Vash turns to stone

By the time Vash had realized where they were headed, it was too late to subtly alter their course. He’d been so grateful Iylaine was wandering towards her own house that he’d forgotten their path would come square up against this wall. He’d forgotten this old farm.

“Iylaine—”

He only touched her arm, but Iylaine jerked away and tried to fling herself over the wall before he could stop her. Hindered by her cloak, she banged her shin painfully enough to cry out, “Ow!”

They froze. The echoes of her cry clattered between the house and the barn. Vash held his breath, listening for a sound of life in the house. Nothing yet.

He lifted a boot onto the wall and leapt over.

“Let me help you,” he said.

Iylaine smiled at him, mistaking his resignation for gallantry. She stepped up onto the wall, and with his hands on her waist she sprang up lightly as a fawn.

Up and over the wall she went—and abruptly her weight fell onto his arms and shoulders, and for an instant he was holding her up.

Only for an instant. She swung her legs over, her skirts flapped against his hip, and she thumped onto the bed of moss that grew in the shadow of the wall.

It only lasted an instant, but her weight and solidity stunned him. The emptiness he felt was due to no hollowness in her. She was warm and weighty and real.

She slipped away and he turned to reach for her waist again, grasping after that brief sensation of something there…

“This used to be my father’s farm,” she said.

Vash let his arms fall. “I know.”

“I used to live here when I was little. Did you ever come see me back then?”

“I came with my mother.”

Iylaine glanced back, but she did not wait for him to catch up.

“We used to live here, just my father and me. It hasn’t changed much, except they cut down some of the trees, and the rest of them are bigger.”

Vash caught up with her after a few long strides. “Let us hurry across the road and return to the woods,” he whispered. “I don’t like being in the open so near a house.”

Even as he said it, Iylaine stopped at the corner of the house and looked up into the eaves. The thatch was ragged, and the plaster was flaking away to reveal the rough daub and wattle beneath, but Iylaine ran her hand up a timber and murmured, “It hasn’t changed.”

Vash turned his face away, offering her some privacy for this tryst with her past. But he fidgeted beside her, anxious to be gone and frustrated by her failure to see that everything had changed. Everything.

“I think it was the happiest time of my life,” she said, stroking a beam with the flat of her hand. “When it was just me and my Da and my white cat that got killed. He took care of me all by himself. And cooked for me! Can you believe it? My Da?”

She turned to him, smiling.

“It wasn’t fancy cooking, just porridge and eggs and what all, but it was good food for a growing girl. He was good at everything he did in those days.”

She looked down at the dirt she was scuffing with her toe, and peeked up again through her loosened hair. Vash’s impatience flagged at the sight of her shy glance and her wistful smile.

She said, “I’m sure he would try to be fair and say he loved all his children equally, and had good times with them all. But I bet he secretly thinks this was the happiest time of his life, too. When it was just the two of us, and he was just a farmer.”

She turned her head towards the field of knee-​high barley they had just crossed, all silvery-​smooth and rippling in the moonlight.

“It wasn’t just a farmer to him,” she said, her voice fading until she was only thinking aloud. “It’s what he loved to do. He was a good farmer. The best farmer.”

She fell silent and looked out over the wall at the field her father had once tilled. Vash’s gaze went no farther than the wall. It was spattered with lichens now, and leaf litter had sifted into the crevasses, but Vash remembered having seen it clean and new. The very stones must have been turned up by Egelric’s plow and stacked by Egelric’s hands.

Iylaine turned back to Vash and asked, “What do you think happens to somebody if you take him away from what he loves and make him do things he’s not good at and never will be good at? Because that’s what they did to my Da. Later on, he used to take off his shirt sometimes and go plowing or reaping for a day, just for fun. He said he did it to tease Wyn and Alred, but how do you think he felt deep down inside when they laughed at him for that?”

She stopped and stared at Vash as if expecting an answer, so he roused himself and tried to think of one. She saw him do it, and a startled flash lit her face as she saw just how far she had let herself prattle on.

Just as suddenly, that glimpse of vulnerability was masked by a twisted smile and a brittle laugh. Vash turned and reached for her as she strode past him into the yard, uncertain he had even seen it except for the pang it left behind. She had always confided in him with perfect faith, even when he’d been a stranger to her. This too had changed.

But Iylaine, he saw, was headed for the barn as if her father still owned it.

Vash charged after her.

“Iylaine!” he pleaded softly—she was lifting the bolt—“We mustn’t stop here! We mustn’t go inside!”

“Oh, pish! My father built this barn, didn’t he?”

“But it’s no longer your father’s barn.”

“So what?” She pulled the doors open. The hinges grated, but at least they did not shriek.

