inadvertently leaning so that they would seem upright. Finally she closed her eyes, and gripping Leafchaser's thick ruff let the wolf lead her through the wood.
The wind deformed those trees, but they changed, and survived… She wondered then, Have we elves also changed to survive this world, and if we have, what were we like when we began?
Only the wind answered her, and she could not understand what it was whispering. The brisk touch lifted the damp tangles of pale hair from her brow and tingled on her skin. It sang in her blood, stimulating her circulation until the throbbing in her head faded finally away. The wolf stopped then, and Goodtree let go of her and opened her eyes.
Below her lay a circular valley-no, a cup, a crater in the
heart of the mountain with a round lake in its center that blazed back the brilliant blue of the sky. There was meadowland around it, and groves of trees like none in the Everwood, all in exquisite miniature.
Goodtree gave a great sigh. There was a feeling here that set an odd tremor rippling through her belly-the same shiver that came to her sometimes when Acorn told his tales. There was power here; she could feel it, and she would seek it even if it proved too great for an elf-woman to bear.
She folded the lionskin and laid it down, slipped bow and quiver off her shoulder and set them atop it, and the long-bladed spear after. She would not need them where she was going. She must pursue this path fasting now. She pulled off her doeskin tunic then, and leggings and boots as well, scarcely noticing as the wind pebbled her pale skin. The Wolfriders went to their soul quest naked as they were born.
**Leafchaser, I am going down there. You must guard these things for me and let none come after until I return. Do you understand?**
Amber eyes stared into hers for a moment, then the wolf pushed her cold nose into Goodtree's hand.**Come too… hunt for you…**
**No! No hunting! I have to go alone! Please stay here and guard!**
The great wolf sat down, head slightly averted, tongue lolling as she panted in the thin air. She could not remember when Goodtree had tried to find her name before, and failed, but she recognized the finality in her elf- friend's sending. With a gusty sigh, she sank the rest of the way down and looked up at Goodtree.
**Will guard… Come soon…**
Three days later, Acorn and Lionleaper stood where Goodtree had stood, and looked down into the valley where she had gone. The sun still shone brightly, but far to the west cumulus clouds were capping the peaks with white towers. Leafchaser sat beside the pitiful pile of possessions that had been too much weight for Goodtree's spirit, but when the two elves began to seek a way down the slope after her, the wolf rose, snarling, to block their way.
Lionleaper looked at his companion helplessly. 'She told Leafchaser to stop us!' He supposed they could ask their own wolf-friends to get the she-wolf out of the way, but he was not sure they would obey.
'Goodtree doesn't want us to follow her!' exclaimed Acorn in sudden anger. 'We've hounded her for almost an eight-of-days, but we have to stop now-'
'Why?' Lionleaper began. 'We don't even know if she's still living!'
'Even if she were dying, we wouldn't have the right. This was her choice. And there's magic in that place. We can't go down there. Don't you yet understand?'
'No…' Lionleaper hunkered down beside the pile of abandoned clothing with a sigh. 'All I understand is that I had to follow her.'
Acorn's sudden smile transformed his angular face. 'So did I…' He lowered himself to the stone.
'The others are safe enough in the little vale at the top of the pass. I'll send Fang with a message for them,' said the warrior. 'Do you know enough stories to fill the time until she returns?'
Acorn laughed. 'Long ago, in the time of legends, the high ones came to the world of two moons…'he began.
By the end of the first day, Goodtree's belly was cramping with hunger until she wanted to scream. It had been that way when she tried this before, she remembered, and tried to distract herself by focusing on her surroundings.
For her vigil she had chosen a grove of what she called sun trees, for they were new to her, rising like columns covered
with smooth bark that had a golden sheen. Their leaves were a translucent pale green edged with sunlight, and the radiance that shone through them filled the grove with a gold-green glow. If she concentrated on it, perhaps she could feel the luminous warmth penetrating her body. Her heart shook with longing to understand the secrets of those trees.
Fill me! Transform me! she prayed, opening her awareness to the sensation as if she were trying to contact a cub who was just learning to send. And for a moment she did feel it. Then the demands of her belly distracted her. She swore, and settled herself to try again.
Sometime during the third day the hunger pangs left her. Goodtree looked down at her naked body with a curious detachment. Her breasts were still pointed and firm, but her hipbones jutted painfully and she could count her ribs. It occurred to her that several days of hard travel after a lean winter had not been the best preparation for fasting, but the thought had no power to disturb her now.
What was disturbing her was memory.
Living with the wolves made it too easy to see life as they did-a succession of events whose connections were rarely remembered or recognized. The moons and the seasons flowed by; cubs were born and the old were killed or died. But one cycle of the seasons was much like another, and those who died nourished the unborn so that nothing was really lost, only transformed.
It was a good way to live, a way that had enabled the Wolfriders to deepen their bonds to the beasts with whom they shared their lives so that both survived. But there were times when understanding cause and effect required a linear view of reality. Perhaps, once she had done this, Goodtree would never have to think this way again. But to understand who she was now, it was essential for her to remember who she had been.
With the same discipline with which she would have backtracked an animal to its den, Goodtree began to move backward along the paths of memory. The death of her father was a recent sorrow; the death of her mother more distant but in its way more painful, for Stormlight had died as violently as she had lived.
But how Goodtree's parents had ended did not matter. What was important was that with each death she had felt as if she had failed them, and there was too much that she could never say to them now. And yet somehow it still needed to be said.
They were so different! she thought in wonder. How could they have Recognized, and produced me? In theory, the offspring of such a union should have the best characteristics of both parents, or at best, something new. But I can't do anything unusual, thought Goodtree, the easy tears spilling from beneath her eyelids. Until I find my soulname, I don't even understand what every other grown Wolfrider knows! She shifted position on the grass beneath the sun tree as if she were in physical agony.
Mother! Why couldn't I have your courage?
The image of Stormlight came vividly to mind: midnight eyes bright and pale hair sparking wildly, preparing for the hunt as if she was going to war. Goodtree remembered sitting behind her mother on the wolf's back, clinging for dear life as they charged into a herd of branch-horns. She heard once more her mother's yell of triumph as the sharp spear bit, and relived her own terror when the murderous horns grazed her as the beast fell. She had sobbed hysterically all the way back to the hurst, and her parents had argued over it for hours- that was a painful memory too.
O my father, why couldn't I have inherited your calm patience?
She remembered the gentle abstraction in Tanner's face, already weathered by the years when she had been born. A lock of brown hair would fall over his eyes when he was
working-and he usually was working, always trying to refine the process he had invented to tan the leather the Wolfriders wore. She had wanted to help him, she remembered, so that he would be pleased with her, but the acrid preparations he used had blistered her hands, and the fumes had stung her eyes until she ran away, weeping. He and Stormlight had argued about that, too.
I cried a lot in my cub days, Goodtree thought distastefully, but maybe I had reason. When did I stop being so sensitive, and why?
A chieftain's cub was adopted by everyone in the tribe, and she had certainly never lacked for food or care.
