined.

She would never have dared to ask him to trot. He gave it to her of his own will, and that was even bigger and almost as smooth. When he flowed into a canter, in spite of all her fear and fret, she was grinning like a fool. It was glassy smooth, yet deeply and subtly powerful.

He circled the whole of the high pasture, catching her pony on the way and sweeping him in their wake. It was better than any dream she had ever had.

When he stopped, she burst into tears. He waited out the storm and offered no commentary as she wiped her eyes in fierce embarrassment. When she was as composed as she was going to be, he said, :I have to go now, for a while. Be patient; go on about your tasks. Tell no one that I came to you. I promise I will come back.:

All her high joy collapsed into bafflement and something like grief. “You’re going away? How can you do that? I thought—”

:Just for a while,: he said. :That is a promise.:

She tried to argue, but he deposited her neatly on the grass beside her pony, ruffled her hair with his breath, turned and vanished into the dazzle of sunlight and sudden tears.

Kelyn had won this round of her long battle with Nerys, and she was proud of it. But her hair felt odd and tight in its pins and braids, and her long skirts were heavy and made it difficult to stride out. As for riding her blue-eyed pony, that was hardly a womanly thing to do.

A woman had more than enough to occupy her, between keeping the house, overseeing the servants, and making sure that the menfolk were fed, clothed, clean, and content. And, now that she was a woman, Kelyn had to consider her duty to the family and the business: to find a husband who would help them both to prosper.

“It is a pity Margit’s child was a girl,” her mother sighed—as she did almost every day. She never added the other thing, the thing that mattered so much to so many people in the town: that Margit’s child and Alis’ daughter hated each other with such single-minded intensity.

Kelyn felt guilty about it as often as not. But she simply could not stand the girl. Just being near her made Kelyn want to hit something—preferably Nerys.

On that particular day of summer, while her womanhood was still fresh and uncomfortable, like a new pair of shoes, Kelyn finished all her tasks early and won an hour to herself.

In this new life, she was expected to fill it with needle-work or study, or else with dreaming about her future husband—if she had had any candidates, which she did not. The face that came to her when she closed her eyes was long and white, with glassy pale eyes, and it was buried in the grass of its paddock.

Her pony was growing fat already with lack of exercise. He needed to get out—and so did she.

Her old, childish clothes were still in the press, tucked under the stiff new skirts and petticoats. She put them on with a kind of shamed relief. They were so much more familiar than the gowns she wore now, so much softer and more comfortable.

They were freer, too. She could move in them: raid the kitchen for provisions, groom and saddle a pony, mount and slip out through the gate in the back garden and ride up the hill toward Wizard’s Wood.

No one in Emmerdale remembered why the forest of pine and fir was called that. It had the magic that all forests have, of sweet scents and dappled shade and green silences. But no wizard had ever come out of it, and while the Mage Storms raged, none had touched either Emmerdale or the Wood.

Kelyn’s mother, who sometimes startled people with the things she said, had observed once that maybe the Storms passed the town by because of the Wood. No one had paid any mind. Emmerdale was a perfectly ordinary, perfectly unmagical place.

Sometimes Kelyn regretted that. No one from Emmerdale had ever been Chosen, and no Mage had ever come from there. Her dreams of magic and of Companions were only dreams.

As she rode under the trees, following a path that led to the heart of the Wood, she rejected that thought— fiercely, almost angrily. Even if she was a woman now, she was not done with dreams. There was magic in the world. She would see it, feel it, even touch it—someday.