Swan Knight’s Son

Book One of The Green Knight’s Squire

A Tale of Moth & Cobweb

John C. Wright

Copyright

Swan Knight's Son

The Green Knight's Squire, Book One

Moth & Cobweb 1

by John C. Wright

Castalia House

Kouvola, Finland

www.castaliahouse.com

This book or parts thereof may not be reproduced in any form, stored in a retrieval system, or transmitted in any form by any means—electronic, mechanical, photocopy, recording, or otherwise—without prior written permission of the publisher, except as provided by Finnish copyright law.

This is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places, and incidents are products of the author’s imagination or are used in a fictitious manner. Any similarity to actual people, organizations, and/or events is purely coincidental.

Copyright © 2016 by John C. Wright

All rights reserved

Editor: Vox Day

Cover Art: Minna Erkola

Version: 001

FOR knighthood is not in the feats of warre

As for to fight in quarrel right or wrong,

But in a cause which truth can not defarre:

He ought himself for to make sure and strong,

Justice to keep mixt with mercy among:

And no quarrell a knight ought to take

But for a truth, or for the common’s sake.

—Stephen Hawes (1523)

Contents

1. Chapter One: The Thirteenth Hour

2. Chapter Two: The Wandering Moths

3. Chapter Three: Town and Wood

4. Chapter Four: Tough Training

5. Chapter Five: Daughter of the Deep

6. Chapter Six: The Lights of the Haunted Mountain

7. Chapter Seven: The Glass-Knobbed Door

8. Chapter Eight: Attic in Elsewhere

9. Chapter Nine: Errantry

10. Chapter Ten: Abominable Snowmen

11. Awake in the Night Land

12. City Beyond Time

13. Other books by Castalia House

Chapter One: The Thirteenth Hour

1. The Midnight Walkers

Gilberec Parzival Moth woke up, startled, when a large black raven landed on his chest at midnight. It was the night of the day before his sixteenth birthday. He was a tall boy, strong for his age, and his hair was an unusual shade of silver-white that he had never seen on anyone else. He usually kept it hidden, tucked into a Gamecocks ball cap he wore. His shirt and dungarees were simple, sturdy, worn, and patched.

He sat up. The raven squawked and flapped in a flurry of black wings to the back of the park bench. It was dark out, and the moon was high and full, a warm evening in April. He could not see the clock tower overlooking the town square from where he was, sitting in the little bus shelter, but from the smell of the air, the cool of the breeze, and the positions of the stars, he knew it was the middle of the night. “What are you doing up at this hour, big guy?” he said to the raven. Ravens, as he well knew, were not nocturnal birds.

Gil also had a black eye, a swollen lip, some small cuts on his face, and an ache in his ribs. He said, “Look like a mess, don’t I? Well, you should see the other guy. I didn’t mean to nod off. Mom must be worried sick. Don’t suppose you could go tell her I am all right?”

But the raven merely hunched its shoulders, spread its wings, and flew up into the night sky, vanishing against the stars.

Gil started to lay himself back down. “Darn ravens. Never do what you ask.”

That was when he noticed how bright the stars were. Bright as when he camped in the wilderness. They should have been dimmer, washed out. He looked left and right. The streetlamp near him was not lit.

He stood. He stepped out into the street. The small town of Blowing Rock, North Carolina, lay sleeping around him. No streetlamps anywhere were lit. No porch lights on any houses. No neon signs on any small shops. Even the traffic lights were dark.

Just then, the bell in the clocktower above the town hall started ringing. Gil turned. Usually the clock face was lit. Now, it was dark. Gil had sharp eyes and excellent night vision, but he could see only a pale circular shadow in the darker oblong shadow of the tower. He counted the strokes of the bell. Ten… eleven… twelve… thirteen….

Gil felt a cold sensation trickle down his spine. “Maybe it is just a mistake. A mechanical failure….”

His voice sounded so unconvincing to his own ears that he snapped his teeth shut and told himself not to say anything more.

