into the ground at the house's center, but there was no furniture other than beds of fresh green leaves. Danali explained that this was a house of healing; here we would remain until our bodies and spirits were whole again.
After setting a guard around our house, Danali saw to our every need. He had food and drink brought to us; he had our clothes taken away to be mended and cleaned.
That evening he led us under escort to a hot spring that bubbled up out of the ground near a grove of plum trees Several of the Lokiiani women climbed into the water with us and used bandruls of fragrant-smelling leaves to scrub us clean. One of them, a Pretty woman named Iolana, immediately captured Marams eye. She had long brown hair and the green eyes of all her people, but she was almost as small as a child, standing no higher than the top of Maram's belly. The difference in their sizes, however, did not discourage htm. When I remarked the incongruity of a moose taking up with a roe deer, he told me, 'Love will find a way, my friend. It always does. I'll be as gentle with her as a leaf settling onto a pond. Don't you find that there's something about these little people that inspires gentleness?'
I had to admit that, their bows and arrows not withstanding, the Lokilani were the least warlike people I had ever met They laughed easily and often, and they liked to sing to the accompaniment of each other's whistling or clapping of hands. They spoke with a light, lilting accent that was sometimes hard to understand, but they never spoke harshly or raised their voices, to one another or to us. Why they were so kind to us after nearly murdering us remained a mystery. Danali told us that all would be explained at a council to be held the next day, when we would be summoned to meet the Lokilani's queen. In the meantime, he said, we must rest and restore ourselves.
Toward this end, he later sent a beautiful woman named Pualani into our house. She had long, flowing chestnut hair and eyes as clear and green as the emerald she wore around her neck. They gleamed with concern as Master Juwain showed her the wound that Salmelu had cut into my side. With great gentleness, she pressed her warm fingers into my skin all around the wound, both in front and where his sword had emerged from my back. Then she had me drink a sweetish tea that she made and told me to lie back against my bed of leaves.
Almost immediately, I fell asleep. But strangely, all night long I was aware that I was sleeping, and also aware of Pualani pressing pungent-smelling leaves against my side.
I thought I felt as well the coolness of her emerald touching me. My whole body seemed to burn with a cool, green light. When I awoke the next morning, I was amazed to discover that my wound had completely healed. Not even a scar remained to mark my flesh and remind me of my sword fight.
'It's a miracle!' Maram exclaimed when he saw what Pualani had done. In the soft light filtering through curving white walls, he ran his rough hand over my side. 'This wood is full of magic and miracles.'
'It would seem so,' Master juwain said as he too examined me. 'It would seem that these people have much to teach us.'
As it happened, Master Juwain had much to teach them. When Pualani returned to check on me, she and Master Juwain began discussing herbs and various techniques of healing. She grew excited to discover that he knew of plants and potions of which she had never heard; then she invited him to walk among the trees so that she could show him the many medicinal mushrooms that grew in the Forest and nowhere else.
Later that day, after they had returned, Danali came to our house to escort us to a feast held in our honor. We all put on our best clothes: Maram found a fresh red tunic in the saddlebags of his pack horse while Master Juwain had only his newly cleaned green woolens. Atara, however, unpacked a yellow doeskin shirt embroidered with fine beadwork; it made a stark contrast with her dark leather trousers, but I liked it better than her studded armor. As for myself, I wore a simple black tunic emblazoned with the silver swan and seven stars of Mesh. Although I gladly left my mail suit in our house, I was more reluctant to abandon my sword.
The Lokilani, however, wouldn't allow weapons at their meals. And so Maram left his sword behind, too, and Atara her bow and arrows, and together we stepped out from our flower-covered doorway and followed Danali through the woods to the place of the feast.
The whole Lokilani village had assembled nearby in a stand of great astor trees.