She stood a moment in the doorway, contemplating the shadowy interior. Vash hoped she would be content to look. He dared not lay a hand on her arm, fearful she would only twist away from his attempt to control her and dash inside.

“It never stopped you and Paul, did it?” she asked. “Didn’t you trespass in men’s barns all the time?”

The animals were beginning to stir. A horse poked its head out over a stall door. In the farthest reaches of the moonlight, huddled geese untucked their bills from beneath their wings and stretched out their long necks.

“We were boys,” Vash whispered. “We were…”

“We were elves,” Iylaine concluded softly for him. Her hems rustled scraps of straw over the cobblestones as she stepped inside.

“Iylaine!”

The horse whickered and reached for her with its snuffling muzzle, and Iylaine swerved to greet it.

“Hallo, old fellow,” she murmured. “Hallo, old boy.”

Vash plodded after her. What could he do? He couldn’t drag her out of there unless he didn’t mind waking all the men for a mile around.

When he stopped at her side, she turned her head briefly and gave him a furtive, fawn-​eyed glimpse through her tousled hair. “My father used to stable his gray mare in this stall.”

Vash bowed his head and sighed. He could not feel what he had once felt, but it was more than a memory when she spoke to him so softly: not a storm breaking over him, perhaps, but the fragile perfume of rain showers wafted from distant lands.

“He was so proud of that horse,” she continued in her caressing murmur as she patted the animal’s neck. “His first saddle horse. He bought her with his own coin. Earned her by the sweat of his brow.”

Her rhythmic stroking of the horse seemed to lull her as much as the animal, and she fell silent. Vash waited beside her, wavering between his determination to see her safely home and his desire to hear her gentle voice again.

Finally he blurted, “Have you heard from your father?”

Her hand stopped on the horse’s neck. “No.”

She turned away and stepped into the barn. She paused, looking stately and sad from behind, but suddenly she scampered across the aisle and flung herself at the narrow ladder.

“I wonder what’s up in the loft!”

“Iylaine!”

Vash followed, but she already had her skirts pulled up as far as her garters and was stumping up the ladder one-​handed.

Vash turned his eyes away as the flash of her white stockings passed his face, but he heard her disappearing overhead, and all his determination returned in a flare of anger.

“You should not go up there!”

She giggled and kept thumping. The ladder shook and swayed until Vash grabbed it to steady it, and when Iylaine vanished into the loft it went dead.

He heard her laughing and taking rustling steps through the hay. The ladder began to quiver again. When he realized it was due to his own shaking, he charged up after her.

“Enough! I do not want to play games with you!”

He pulled himself up and stopped at the edge of the loft, panting harder than the climb warranted.

A laughing shadow moved before a curtain of utter darkness, just out of reach. “I am not playing games with anybody,” she said. “I just wanted to see what’s up here.”

“If you can see anything at all, your eyes are better than mine!”

“Oh, pish!”

She rustled off through the loose hay. Vash tensed and watched her dim form melting into the darkness. A trace of his old anxiety awoke in him: a bodily fear that she wasn’t paying attention, that she would step right into an open trapdoor or onto a missing plank, that he wouldn’t be there to save her. He yearned to go after her and pull her to safety. But she would probably twist away and scream.

“We’re elves,” she said. “We can almost see in the dark. But if you insist…”

He heard a thunk, and then a band of blue sky opened beyond her. She leaned, and a pair of tall shutters creaked open, filling the loft with a glow that was almost blinding after squinting into the dark.

“There is nothing up here,” he said, “but old hay.”

“That is just how I like my lofts.”

She spun on her heel and strode back to him, head high as a queen’s. Her hay-​trimmed cloak trailed behind her.

“I spent many hours of my life hiding in haylofts, you know. Haylofts were the one place I could be alone and still feel safe.”

She patted Vash’s waist as she swept by.

“After all, I never knew when you were nearby and when you weren’t. And who knows what the children had to do to me before you would have stopped them.”

Vash winced. He knew, he knew, he should have done more—or he should have done less, and never revealed himself to her at all. This was what compromise had bought them.

The rustling stopped, and she said, “I must know the inside of every loft in Nothelm.”

Her voice was softer now, almost wistful, but it sounded perilously close to the edge. Vash turned his head.

Only half the loft was walled off from the barn below, and she stood in the open half. The night wind blew in one window and out the other, ruffling the wayward curls that trailed down her back.

“There was only one loft I was never allowed to play in,” she said. “This one.”

She stood very still, looking down into the barn. Vash thought of the cobblestones twelve feet below, and a liquid heat raced through his blood and pounded in his ears.

“Do you know why that is?” she asked.

She glanced back at him. She was awaiting an answer. This was his chance.

