The Wood Nymph, the Cranky Saint

long as I can remember. The trees are mine to tend, but even they always grow old and die eventually, in spite of my care. They take the only way that leads out of the ever-repeating cycle of life here on earth, but that way out is closed to me.”

Her voice dropped even lower. “I know I don’t think of time the way you humans do, although the hermit has tried to explain it to me. You go from a world of time to a world of timeless ness when your souls are set free by death. But I am not sure I even have a soul. The hermit has told me that I will not meet God face to face, if I ever meet Him at all, until the end of infinite time, when the world itself shall end.”

She lifted her head almost sharply and tossed her hair back over her shoulder, frowning at me in earnest. “I am immortal, but not with the immortality that the hermit tells me is reserved for mortal humans. While the world lives, I live, and I revere the God whom Eusebius taught me created it. But according to the hermit I shall not pass on to spiritual immortality, nor even become weary of living and find rest in death. The saints, including my old friend Eusebius, may appear over the seasons to the hermits here, and even some times to other men, but they do not speak to me.”

This took care of my hope that she might know what the Cranky Saint actually intended. “But-”

“But I have not become weary of the world,” she said without giving me a chance to speak, and in her normal cheerful tone. There was now not even a trace of a shadow in her expression. For someone who never had contemplate her own death, it must be hard to be serious for very long. “There are always surprises here in the world, such as young wizards.”

“What was that all about?” Evrard asked me in an undertone, but I shook my head. I was even more convinced than I had been that there was no reason, whatever the bishop might think, to try to move the wood nymph out of the Holy Grove.

“Let me offer you some honey in which to dip the strawberries,” said the nymph.

I took a sip from the cup in my hand and wondered if the nymph herself deliberately set out to forget some of the experiences of the uncounted millennia she had lived, either because they were unpleasant or just because there were too many of them. But if so she managed to be selective in what she forgot, with an under standing of the magic involved that was certainly beyond me.

The conversation shifted at once to other topics, and nearly as quickly I began to lose track of what we were discussing. The nymph’s conversation was as unexpected, yet as internally consistent-and as difficult to remember-as the dreams one has when first drifting into sleep. The minutes could have been the seasons within a forest, each with its own events, but in retrospect all timeless and the same.

I looked down at the cup in my hand and realized I must have drunk a number of glasses of the nymph’s icy water. In spite of the disconcerting effect of watching myself forget, talking to her was so pleasant that I would have been willing to continue indefinitely.

As each new topic arose, it was crystal clear, and I thought with admiration that the nymph was not only charming but witty and highly informed about the practice of magic. With each topic, as we laughed and traded quips, I thought I could not possibly forget this conversation. But as we turned to a new subject, even while that subject became brilliantly clear, I realized that the former was fading from my mind.

The only part of the day’s conversation I was able to reconstruct afterwards was her attempt to explain the lives of birds to us. She whistled until finches and thrush flew from all over the grove to land on the branches nearby. They chirped to her, and she to them, in apparent perfect understanding. Although they all seemed to have nothing magical about them, their colors were more brilliant, their eyes brighter, their songs sweeter, than any birds I had ever seen.

“We’d better leave soon, if we’re going to the duchess’s castle,” I managed to say at last. I had only intended to stay in the nymph’s tree for an hour or two, and we must have been here far longer. Even suggesting we leave required a major effort of will.

I glanced upward to try to guess the time from the sky and was startled to see it was already dark. And then I realized it was raining, a light steady rain that tapped on the leaves around us but touched us not at all. I had the vague recollection that it had been raining for some time.

“You may leave if you wish,” came the wood nymph’s warm voice from the shadows, “or if you like you can spend the night here with me.” I knew, even without seeing her, that she was not addressing herself to me, or even to both of us. She was speaking to Evrard.

He knew it too. “I would very much like to stay, Lady. Daimbert, what will you do?”

“Evrard, I-”

“I am free,” he said meaningfully, “and that means I am free to choose.”

I knew better than to stay where I was not wanted. “I’ll go back to the apprentice hermits,” I said. “They can practice their hospitality some more.”

Wrapping a protective spell against rain around me, I floated down from the tree, landing lightly next to Evrard’s heavy footprint. Long ago, I had put a spell of light on my belt buckle. Because the buckle was made in the shape of the moon and stars, I had thought it appropriate to do so, but I had always been disappointed that it had never glowed very brightly. It would not have sufficed the night before, to light the path for two mounted men, but when I turned it on now it glowed softly, giving just enough light that I was able to grope through the grove amidst little swirls of mist, fly over the waterfall, and continue down the valley toward the stone huts.

Our mares were where we had left them, standing contentedly head to tail in the warm rain. I continued past them to the hut where Evrard and I had passed the previous night.

The light from my buckle showed a blanketed lump in the corner. It thrashed suddenly as I came in, and the leader of the apprentices sat up, looking at me with startled eyes.

“I’m very sorry to disturb you,” I said contritely, “but would it be possible to ask you for hospitality again tonight?”

Without answering, he jumped up, seized his blankets, and ran out into the night. I went to the doorway and was fairly sure I saw him enter another one of the huts. I would not have wanted him sleeping out in the rain on my account.

I unfolded the saddle blankets we had left in the corner with our saddles. Tonight I had both mine and Evrard’s, and the damp air made me glad I did. My stomach growled, but I did my best to ignore it. I felt surprisingly weary, as though I had run a great distance today, instead of sleeping late and then spending many delightful hours talking with the nymph. The steady drum of rain on the slate roof over my head lulled me quickly to sleep.

V

I awoke near dawn, unsure what had wakened me but suddenly and abruptly fully conscious. The sound of rain had ceased. I breathed very quietly through my mouth, not daring to open my eyes or even move but convinced that someone-or something-was in the hut with me.

Whatever it was, it seemed to be trying to be as silent as I. Very slowly, I opened my eyes, just far enough so that I could see through the lashes. The predawn light was still dim. Next to my face were two horny bare feet. The toes appeared unusually large.

Against my will, my heart pounded violently and my eyes flew open. Saint Eusebius, I thought, had appeared to me.

My eyes moved upward, to a long ropy beard and then to a face where sharp eyes looked back at me from beneath heavy white eyebrows. I realized after one dreadful second that this was not a vision of the saint. He smiled kindly. It was the old hermit.

He sat down companionably next to me. “I am sorry if I wakened you, my son,” he said. “But I wanted, if possible, to speak with you before my apprentices arose.”

I sat up slowly, pushing back the blankets. “What do you want to discuss?”

“I wanted to provide reassurance, both to you and to your friend the royal chaplain. That young man takes his spiritual responsibilities so seriously that I fear he may forget the words of Christ, ‘My yoke is easy and my burden light.’”

I let this assessment of Joachim pass without comment. “Well, I’m hoping to reassure him myself,” I said.