There must have been nearly five hundred of them: men, women and children sitting on the leaf-covered ground and gathered around many long mats woven of long, green leaves. I saw at once that these mats served as tables, for they were heaped with bowls of food. Danali invited us to sit at a table beneath the boughs of a spreading astor, along with his wife and five children. And then, just as we were taking our places, Pualani walked into the glade. Her hair was crowned with a garland of blue flowers, and she wore a silvery robe that covered her from neck to ankle.
Although we had supposed her to be quite young, she was accompanied by her grown daughter, who turned out to be none other than Iolana. With them walked her own husband, a slender but well-muscled man whom Danali introduced as Elan. He surprised us all by telling us that Pualani was the Lokilani's queen.
Pualani took the place of honor at the head of the table with Elan to her left. Master Juwain, Maram, Atara and I sat to one side of the table facing Danali and his family.
Iolana knelt directly beside Maram, and they both seemed quite happy with this arrangement. She gazed at him much more openly than would any maid of Mesh.
Without fanfare, toasting or speeches, the meal began as Pualani reached out to pass a bowl of fruit to Elan. I saw that at the other tables surrounding us, the Lokilani were circulating similar hand-woven bowls. There was much food to heap on top of our plates, which were nothing more than single but very large leaves. As Danali had promised, all of our meal had come from trees or bushes in the Forest. Fruits predominated, and I had never seen so many served in one place, blackberries and raspberries, gooseberries, apples and plums. There were cherries, pears and strawberries, too, in great abundance, as well as a greenish, apple-like thing that they called starfruit. And others. It was all quite ripe, and every piece I put into my mouth burst with fresh juices and sweetness. They made good use of the many seeds and nuts, which included not only familiar ones such as walnuts and hickories', but some very large brown nuts they called treemeats. Danali said that they were more sustaining than the flesh of animals; they tasted rich and earthy and seemed full of the Forest's strength. The Lokilani cooked! them into a thick stew, even as they baked a bread of bearseed and spread it with various nut butters and jams. As well, we were passed bowls of green shoots that I had thought only a squirrel could eat, and at least four kinds of edible flowers. For drink, we had cups of cool water and elderberry wine. Although it seemed this last was too sweet to drink in quantity, Maram proved me wrong. He let the Lokilani refill his cup again and again even more times than he refilled his own plate.
'Ah, what a meal,' he said as he reached for a pitcher of maple syrup to drizzle over his bread. 'I've never eaten like this before.'
None of us had. The food was not only more delicious than any I had ever tasted, it was more alive. It seemed that the essence of the Forest was passing directly into our bodies as if breathed into our blood. By the time the feast ended, we all felt quite full but also light and animated, ready to dance or sing or tell stories according to the Lokilani's wont. As we discovered, our hosts and captors were quite fond of such after-dinner celebrations. But first, Pualani and the others had many questions for us, as we did for them.
'We should begin at the beginning,' Pualani told us in a voice as rich as the wine she poured us. Her deeply- set eyes caught up some of the color of the emerald necklace she wore, and I thought that she was not only beautiful but wise. 'We would all like to know how you found your way into our wood, and why.'
Since I – or rather Altaru – had led our way here, Master Juwain, Maram and Atara all looked at me to answer her.
'The 'why' of it is easy enough to tell,' I said. 'We were fleeing our enemies, and our path took us here.'
I told her something of the Stonefaces who had been pursuing us for many miles through the wilds of Alonia. Of Kane I said nothing, nor did I relate my dream of Morjin.
'Well Sar Valashu that is a beginning,' Pualani said. 'But only the very beginning of the beginning, yes? You've told us the circumstances of your flight into the Forest but not why you've come to us. But perhaps you don't yet know. Too bad. And sad to say, neither do we.'
Maram, after taking yet another pull of his wine, looked at her and slurred out, 'Not everything has a purpose, my Lady.'
'But of course, all things do,' she told him. 'We just have to look for it.'
'You might as well look for the reason that birds sing or men drink wine.'
She smiled at him and said, 'Birds sing because they're glad to be alive, and men drink wine because they're not.'