He swallowed and walked softly down the length of a plank, scarcely stirring the hay. When he reached her side, after calculating how she might best be grabbed if she started to fall, he asked, “Why?”

“Because,” she said, breaking into a haggard smile, “my mother hanged herself in this loft.”

O Mother. The fire in his veins turned to ice.

Iylaine laid a hand on the timber beside her to steady herself, and reached up and grabbed one of the ropes that dangled from the rafters.

Vash scarcely breathed, but his eyes darted, watching every move and countermove, calculating her center of gravity from instant to instant. If he touched her the wrong way now… If she tried to twist and scrabble away now…

“She wrapped a rope around her neck,” Iylaine explained, running her hand down the length of the rope, “and tied a knot, and walked right off the edge and never looked back. It must have been right at this very spot.”

The rope slipped from her fingers and she turned to Vash.

“My father—”

Vash flung up his arm and grabbed the timber on the far side of her, fencing her in.

The slam of his hand against the wood startled the sickly smile off her face. Then she scowled at him even as she shrank beneath his looming height. His heavy breathing stirred her hair.

“Now,” he whispered, “you are playing games with me.”

“I most certainly am not!”

She ducked away and flounced into the safety of the loft. Vash dropped his arm and slumped in sickened relief. His shaking limbs were flushed with heat, but all the blood rushed out of his face, leaving it prickly and numb.

“I was just telling you,” she said, “why I’ve never been in this loft.”

She tried at first to tuck back the hair that had fallen loose, but grew frustrated and started twisting the pins out of her braid as she talked. Her hands were trembling in spite of the boldness of her voice.

“My father was the one who found her hanging there,” she said. “What do you think that does to a man?”

Her pins pinged onto the planks, leaving a glittering trail behind her. Vash realized she was approaching the window, and his stomach churned again with fear. O Mother, what was he to do? Would he be trapped here with her all night, watching her pace from edge to edge?

“It is something,” he said, steeling his voice with the authority of a prince, “that no man should have to endure twice.”

Iylaine turned and gave him an unreadable look while she shook down her hair. She seemed on the brink of saying something, but her expression hardened, and she chose other words.

“He endured it three times,” she said. “One wife hanged herself, one was murdered, and one died in childbed.”

She tugged her arms out of the sleeves of her cloak and tossed it onto a pile of hay, keeping her gaze fixed on Vash all the while. Vash dared not take a step closer so long as she glared.

“None of those were truly his fault, of course,” she said. “And yet he was just responsible enough each time that he can blame himself for their deaths. What do you think that does to a man?”

Vash threw up his arms in surrender. He wondered what she thought she was doing to an elf.

“Iylaine,” he pleaded, “what do you want me to say? What do you want me to say?”

Her gaze softened, then wilted, then dropped from his face entirely.

“I don’t want you to say anything,” she mumbled.

She thumped down onto the hay pile, and flopped back to sprawl upon the cloak she’d spread over it. Vash’s stomach sank. Did she plan to sleep here tonight?

“I’m just telling you why…” She trailed off and stared up at the rafters, twisting and weaving her hair between jittery fingers.

Vash crossed the loft and squatted beside her in the hay. “Why, what?” he prompted.

“I don’t know.”

“Why you brought me here?”

Her face crumpled and she nearly sobbed. “I don’t know why! Not to play games!”

Vash sighed. He propped his elbow on his knee and pinched the bridge of his nose. What was he to do? He was wrong to be angry with her. She radiated unhappiness like embers throwing off heat.

He pinched his chin and looked up at her. She still stared at the roof, quite still except for her panting breast and her fingers churning in her hair.

Finally Vash crawled onto the pile of hay and settled in on his hip beside her. He had all night. He would have done no less for any of his cousins, after all.

Iylaine heaved a teary sigh and laid her head back on her hand. “Talk to me,” she whispered.

“If I had known you wanted to talk,” Vash grumbled, “we might have arranged a safer place to meet.”

Alred could have arranged something. Why had she not asked him? Alred’s presence—or at least his approval—would have made it all less murky.

“We’re safe up here,” she insisted.

“We are until those geese waddle out into the yard and begin quacking.”

Iylaine snorted. “Honking,” she said softly.

“Sorry?” Vash looked down at her and saw a fragile smile playing over her lips. His breath caught, and for an instant he was startlingly aware of their location relative to his.

Only for an instant, and the feeling passed, like a glittering mist vanishing the moment the rising sun reveals it. Vash looked away, but the mist seemed to have dampened his cheeks and forehead.

“Honking,” she repeated. “Ducks quack. Geese honk.”

“Oh,” he sighed, sinking a little deeper into the musty hay. “I never remember those. Paul is the elf to ask about English animal sounds.”

