“He did? When was this?”
“The first year I came to Yurt. I had an encounter with the
“Oh, Daimbert, I’m sorry!” said Evrard, at once highly contrite. “I didn’t know. But you hadn’t said anything about it, and I never heard anybody mention it at the school.”
“They wouldn’t have.”
When the resulting pause seemed highly strained, I added, “I do hope you realize I have not become a pawn of organized religion. When I heard the duchess had hired you, I was delighted at the thought of having a wizard to talk to, someone whom I thought I would be able to under stand better than I could any priest, and who might even understand me.”
Silence fell again. Evrard did settle down at last and began to breathe deeply-doubtless dreaming of the wood nymph. I shifted, trying to find a less hard and bumpy patch of dirt on the hut floor, and pulled the scratchy blanket up around my ears.
I was drifting off to sleep at last when abruptly I was brought back to full consciousness by a distant, repeated call. It could have been an owl, a real owl, it could have been the horned rabbits, or it could have been something far worse. I lay perfectly still, but heard only Evrard’s peaceful breathing and the strangely ominous rustle of leaves. Talking to the wood nymph had removed the terrors of my predecessor’s cottage to a comfortable distance, but now they were back again in this dark hut, made worse by the winds of night and the slightly lighter rectangle that marked the open doorway. I listened for a long time, but the call did not come again.
IV
We did not wake until well into the morning. I sat up and looked across the hut to see Evrard just opening his eyes. He jumped up at once when he saw the sunlight outside. “It’s late. The wood nymph is going to wonder where we are.”
“And the apprentice hermits must be wondering when they’ll be able to have their hut back.”
“Do you think their hospitality extends to breakfast?”
But we didn’t see the apprentices when we came out. We checked my net for horned rabbits, but it had caught nothing yet. I renewed the paralysis spell, and Evrard dropped in some fresher herbs.
“Maybe the nymph will have something today besides berries,” he said as we scrambled up beside the little waterfall toward the grove. “A doughnut and a cup of tea would be even nicer.”
“I doubt the nymph does her own baking,” I said. “For that matter, I wonder where the apprentices get their food.”
“From the store,” said the city-bred Evrard.
“Not out here,” I said with a laugh. “They must grow their own lettuce, and we saw their goats, but I didn’t see a bake-oven.”
Evrard suddenly pointed upward. “Who are
I craned my neck to look. Tiny figures were descending the cliff, a short distance to our right. They seemed to be making their way down by handholds and toeholds. It made me dizzy just to look.
“Maybe,” I said, “the entrepreneurs have their first five pennies at last-or I’d guess even more, if they’re charging five apiece.”
“It’s going to take them a while to save enough to hire me if they can only manage pilgrims at this rate,” said Evrard.
I didn’t like to watch, but I couldn’t look away. There were three figures on the rock face, all robed in light gray. They descended slowly but steadily. In a few moments, the first, then the second and third, reached the ground.
“Maybe they didn’t want to go around by the road on foot because it’s so much further,” said Evrard.
“Well, they’d certainly reach the valley floor the fastest way possible if they fell off the cliff.”
They walked toward us, and I was able now to see that the three men all had deep cowls pulled over their heads and crosses embroidered on the shoulders of their robes. Pilgrims, I decided.
They saw us and stopped, apparently surprised to see two wizards in a holy hermit’s grove.
“Bless you, my children,” said the pilgrim who appeared to be the oldest. Then all three seemed to forget us completely. “Do you have the bread and the little bottles?” the old pilgrim asked the others.
“Right here,” said another. He pulled from his pocket a large loaf like the one we had eaten last night.
“Then let us proceed.” They walked purposefully toward the shrine at the center of the grove.
“If the apprentices have to rely on occasional pilgrims for their bread,” Evrard commented, “maybe it’s just as well we didn’t eat any more.”
A gust of wind caught the pilgrims’ robes, lifting them and wrapping them around their ankles. One had to stop and untangle his legs, shod in tall riding boots, before proceeding. But I was looking forward to seeing the nymph again and was nearly as uninterested in the pilgrims as they were in us. I glanced up to see pale tiny clouds coming in a thin but steady flock across the slice of blue sky above us.
Even though we had just been there yester day, the wood nymph’s tree seemed very difficult to find. I had begun again to wonder if she was deliberately hiding from us, when at last Evrard pointed to a deep footprint in the soft earth. “That’s mine. I came down last night faster than I meant to.”
I said again the spell to call the nymph, and a tinkling laugh came from the tree above us. We caught a glimpse of violet eyes and a beckoning hand.
But when we started flying up toward her, the nymph darted away, leaping lightly through the air, catching branches just in time to break her fall, swinging through the canopy of the grove. Evrard and I flew after her, almost catching her a dozen times. But every time, laughing and with her hair swirling around her, she dodged or spun away at the last second. Much less agile among the branches than she was, we kept getting leaves in the face just when we thought we had cornered her at last. But finally she returned to her platform, and all of us dropped to the cushions, panting and laughing.
This morning she had strawberries and the same icy, invigorating water she had offered us the day before. Evrard did not mention that he would have preferred tea and doughnuts. “Were you two sleepy heads this morning?” she asked, which made me look suspiciously at my cup, wondering if she had put something in it.
But I did not ask, deciding instead to find out at once what she knew about the Cranky Saint. She might have some idea why Eusebius wanted to leave. Although I remembered scarcely any of our conversation of yester day, I did remember the beginning. The sensation was that most of the rest had taken place years ago and had comfortably faded.
“Lady, I want to ask you something,” I said, putting down my cup almost full, though I was thirsty. She bent gracefully to offer me more berries. “Do you speak to the hermit of this grove and to Saint Eusebius?”
She looked away, out across the tops of the trees, and an expression passed across her face that might have been a frown. Evrard lifted his eyebrows at me questioningly, but I shook my head at him.
The wood nymph looked back at us again, not quite smiling. “The hermit and I speak of mortality and of God.”
I opened my mouth to speak and changed my mind. But she took my silence itself as a response.
“Yes, I have wondered sometimes,” she said slowly, “what it would be like to be mortal. You humans are born and live for a period, trying to create something in this world to match your dreams, seeking to achieve something you never quite reach. And when you become old and weary you die. But then, the hermit has told me, you come face to face with God.”
Joachim, I thought, ought to hear this.
“You live for such a short period of time,” she added, “that your goals and dreams can never all be fulfilled. Does facing God make up for this?”
I didn’t know what answer to give, but fortunately she didn’t seem to expect one.
“I don’t think I was ever born,” she went on, so softly that I had to bend toward her to hear. “The world has changed, and I have changed, but I do know I was here long before any humans first came to the valley.” Her head drooped forward, and her long hair almost hid her features. “I have lived here in the grove forever, or at least as
