Iylaine is scolded by an owl

Iylaine ducked behind a tree and waited for the grooms to pass. She had somehow managed to walk past the guards at Nothelm gate, but she did not care to take unnecessary risks. Inside the castle she had been nearly delirious with her desire to get out, but now that she was out, she felt her cunning return to her with her calm.

They had arrived home that evening in time for a late supper, and then she had had to sit up with Gwynn and Margaret and tell of her adventures. Finally she had pleaded fatigue in order to escape to the solitude of her bedroom, though she was not tired, and her bedroom was not what she wanted.

She had tried to lie still a while, but her fever was upon her again.

It had come and gone the whole while she had been away, and everyone had concluded that it was a sort of homesickness, since no one could feel her heat but she. If anything, though, it was worse now than it had been since the second night of their journey, when she had thought that drowning herself in the sea was the only thing that could relieve her anguish.

Tonight she did not wish to drown, but she had briefly been wild enough that she might have done that or worse. She had even thought of leaping from the top of the wall to escape. Indeed, she did not know how she had made it out past the guards. It was as if they had not seen her at all.

But she was free, and she ran freely as she had not done since she had escaped from Malcolm’s father’s house and had gone galloping over the moor, first on Druid’s back, and then on her own two feet as she and the horse played a game of tag.

Malcolm had been sorry she had done it. Malcolm did not seem to like her to be her own wild self around his mother, and thereafter she had obeyed his wishes in this, since she had so rarely done what he wanted in other things.

But now she was free, alone, and she ran freely. A young stag came bounding after her for a while, delighted to have a female to chase when all those of his own race were slow and busy with their fawns. The owls and the nightjars greeted her as they or she flew past, and the nightingales interrupted their songs to whistle at her. She was home! They all seemed to be celebrating with her.

It was the forest she was needing. It was the keen, moist air of the forest, and the cool breath of the living leaves, and the chill dew. It was the trees she knew. It was the one water-​​loving tree she sought in particular, and, like the tree, she thought she might dip her feet a while in the cold brook. Mostly, though, she longed to hold a certain stone in her hands until she had fed all of her heat into it. It would be so cool…

Since her birthday, she had been coming to lay the black stone of the willow at its roots again, though she had never laid a pink stone down so that she might explain. Nor did her cousin leave a pink stone so that he might demand an explanation. And because of this – since it made it seem that he did not even care that she had stopped coming for a while – she had not left a pink stone before her departure to tell him she would go.

She had sometimes regretted it, and now she hoped he would have left a pink stone so that he could ask an explanation from her on her return. She did not dare leave a pink stone of her own, for she had nothing urgent to say except that she had missed him. But she missed him always, and he never seemed to miss her, and so…

She stopped at the foot of the willow and hesitated until she was startled by a shrill scream just above her head. A moon-​​white owl sat on one of the heavy branches and peered down at her with one eye open in his round face. He did not seem pleased with her.

“I’m sorry,” she whimpered, though she did not know for what.

The owl opened his other eye and screamed again, and then he closed them both and began grumbling under his breath.

She no longer wished to stay beside the willow and dip her feet in the water. She could not bear the reproach of the owl, and if, as she suddenly feared, she found a black stone after all, she thought she could not bear anything that was to follow.

“I won’t be long,” she apologized softly, and then she lifted a hand to the hollow.

She stubbed her fingers and nearly snapped a nail, for her hand met the cold stone sooner than expected. She felt around it and understood: the stone was high in the hollow because it was lying atop other stones. Her heart began to pound.

She pulled out the first stone. It was pink. She dropped it at her feet and felt for another. It was pink. The next stone and the next were pink. She dropped them at her feet one after another until she had built up such a pile that every stone cracked and clattered against the others as it fell and tumbled to rest.

The owl shuddered at the sound and scowled at her, but he did not leave his perch.

They were all pink, stone after stone. She did not count them, but she thought there might have been a stone for every day she had been away.