“He’ll need them, now he has a baby to sing to.”

Vash did not want to think about that. He had felt truly happy for Paul and Cat. He had not felt sorry for himself at all. And then he had let his tongue run away with him and conjured up the toddling, babbling ghost of the son he would never have.

He leaned his head back against the wall and asked, “What shall we talk about?”

He was certain she would want to talk about her father, as she had stubbornly been doing for the last quarter hour.

Instead she wormed her hand into her purse. “This,” she said.

She lifted something small and dark before his face, pinched between thumb and finger. He could not see it properly in the dark, but with a sickening suddenty he knew just what it was.

“Oh, that,” he sighed. He let his head thump back against the wall and closed his eyes. “I should not have done that.”

The hay rustled beneath her. “Why not?”

“Because I could not be certain you would understand what I meant by it.”

“How could I understand?” she asked sourly. “You never even told me the story. But if you don’t want me to have it, you may have it back.”

She held it out to him, but he gently pushed her arm down. “No, keep it. I did want you to have it. It’s…”

He stared at her fist, clamped tight around the stone. He had wanted her to have it. It had meant so much to him at the time—more than she could ever know. That had been the beauty behind the gesture. He had taken some melancholy comfort in the thought.

Now, though… now it was just a stone. Now it meant more to her than to him. He felt cold and dead as a stone inside. The horror of that was the one thing he still felt passionately in his blood and in his bones.

“It’s one of the stones you left for me once,” he explained to her. “I kept it and left another for you. I had it in my room for years. I held it so many times. I slept with it. I probably wet it with my tears.”

Iylaine lifted the stone again and studied it for herself, seeing it with new eyes. Vash fell silent, embarrassed by his old excesses of emotion. Yet they had felt so real and so urgent at the time. He had felt so alive.

“It’s the last stone you’ll ever leave for me,” she whispered.

Vash shifted on the creaking hay. “I think… that would be best.”

“Can’t we even be friends?”

He sighed. “I think… Perhaps. Someday. But the stones, you see, they are not for friends. So we had best not do that any more.”

She closed her fist around the stone and let her arm fall limp into her lap.

They lay side-​by-​side for a while, she sprawled on her black cloak, and he propped awkwardly on elbow and hip, sinking into a pile of old hay. Bats flapped past the open window. On the cobbled barn floor below, the geese ruffled their bills back beneath their wings and settled in to dream.

“Will you tell me the story now?” Iylaine whispered.

Vash looked down at her face. It was closer than before, but she seemed farther away than ever, sunk deep beneath the surface of the tears that sparkled on her eyes. “Now that it’s too late,” they said more clearly than words.

“If you like,” he said. “It will not be as pretty as it should. I do not tell stories as well in English.”

A twinge of guilt drew tight around his throat. He had told grand stories in English to Kraaia. He had a rapt audience in Aelfie and the little girls, too.

But they were not elven stories, he reminded himself. Kraaia liked Greek stories and fables: stories she already knew, so that she could cut him off at the best parts, tease him when he pretended to forget the details, and substitute subversive morals of her own devising.

Telling his own people’s stories would not be the same. Least of all this one.

“I don’t mind,” she said. “I like to hear you speak English. You have a pretty voice.”

“Thank you.” He managed to smile down at her. “And so, in English,” he began in his loveliest voice, “I believe you say: Once upon a time.”

Iylaine broke into a smile so dreamy and wide that a tear ran down her temple and into her hair. Vash did not dry it.

“Once upon a time,” he said, settling on his back in the hay, “there was an elf prince.”

“A handsome prince!” Iylaine gasped.

Vash blinked, shaken. Kraaia was always teasing him about handsome princes and kissing toads.

“Sorry,” Iylaine mumbled. “In English stories, if there’s a prince, he’s always handsome.”

“In elven stories, too,” Vash said, recovering. “So I did not think it was necessary to mention it.”

Iylaine smiled.

“Now, in this time I am telling you, once upon a time, the world was very new. The world was so new, the moon still had her polish, and the mountains were yet smooth.”

He swept his arm in a wide arc, conjuring horizons and shining skies.

“And there were no dead trees lying in the forest, and no mud in the lakes, and no stones in the streams. All was meadow once upon a time. Tall grass grew in the forest, between the trees. And green grass grew in the streambeds, brushed smooth as an otter’s pelt by the stream.”

He stroked his hand down his sleeve, conjuring clear water over flattened grass.

Iylaine whispered, “Sounds beautiful.”

