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There was the cave where she and Marie had hidden from them. Beyond was the
barren cape, plunging on either side to the sea, narrowing to a natural stone
span that led outward . . . to the dark wooden doorway of the mage Anselm's
keep.
She had hesitated near an odd willowlike bush. The upper surfaces of its
leaves were rich green, their undersides pale and silvery. She stared as if
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the very force of her gaze would penetrate its illusion.
Gradually, limned with light and shadow, she saw . . . a child. No, not
exactly . . . The creature that appeared where the bush had been had great
violet eyes, a rare color only seen in sunset, or dappling the sandy bottom of
a cove. Those eyes were old, not young. His silken shirt shimmered like
moonbeams and his baggy trousers were the green of young leaves in springtime.
Tiny silver bells jingled on the toes of his soft, pointed shoes.
"Ha, child!" said Guihen the Orphan. He wiggled his overlarge ears. "That
didn't take you long. Are you growing stronger, as well as more lovely? Or am
I losing my touch? But then, you always saw through my illusion."
Pierrette wasn't sure what he meant about growing stronger. And more lovely?
She was a small, bony-kneed child of seven. "What are you doing here?" she
asked.
"I came to warn you."
"Of what?" Wisps of fine hair at the back of her neck stiffened. "You're only
a willow bush, and I'll push you aside." She was angry. She wanted her mother.
Guihen sighed. "Elen is not here, child. She lives in a green and lovely
vale."
"She's not in heaven. P'er Otho said so."
"No, her place is of this earth, but you won't find it on the Eagle's Beak.
But there, beyond that gate, is the magus
Anselm . . . and a terrible fate for a little girl."
"Mother said to seek out the mage."
"She was distraught. She didn't think. Go back to your father and sister."
"Don't try to stop me!"
"If you knock on that gate, you won't return to Citharista unchanged."
Guihen's ears flapped, as if agitated. "Would you deny yourself an ordinary
life: a husband, children, a place to call home?"
Pierrette hesitated. When the wood sprite next spoke, his voice no longer
tinkled like the bells on his shoes. It echoed hollowly like wind in the door
of an abandoned sepulcher. It was as harsh as the creaking of rusty hinges, as
dry as old bones: "
Go back, or be doomed to make your bed in strange places. Go back, lest time
itself bend about you, and you not find what you seek for a hundred hundreds
of years!
"Little Pierrette did not comprehend what Guihen had meant, but the dire
threat in his voice was clear, and she knew that a terrible choice was before
her: go forward, and suffer, go back and . . . and what?
Pierrette was too young then to value the prospect of a husband and children.
And her own bed was not the secure place it had seemed before that terrible
night the night Elen had been killed. That time, she did as she was told, and
made her way back to the village. But Citharista, her father and sister, her
lonely, motherless house and bed, gave her heart no ease. She knew then that
she was not like other children, and that she would not be like the others
even when she grew up. She would indeed deny herself an ordinary life husband,
children, and a place to call home. Guihen's words echoed in her head:
"Go back, or be doomed to make your bed in strange places. Go back, lest time
itself bend about you, and you not find what you seek for a hundred hundreds
of years!" But she had, at last, years later, gone forward.
* * *
Yes, Pierrette knew what it was like to be an outcast, to be denied and
herself to deny all the simple pleasures of ordinary, conventional life. "I am
so sorry for you," she said at last. "We are not as different as we seem."
"You had a choice," he replied, without heat or apparent resentment.
Did I? she wondered. Could I have chosen otherwise? She did not believe she
would ever answer that.
What was done was done, life went on, and everyone had to snatch what fleeting
joy they could, what they were given.
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Part Three Dawn
Pierette's Journal
I can safely conclude that the shadowy apparitions that have disgusted,
distressed, and even terrified me are not unrelated to the answer I seek. They
are palpable expressions of the principle of the Law of the
Conservation of Good and Evil. I am forced to conclude that the balance they
seek to restore with their westward migration is the one that Minho's spell
upset.
That they are so evident in Armorica, but not in Provence, suggests that there
is still time to accomplish my task, because the disturbance of balance they
embody is still localized. Further, the shadows are by definition
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