work, and keep her. That was all she could hope for now. In fact, if she got less, she would not be hoping too much longer for anything. She started off toward the bridge.
The crutch dug under her armpit; her leg ached. But she had hours before sundown. One of a dozen people, she clumped across the bridge and turned onto the path up the mountain.
The other travelers soon turned off, and she was alone as she climbed. The path wound steadily upward, rockier and narrow between tall pines. The crutch slipped on the stones and she almost fell. She should try to walk without it; her leg seemed to get stronger when she used it. But it hurt more too, to walk without the crutch.
Far behind her, someone called out. She shivered. The voice was too far away to tell who it was but in her heart she knew it was Palo.
She could stop. Go back. Take whatever he deigned to give her. He wasn’t so bad, quick-tongued and sometimes funny. She imagined the drudge work of keeping house while he lay around, as her father had. Then the drudge work in bed at night. She hobbled along; he was far behind; he would give up soon. The path narrowed still more and turned a sharp bend around a boulder, and she stopped, startled.
Ahead of her the path divided in two. The left-hand way wound on up the mountain, paved with jagged rocks and overhung with scrawny trees.
The right-hand side led off through what seemed a glade, where the sun streamed in through tall, fair oaks and lit the flower-dappled grass between them, and the path led easily downward, smooth and wide.
She gulped. She had been up this road before, not often, but enough to know this right-hand path had never been here before. The old man’s words came back to her.
A place where you could be made whole, and beautiful, and happy again—
Behind her, closer, Palo called.
Uncertainly she took a step forward, into the right-hand path.
The air was warmer here. The sunlight touched her face. She walked on, hitching along on her crutch, the ground deep with leaves, soft underfoot. The trees seemed to spread their arms over her, like a ceiling overhead, so she walked down into a dark tunnel. The wind blew through their leaves and they whispered like voices, too soft to hear the words.
A wave of uncertainty broke over her: She should go back. She turned and saw, far up at beginning of the path, where the sunlight shone, Palo’s dark shape against the afternoon sky. Then, coming up the other way, she heard the bustle and laughter of a crowd of people.
She turned toward them, wondering where they had come from. They gamboled toward her, bright and pretty as a flock of butterflies, girls and men in beautiful clothes, gathering up armfuls of wildflowers as they passed through the grassy glade at the far end of the tunnel of oaks. Fioretta drew aside, to let them go by, but they did not. They gathered around her, mirthful and bright-eyed, and took the gathered flowers and wreathed her in them. She stood, too amazed to move, drenched in buttercups and violets and sprays of yarrow, and the crowd around her parted.
Through the gap came the old man. He had shed the gray cloak. He looked much younger, his beard darker. He wore white, head to foot, a gown, a peaked cap. He said, “Welcome home, Fioretta,” and took her by the hands, smiling.
She could not speak; glad, and grateful, she let herself be drawn forward, into the midst of these fair and merry people. They hurried her down the road. The trees ahead parted, and across a flowery meadow, a castle tower streamed a red pennant against the violet sky. That was where they were going, that white spire above the forest.
She thought suddenly of Palo, and turned and looked back, but he was gone. Good, she thought, relieved, and turned forward, toward the wonders that awaited her.
She had known, even then, that there would be a cost, but then she had not cared.
FROM THAT MOMENT on, she had been beautiful. Her legs were quick and her feet sure, her hands graceful, with delicate fingers; her hair was like spun silk, braided with ribbons and jewels. She wore a satin gown that glistened with embroidered figures and on her feet were soft leather shoes. That first day she sat on a raised dais beside the wizard-king, looking out over his great pillared gilded hall, and watched his glittering, exuberant court flirt and laugh, dance and declaim before them.
The hall was wide, and yet full of light, from lamps standing everywhere. Round golden pillars held the roof up high above them. The crowd whirled and dipped across the floor in a constant gaiety. And she was their queen. One by one they all came and bowed down before her. Servants brought trays of bread and fruit and cheese and she ate until she was stuffed.
She put her hand to her face; the scar was gone, her cheek as soft as a rose petal. Her leg was straight again; she was whole again.
Before her passed a constant stream of amusements. There were jugglers and tumblers, which made her laugh, and singers who played so tunefully she held her breath to hear them. She turned to the man on the throne beside her, and he smiled, and patted her arm. She wondered what to say to him, how to thank him, but he only nodded, and gestured toward some new fancy. She wondered how long this would last.
A clown in red pants brought out a bear, which turned in circles, smirking. Girls wearing almost nothing commanded monkeys in little red hats to ride dogs, and the dogs to run in circles, and then stand on their hind legs and yap, the monkeys clinging tight.
Three men rushed out bearing on their arms a host of brilliant birds that shrieked and flapped their wings, deafening. She put her hands over her ears at their screams, and beside her the wizard-king gave her a sharp look and waved his hand and said something, and abruptly they were ponies.
A little group of musicmen sat down below the dais, tuned their lutes and patted their drums, and the court began to dance. The wizard turned to her. “Dance, my dear one,” he said to her. “Let me see you merry.”
“With you?” she asked, shy; he seemed so solemn, too majestic to dance, and in spite of her gratitude, she did not really want to touch him.
“No, no,” he said, with a smile. “I will watch.” He gestured her toward the round dance forming on the floor. “Show me your grace and beauty, my queen.”
She stood, delighting in her nimble legs. She ran out neat-footed as a goat to the spreading circle of girls in the center of the hall. Without thinking, she knew every step perfectly, and she whirled and dipped so elegantly everybody else stopped and gathered to see it. The music was beautiful. The dance was a song her newly perfect body sang. But when, out of breath, she went back to the edge of the floor, to let someone else have a place, she heard the wall behind her murmur.
She turned her head, looking out of the side of her eye. The wall was of pale stone, the surface carved intricately into vines and leaves. At first she saw nothing, but then, in the spaces between the leaves, eyes appeared.
Desperate, gleaming with tears, they turned on her, and through a crevice between the stone vines a hand reached out.
She jerked herself forward again, her heart pounding, and stepped out a little into the middle of the floor. Out of reach. She would not see this misery. She was too happy. She could dance, and she had never eaten so well, and she was beautiful. That was what mattered. She made her way back to her place by the wizard-king.
But now she saw bits of people everywhere, eyes in the columns, too, hands, and feet, and the tables, she saw, had human legs, and the braziers were the bottom halves of people, with their open bellies full of fire. The lamps were long thin girls, all gilded, their hair aflame. When she looked down, she thought she saw the floor was made of twisted bodies jammed together. Yet it was smooth and hard as stone. She lifted her gaze to the happy whirling courtiers around her, and her heart froze.
She stood beside him, and said, too loudly, “I loved the dancing.”
The wizard said, “You were the most beautiful dancer there, my Queen Maeve.”
Then from the crowd suddenly a woman strode forward who was not joyous and not laughing. Her eyes flashed with anger. She cried, “No! I won’t have this—I was there, yesterday—”
Fioretta stiffened, her mouth falling open. She turned toward the wizard, and he gripped her arm, leaning toward her. His gaze turned on the angry woman. “Be warned,” he said, in a deep, harsh voice. “Remember what you were before.”
The woman flung her arms out to him. She was beautiful, tall and shapely, with long black hair and red lips.