“It was a very beautiful land, in truth. And the prince liked to wander about in it, for it was the land of his people, and he loved it. But one day while he was wandering, towards the end of winter, when the snow was just beginning to melt, the prince smelled a lovely breeze from the east. So he decided to follow it, and he wandered and wandered until he reached a stream, which was the edge of his people’s land. And what do you suppose the handsome prince found on the other bank of the stream?”

Iylaine guessed, “A beautiful flower.”

Vash smiled down at her, and she smiled up, a little shy and a little proud of her idea.

“You forget, kón’anín, it is a love story I tell. He found a beautiful princess there.”

“Oh.” She blinked, and her smile saddened.

“The princess was the daughter of the king of the eastern land. She and the prince had never met, but they fell in love at that instant. They stayed together and talked and sang together all that day. And just as the clouds were touched with pink, the prince laid the princess down at his side, saying to her, ‘On the first day of spring, I promise you, I will go to your father and ask to have you as my bride.’ And they loved each other until the pink clouds went dark, and then it was night, and they had to return home. They promised to meet on the banks of the stream as often as they might, but the prince had many duties, and the princess’s father watched her closely, so they knew it would not be often. The princess was so unhappy that she cried a tear. And her love was so pure that the tear did not fade into the stream, but instead turned into a stone. And it lay where it fell on the grassy streambed. A black stone.”

“Oh…”

Vash looked down. Iylaine’s face wavered and went still. He leaned his head back against the wall.

“The princess,” he continued, “said to her love: ‘So long as this stone endures, so long shall last my love for you. And if I come, and you are not here, I shall cry a tear, and when you find it you shall know that I was thinking of you.’ The prince replied, ‘And by my tears you shall know, too, that I came and did not find you.’ And so they parted.”

Vash heard a tiny, bleating whimper beside him on the hay. He looked down and saw Iylaine sucking on her bottom lip. Her face quivered as she fought back tears. She must have felt him move, but she did not look up at him.

“Shall I stop here?” he whispered.

She shook her head.

“Are you cold, cousin?”

She shook her head again, but she sniffled, rustled closer, and tried to lay her head on his arm. Vash scooted down in the hay to lend her his shoulder instead. He would no longer be able to see her face. Perhaps that was just as well.

“So the winter went on, and they met at the stream when they could, and they loved one another and were very happy. And when they could not meet, which was most of the days…”

A flicker of movement caught Vash’s eye, and he stared down his nose at Iylaine’s hand lying on her skirt. Her thumb alone moved, subtly caressing the stone. Just so had she caressed his finger the last time they’d met… the last time she’d touched him as her husband…

His heart contracted, and for the space of a crushing, gasping breath, he felt again just what he had felt then.

The feeling passed, but a spasm of grief remained closed around his throat, choking off any further words. He leaned back his head and dried his tears as fast as they arose.

It was such a stupid story—not worthy of the two of them at all. Ridiculous obstacles, easily pushed aside. Caricatural villains, adoring allies, and fathers who unbent and consented if only one asked a few times.

And a happy ending. A stupid, happy ending for the stupid prince and his stupid princess. He’d been stupid himself to believe in it for so many years.

“What happened?” Iylaine prompted softly.

Vash started. “Sorry.”

Bright Mother, his voice was a croak. He coughed and tried to return to his story without letting on that he was suffering to tell it.

“On most of the days, they could not meet. When the princess came to the bank alone, she cried a tear, and the tear turned to stone. And when the prince came, he…”

O Mother, he could not. He could not.

“When the prince came, something strange happened. He cried, but his tears were only water, and did not turn to stone.”

Iylaine was very still. Vash’s heart beat faster.

“So he… So he took a lump of wood, and burnt it to charcoal, so that the princess would believe it was a stone. And so the winter went on. But one day, near unto spring, a fragrant breeze blew from the south, and soon afterward a group of elves came from the southern lands to pay a visit to the prince and his family. And these elves were very handsome, and their ladies played on their flutes such music as the prince had never before heard. For many days and many nights there were feasts and music, and the first day of spring came and went, and the prince forgot the promise he had made to the princess.”

Vash paused, listening, waiting, almost expecting a horde of elves—the ghosts of ancestors—or even the moon in the sky—to descend on him in fury at his twisting of the old tale.

“Until one day,” Vash continued, heart pounding, “when the wind turned, and a breeze blew from the east again, and he remembered. Then he rushed to the bank of the stream, and there he found many, many stones, one for each day he had stayed away. Black stones, and pink stones too, and he did not know what this meant. So he slept on the bank that night, and in the morning the princess came. She was not as beautiful as she had been, because in her grief she had scratched her face until it bled.”

By now Iylaine had stopped caressing the stone. Now she held it in a fist so tight he could feel the tension all up along her arm, where it was pressed against his.

“The pink stones were her blood,” she whispered.

