A Hero's Tale (41 page)

"Tamar will go home on midsummer's day," she said.

"What?"

"Someone has to go."

I stared at her.

"You can't," she said. "I can't."

"But Tamar is too young. She still has so much to learn."

"Her teacher will go with her."

"Sparrow?"

"Yes," she said. "Sparrow will exercise my authority until Tamar is old enough -- and wise enough -- to take the place of leadership."

The plan made so much sense that I could think of no way to object to it. My mother was right. We couldn't leave our people leaderless. One of us would have to go home.

"It's best, I think, for everyone," my mother said. "And Tamar will do better there."

I knew what she was getting at. Already Tamar showed signs of resenting my new position. It was one thing to be only an apprentice in a house where your sister was a warrior. It was something else altogether to be subject to her authority. Not even the reflected glory she had once imagined for herself could make up for it.

"And I think it will be good for Sparrow," said my mother.

She was right about that too. For Sparrow it would be an opportunity. Though she was now a warrior, no one in Merin's house would forget that she'd been born a slave. In my little village in the hills, she would be accorded all the respect that was her due.

I had one last hope.

"Has Sparrow given her consent?" I asked.

"Yes," she said.

Because she would soon be leaving, I tried to spend as much time with Sparrow as I could. She had asked me to teach her how to use a bow, and every afternoon we spent an hour practicing.

One day I couldn't keep from making an attempt to change her mind.

"I used to think you were ambitious," I said.

Sparrow turned to look at me. "What are you talking about?"

"Didn't it occur to you that I would have offered you any place you wanted?"

"That has nothing to do with it," she said.

"I don't understand why you want to leave us."

"Tamar can't go home alone," she said.

"That doesn't mean you're the one that must go with her."

"I chose to go with her," she replied. "I want to go."

"Won't you miss Merin's house?"

"Of course."

"And all your friends here?"

"Of course."

"And me?"

Sparrow set her bow down and approached me, and there, on the open hillside, she cradled my cheek in her hand and kissed me. I didn't resist her, but afterwards I glanced around, to see if anyone was watching.

"Even if I stayed," she said, "I would miss you anyway."

And then I understood that I was missing her already, and even if she remained in Merin's house I would miss her as much as if she left it, because I was missing what we could no longer be to each other.

On the morning of the spring festival, I woke in Maara's arms. We had our old room back. Namet claimed her old room too, the one next door. She first asked us if we minded, then assured us that she was growing a little deaf.

It was my favorite time of day, when we would wake before the household and have a few minutes to ourselves before duty called us out of bed. This morning, though, Maara was still sleeping soundly because she had stayed up late the night before, preparing for the holiday. I leaned up on one elbow, to gaze down upon her sleeping face.

A shaft of sunlight slipped over the windowsill and crept inch by inch across the bed. Fairy dust danced in the sunbeam, and everything it touched it turned to gold -- the worn wooden bedstead, the faded coverlet, the bronze of Maara's cheek. Before the sunbeam reached her eyes, I turned her face toward me and kissed her awake.

The moment we appeared downstairs the servants whisked Maara away to oversee yet another round of preparations. I wandered into the kitchen and made old Gnith a bowl of tea. She didn't remember that it was a festival day, but she enjoyed the tea. I held the bowl for her while she drank.

"Who are you?" she asked.

"Someone who cares for you," I answered.

I didn't ask a blessing. I already had everything I wanted.

I ate a little breakfast, then settled into a quiet corner in the great hall. Sparrow pestered me to join her and Tamar in the meadow by the river where the young people were gathering, but I sent them on without me. I had not forgotten how free I felt when I kept the holiday with the maidens of Merin's house. We enjoyed our freedom all the more because the people in authority left us to our own devices. Now I was one of the people in authority.

At midday I went out and joined them for the feast. Tamar mumbled something about a question she meant to ask our mother and went inside. Sparrow and I helped ourselves to dinner and sat down to picnic on the hillside.

"Where's Maara?" Sparrow asked me.

"Still indoors," I said. "It seems she always has too much to do."

Sparrow gave me a sidelong look. "Will she come out this evening for the dancing?"

"She will," I said, "if I have to drag her out of the house."

Sparrow laughed. "You suit each other."

I blushed.

"When did you know?" she asked me.

I looked back on the moment when I first beheld my heart's desire.

"It was the night I left Merin's house," I said.

Sparrow had been about to take a bite out of a joint of meat. Instead she set it down and stared at me.

"When did you know?" I asked her.

"Didn't I watch you mooning after her all summer?"

"You didn't say anything to me."

"Of course not," she said. "It wasn't my place to say anything to anybody."

"To anybody? Was it that obvious?"

"To everyone but you," she said.

"And Maara."

"She didn't know?"

I shook my head.

Sparrow knit her brows. "That's odd," she said. "I could have sworn Maara was angry with me."

"When?"

"Last summer. The way she looked at me sometimes, as if she wanted to accuse me."

"Of what?"

"Of holding on to you."

Sparrow took my hand between both of hers and squeezed it.

"Maara was right," she said. "I was holding on to you. I held on to you too long."

I was beginning to wonder what else I might have missed that was right before my eyes.

"I want both of you to know I'm sorry," Sparrow said. "If I had let you go, everything that happened might not have happened."

"Like what?" I asked her.

"Well," she said, "like Vintel's jealousy."

For the first time I thought about what would have happened if Vintel hadn't turned us out of Merin's house.