“That is right. Her love was so pure that the blood she shed turned into stone. She told the prince again, ‘So long as these stones endure, so long shall last my love for you.’ The prince was very sorry, and they loved one another on the banks of the stream, and he promised her, ‘On the first day of summer, I shall go to your father and ask to have you as my bride.’ So the spring passed, and sometimes they met, and sometimes they cried. The princess left black stones behind, and the prince left bits of coal. And one day a breeze blew from the west, and with it came elves who were very beautiful, and whose ladies sang songs more beautiful than any the prince had ever heard. There was feasting and music and singing, and again the prince forgot his promise, and the first day of summer came and went. Until one day the wind turned, and a breeze blew from the east, and the prince remembered his love. He hurried to the bank, and he found there many, many stones, almost covering the grass at the bottom of the stream. Black stones, and pink stones, and white stones.”

“You never left me white stones,” Iylaine said.

Vash craned his neck to look down into her face.

“I did, kón’anín,” he said gently. “You did not know what they were.”

Iylaine’s face twisted and locked into a grimace of anguish. Then she pressed her mouth against his sleeve and tried to stifle a sob.

Vash let his head thunk back against the wall. Why had he told her that? Why was he telling this story at all? At the least he should have stuck to the stupid, childish, happy version.

Druze often complained that the elves of latter days had neutered their stories as the men did their bulls, but bulls were dangerous beasts with wicked horns. Druze spoke proudly of the tales of his grandfather, so laden with sorrow and regret that the Shalla had been obliged to cut out his tongue, for too many elves were dying of grief.

Of course, even Midra said Druze was mad.

“What were they?” Iylaine asked in a small, sniffly voice.

Vash wiped his hand down his face. “What, cousin?”

“The white stones.”

He sighed. “Oh, they… they were her teeth. Her grief was so strong, she ground her teeth together until they fell out. And they turned to stone because her love was so pure. She told the prince, ‘So long as these stones endure, so long shall last my love for you.’”

Vash peeked down at Iylaine. He saw little more than one wide blue eye behind his shoulder, watching him raptly, and a mess of pale hair, still rippling from her braid. But he could feel the heat of her breath through his coat, and the gentle, roving pressure of her mouth, lipping over the smooth fabric of his sleeve.

“Now,” he said, looking up at the rafters in an attempt to ignore the warmth and softness beside him, “she was less beautiful than before, but the prince loved her more than ever, and he promised that he would go to her father on the first day of autumn and ask to have her for his bride. But, cousin,” Vash prompted gently, “do you know what happened then?”

Iylaine lifted her mouth from his sleeve long enough to speak. Her delicate face looked both childish and wise.

She guessed, “A breeze came from the north.”

“You are good at stories,” he whispered. “That is right. A breeze came from the north, and with it came many elves. They were more handsome than any elves the prince had ever seen, and their ladies knew the most beautiful dances. So there was feasting, music, singing, and dancing, and the prince forgot all about the princess, and the first day of autumn came and went. The leaves fell, and then the first snow. And do you know, cousin,” he confided, his head close to hers, his breath whispering over her warm hair, “the wind does not often blow from the east in the autumn. Many moons passed before the prince remembered the princess.”

Iylaine twisted on the hay and snuggled closer to his side, waiting to hear what the princess had left behind this time. Vash wondered whether the soft weight he felt on his arm was one of her breasts. O Mother of Beauty. He was a practiced storyteller and knew how to pace himself, but tonight he was getting out of breath.

“He hurried to the stream again, and he found stones and stones and stones: black and pink and white. So many that the grass at the bottom of the stream was covered over and could be seen no more. But there was something else there. There was…”

Vash’s heart was galloping. This was his last chance to veer back towards the old story’s ending, if he chose.

He tipped back his head and lingered for a moment over the image he was about to evoke for Iylaine. A pillar of pure grief. An unhappy ending. Even his saddest songs had always been songs of longing, with some hope for the future. Now he was about to conjure eternal loss.

“There was a tall stone on the bank of the stream. A dark stone, flecked with pink and white and glittering with crystals.”

Vash hinted at its height with a wave of his free arm.

“Slowly the prince understood that it was the princess herself. Her grief was so immense that she died there, and her love so pure that her body turned to stone. And now that the stream was full of small stones, it babbled as it flowed, saying over and over, ‘So long as these stones endure… So long… so long…’ And the prince… the prince…”

Vash shook his head sadly, touching his cheek to his lost wife’s hair and lifting it away again, touching and lifting, touching and lifting.

“The prince understood too late how much he loved the princess, and he died there, too, on the opposite bank. And his love was so pure, once upon a time, that he turned into a willow tree and stood crying over the stones in the stream, year after year after year. And now, kón’anín, now, the world is very old. The mountains are rough and gravelly, dead trees lie in the forest, and the lakes are full of mud. That stone on the stream bank has been worn away to dust by a thousand thousand winters of wind and ice and rain. So long did the princess’s love endure. But there will always be willows on the banks of every stream, for ages of ages, crying tears and tears and tears.”

Iylaine lay still and quiet and warm against his arm, turning the stone over in her hand. Vash’s heart slowed. No hordes of elves descended. And in the fields outside a fog gathered, blurring the sharp shadows cast by the moon.

At last Iylaine said softly, “It is a beautiful story. But I know why you never told it to me.”

“Why?”

“Because I would have known you loved me.”

Vash bowed his head and picked at the wisps of hay on his coat. “I was not permitted to tell you so, not even with stories. But I always thought you knew. Or would know, the day you were old enough to think about it. How I waited for that day…”

His eyes filled with tears, and he was tempted to let them spill over. It was a melancholy pleasure to feel something again, even if it was only sorrow and regret. He wondered whether she would dry his tears if she noticed he was crying.

But there was no tenderness in Iylaine’s voice when she replied. “You thought I knew because you’re used to having everyone love you.”

Vash’s hand stilled.

“I’m not like you, with all your family and cousins and friends. Do you realize that?”

She sat up on her elbow and looked down on him. The ice-​blue glow of her eyes made him grateful he had kept his tears inside.

“And I’m not like other girls when it comes to boys,” she said. “Girls like Gwynn and Connie. Every time they see a boy they like, they think about every tiny thing he says and does, and they think every tiny thing is proof that he loves them. But I’m the opposite. Whenever I saw you, I only saw the signs that you didn’t care about me that much at all. Every time I thought you might care about me in a special way… That just seemed too good to be true. Too good for me.”

She flopped back onto the hay.

“That’s just how I look at things,” she muttered. “And no wonder. Look at the life I had. My own parents abandoned me. All four of them. What do you think that does to a little girl?”

Oh, the poor lady, the poor princess, the poor child. Vash’s throat ached from holding back tears, and he did not trust himself to speak. Instead he reached over to where her arm lay on her skirt and clasped her wrist in his hand. Her blood drummed hot against his fingers.

“You had to be a little more specific, Vash,” she said stubbornly. “I couldn’t guess how you felt, if I only saw you once a year. That is where you elves are so wrong. You think that because two elves are bound together, of course they will love each other without even trying, and everything will be so obvious. But it doesn’t mean anything, does it?”

Vash swallowed. She sounded as if she expected him to agree, and he wasn’t certain he even understood what she was saying.

“It doesn’t change anything, does it?” The challenge in her voice gave way to sympathy, and she rolled over and squeezed his arm. “Oh, Vash, I could have told you so if you’d just asked me after last summer. It doesn’t change anything, being unbound, does it?”

She brushed her cool hand over his forehead, like a mother soothing her child.

“It just makes you lonelier,” she said, “because now you don’t even feel close to me inside. That is one thing you elves got right. I miss that so much.”

O Mother. Her soft weight was pressing him down into the hay.

“I miss you so much,” she whispered. She stroked his dry cheek with the backs of her fingers. “I love you so much.”

Vash wanted to shake his head, but sharp stems of hay were stabbing his ears and neck. He thought he ought to protest but he didn’t know what to say.

Iylaine heaved herself up until her breast lay heavily on his breast, and the warm, wet breath of her parted lips blew over his mouth. Vash tried to turn his face aside but she was so close, she was everywhere.

“Do you remember,” she whispered, “that kiss you gave me when I was eight years old, and how you promised you’d want it back someday? I’ve been keeping it for you all this time.”

She laid her fingers alongside his jaw and tipped his face up to hers. He squinted his eyes shut in a last, desperate attempt to make this stop happening. Then her lips brushed his.

Bright Mother. This was no cool, prim little eight-​year-​old girl’s pucker. In nine summers the kiss had ripened, sweetened, grown hot and heavy, even fallen open, revealing the wet, faintly metallic flesh within.

Her mouth molded his, softening his lips and sliding them between hers until they were slick and slippery, and somehow their slightest movement became an answer to her kiss. O Mother. Now he knew.

She drew her fingertips down the side of his neck, rasping over his stubble, and he sucked in a sharp breath at the unexpected pleasure of it.

Iylaine pressed her mouth firmly over his. A delicious heat soaked through his skin, relaxing the clenched muscles of his jaw and shoulders.

O Mother. He had to stop this.

Her tongue darted between his teeth, and her hand slid down his collarbone and beneath his coat, tugging his shirt collar tight around his neck.