"If not for Vintel's jealousy," I said, "we would be at war. Or worse."

"Oh," said Sparrow. "I never thought of that."

"It would seem that everything happened for the best," I said.

Had everything happened for the best? It had certainly been best for Merin's house, for everyone in it and everyone protected by it. And how could I regret my time among the forest people or the friendship of Finn and Bru? Nor, I thought, would I give back a moment of the time I spent with Maara in the wilderness -- until before my mind's eye came the unwelcome image of Maara in Elen's bed. Of all the days of my exile I regretted only three, three days that had saved the lives of everyone I cared for, three days that had taken from me something I could hardly put a name to.

What I had lost in Elen's house I despaired of ever getting back. I found no one in Merin's house to heal me. My mother advised me to be grateful that Maara and I had been so quickly reunited, and I had before me her example, that she and Merin could set aside twenty years of hurt and misunderstanding.

I had a little better luck with Namet. She understood that it was not my love for Maara that had changed, but something deep within myself. She saw that I had lost the credulity of youth, which we all must lose, so that we can see the world as it is. And she saw that there was something more. When she asked me what else it was that troubled me, the only answer I could give her was that I feared to go again into the oak grove.

So it was there I went.

Under the trees it was cool and quiet. In the distance I heard the shouts and splashes of young people playing in the river, and from time to time a strain of music drifted by. I sat down in the center of the grove. This time I had no expectations.

The oak grove was a pleasant place. Dappled light filtered through the canopy of green above my head, and I lay back on the mossy ground to watch the patterns change. A squirrel scampered along a branch, then stopped for a moment to peer down at me. I watched as it leapt from limb to limb as easily as I would cross a creek on stepping stones.

A sudden gust of wind rattled the leaves. I overheard them whisper their secrets to one another. I couldn't make them out at all.

Perhaps I closed my eyes.

The sky grew dark, as though a thundercloud had swallowed up the sun. Under one tree, a deeper darkness gathered, where Maara had left behind a shadow that dared me to occupy the place where she had felt herself abandoned. I went to sit there. I heard no distant music, no shouts or laughter, no whisper of the breeze, but only the hollow echo of her loneliness.

On that night two years before, I came into a place where I felt love all around me. Maara had felt it not at all. At the time I could not imagine what she was feeling. Now I knew, as if I could inhabit the shade of her, feel the world from inside her skin, behold the world from behind her eyes. It was a feeling not unfamiliar. I had fallen into it before, in Elen's house.

For my beloved I felt a new compassion. How had she reconciled herself to such a feeling?

I knew well the lessons her life had taught her. Hadn't she taught them all to me, so that I could profit from what she had suffered? No wonder she was so determined that I achieve my destiny, because my success gave meaning to her suffering, which would otherwise be wasted, an unproductive labor, that brought forth nothing.

And I also knew what her life had caused her to believe about the world, that we are all alone here, and that though there may be unseen forces at work in it, they are at worst malicious and at best indifferent, oblivious to our joys and sorrows, unconcerned with the strivings of humankind.

My life had taught me just the opposite. Sheltered and comforted from birth by loving hearts and loving hands, I never doubted that the world itself has love at its center, and that in spite of adverse situations and events, ultimately all life is moved by love.

Then I understood. There was not something gone from myself. Something was gone from the world, and to find it I would have to return to where I lost it. I would have to return to the abyss.

I fell, and there were no arms to catch me. I was alone in the power of the deep. Where once I felt the Mother's arms around me, I felt now only the cold, the dark, the lonely place where there are no answered prayers, no hopes fulfilled, no dreams come true.

Yet this is where the hunters of the forest people find their power. They know they are alone, and they accept it. I could not accept it. It seemed too cruel. Were we made to no purpose, destined to wander through our lifetime in search of something we may never find?

What is it that we search for? Every child knows the answer. We search for love. Love is our shelter. Love is our purpose. Love is why we are here.

In the depths of the abyss I stood my ground, ready to do battle, only to find myself abandoned by my adversary. In this lonely place, I had no one to complain to, no one to blame. Instead my own heart became the battlefield, and the adversaries were within me. Within my human heart, hope and fear fought each other to a standstill, and I was caught between, between the hope that someone cares and the fear that no one does.

Someone touched me, took me up from where I lay on the cold ground, and held me fast against her heart.

"I searched for you everywhere," she said.

While I gathered my wits together, Maara let go of me and peered at me in the dim light. She didn't question me. She sat beside me, held my hands, and waited for me.

"When I found you here," I whispered, "what were you feeling?"

"That was long ago," she said.

"Don't you remember?"

"I remember."

"Tell me."

"I felt alone," she said. "I was alone."

"How did you bear it?"

"Not very well," she said.

"I used to feel love here," I told her. "I can't feel it anymore. Love never comes into the oak grove anymore. Just as it never came to you that night."

Maara took my hand in hers, turned it over, caressed my palm, then kissed it.

"No," she said. "That night love did come into the oak grove. That night you came into the oak grove."

She had given me the answer. Sometimes even now I entertain the hope that Love lives in the world independently of us, but when I am most courageous, I believe that love was born within the human heart, and that the survival of love in the world, as well as its ultimate triumph, is entirely our responsibility.

Under the trees it was growing dark. Through the branches I glimpsed the deep red glow of sunset, already fading into night. Music drifted from the meeting ground, where the bonfires had been lit.

Maara stood up and lifted me to my feet.

"Dance with me," she said.