Vash twisted his mouth away from her kiss and whispered, “Iylaine! We cannot do this!”

Iylaine smiled, and her hand slid back up his neck to clasp him by the jaw again.

“You and your rules,” she murmured teasingly.

She kissed him. The heat of her mouth was another shock of pleasure on his wet lips, already chilled by their brief exposure to the night air. He moved his mouth in response to hers, trying to buy himself time to think. But it was getting harder to think.

Her fingers combed through his hair, trailed down his neck, slid beneath his coat again. She dragged her hand down his chest as she kissed him, pulling his shirt taut over his skin. He gasped again and arched slightly beneath her hand.

Bright Mother. She knew things about him that he didn’t know about himself.

“Iylaine!” he whispered against her seeking lips. “We must not! You are married!”

“Married,” she intoned, shaking her head so that the tips of their noses just brushed. “Marriage is nothing but the men’s way of binding themselves together. It doesn’t matter either. I’m married to Malcolm, but I love you.”

Vash tried to speak a protest, but Iylaine slid her hand over his chest and side again, and he only gasped and shuddered. An aching desire surged through his blood.

“I’ve always loved you,” she said, lowering her voice to a rumbly purr. Her hand concentrated on his chest now, trying to feel out a nipple through his shirt. “You’ve always loved me. We were made for each other. It’s not too late.”

She kissed him, and he let her. He told himself he needed to catch his breath. He felt so weak and warm he could scarcely keep his head from sinking back into the hay.

What was happening to him? Was this love after all? Her love had survived the end of their marriage—might not his?

Was it possible to love someone and yet feel such anxiety, such frustration, such impatience, such annoyance, such anger—yes, even anger!—as he had felt with her this night?

But he knew he had to stop this. He needed time to think. They both needed time to think.

He turned his mouth away from her kiss, and she went on kissing him down his chin.

“Iylaine—”

“Whisht!” She kissed the side of his neck. Slow, hot kisses.

“Iylaine!”

“Whisht!”

She lifted her head only long enough to shush him, and then she was kissing the sensitive skin beneath his ear. But to quiet him she tried the thing that had worked so well before: she dragged her hand down his chest, over his ribs, and onto the muscles of his belly, all knotted with the strain of not surrendering to her.

Vash lay rigid and panting, but inside he was sinking into a yearning so deep that it felt like his old, unending ache for her. Perhaps it had not died. Perhaps it could yet be satisfied.

Her hot lips played over his neck, and the heat soaked into his body, spread and flowed and sank down to pool in his groin. His hips twisted on the hay, seeking after the hand that lay on his belly, so close and so achingly far away.

But the treacherous hand slid away from his seeking and smoothed his shirt back up his chest.

The hand pressed so firmly that it even dragged his shirt up a short ways along with it. He felt a tug on his belt. A teeth-​chattering chill raced through his blood. O Mother.

Iylaine slowly kissed her way down his neck, and her steamy breath heated the wet trail she left behind. Her hand slid up and down and up again, stirring his shirt over his rigid torso. Again he felt the tug on his belt.

“No!” he gasped.

He tried to catch her wrist, but she struggled with him playfully, and his arm was so wilting and weak that she easily shoved it down into the hay. She held it there, and pushed herself up just long enough to gloat over his helplessness, grinning wetly at him out of the shadows. A gust of night air rushed in, chilling the side of his neck.

“No, Iylaine,” he panted. “Not like this.”

She lowered herself over him again, laying more of her weight on his body, crushing him into the hay. Her hot breath seared his neck.

“Not like this,” he pleaded. “Let’s go—let’s go somewhere warmer, somewhere nicer…”

He did not know what he would do with her afterwards, but he needed to get out from under her now.

“I will keep you warm,” she whispered.

She wriggled lower and slid her hot tongue down his neck.

“No, Iylaine, don’t—”

Her mouth reached the base of his throat, and she released his wrist to tug on his collar. Never had he been so grateful that it fastened in the back.

“Iylaine—”

“Whisht!” She shushed him with a last blast of her hot, panting breath.

She gave up on the collar and inched her body farther down his, writhing upon him like an eel. Icy air swirled over his exposed neck and soaked down to the bone. His arm lay numb and prickling beside his head.

And then her hand returned. His shirt yanked free of his belt. A chill breath swirled through the fine brown hair of his belly. A cold hand stroked him through the taut fabric of his pants.

His body shivered a last time and went rigid, petrified except for his heaving breath.

Outside, a bat flapped past the window. In the cobbled barn below a goose ruffled its wings in the midst of its dream.

And from the loft Vash stared out at stars he had once thought he would never see again, lying still as a stone at the bottom of a stream.