That was when he saw a group of people. They were a block or two away, in the center of the lane, walking. Their pace was not quick, but slow and reluctant. No one carried any lights. They were walking toward him.

Some instinct told Gil to move away slowly and to make no startling moves. He turned and walked across the square of greenery that formed the little park at the center of town. He passed underneath the tall pine which, in winter, was decorated with Christmas lights, but which now was dark.

Opposite the town hall was an old abandoned church, built in the colonial days, built of gray brick, with narrow windows of leaded glass. A belltower was perched atop and faced the town hall clocktower from the opposite side of the town square park.

Gil looked back. He saw men and women, young and old, walking in utter silence. Most were carrying burdens on their backs or in their arms. It was a strange collection: Gil saw a china doll, a gold clock under glass, an embroidered pillow, a jeweled necklace, a set of gilt-edged old books, a tray of silverware, a decanter of wine, a box of cigars. Many of the women had shining fabrics folded over their arms, silks and satins of expensive dresses. Several people were carrying portraits in frames. It was hard to see in the dark, at a distance, but everything he saw was finely-crafted or antique.

2. The Forsaken House

The door of the abandoned church behind Gil now swung open a crack. Gil was almost positive that the door had been nailed shut. Gil looked up at the moon. It was full.

A soft voice from the darkness in the door crack said, “Enter.”

Gil looked doubtfully at the dark church door and looked again back the way he had come. Gil saw the stream of silent walking people was being met by a second crowd of people, shambling with hesitant steps in from a side street. It mingled with the first group. Both were headed for the town hall.

Gil now saw that all three of the big main doors leading into the town hall were open. He had never seen all three open before. There was a dim set of floating lights inside the town hall, like candlelights, or fireflies, or captive stars, moving and swaying, as if to music no one could hear.

“Sanctuary is here,” said the voice from the church, very quietly.

That was when Gil realized something was missing. He heard no insistent noises. Where was the chirruping that went on all night this time of year? Usually, it was as loud as a brass band. But now the air was utterly silent.

Gil hurried up the gray stone stairs to the door and slipped inside. An unseen hand closed the door behind him. It was utterly dark in here, except for the tall, thin windows, high above his head, where the bright, clear stars could be seen.

3. All Men Are Welcome

A figure stepped in front of the window, so Gil could see the silhouette of a tall shape with a peaked hood outlined against the stars.

Gil said, “I thought this door was nailed shut. Isn’t this church abandoned?”

The hood nodded. “My task is to rebuild the old church. All men are welcome to enter by the door.”

Gil said, “That’s kind of funny. There is a door in my place that sometimes opens on the full moon. Other times I cannot find it. Do you know about doors like that? I see strange things some times. Hear them, too.”

“What things have you seen?”

“So can you open the door I keep seeing in my house?”

“Not I. What things have you seen?”

“About a week ago. Me and some boys from school were playing by the banks of the river. I looked, and I saw a barge on the water. It had black cloth draped over the bow and stern, and a black flag. There were girls in veils and black cloaks poling the barge, and they yelled and wailed and wept as they went. I pointed, but the other boys did not see anything. They saw mist on the water and heard birds screaming. One of them called me a liar, so I had to punch him.”

Gil drew a breath, and his bruised ribs twinged, so he winced.

The voice said, “You have been fighting again today.” There was a sad note in the voice.

Gil said, “Yes, sir. That happens to me a lot.”

The hooded figure took a step. From the sound of the footfall on the stone floor, he knew the man was barefoot. The starlight glinted on the crucifix hanging at his neck as well as the pale length of rope which belted his robe. Gil felt a sensation of relief and laughed.

“You are a monk, aren’t you, sir? In that hood, I thought you were a ghost.”

“Everyone is a ghost, my son. The ones who tarry on earth, like you, are still inside the body of clay their mothers bestowed.”

At that moment, there came a scratching at the door. It reminded Gil of the sound his dog made when he scratched to be let in, but it sounded larger than a dog.

A voice from outside said, “Open to me! All sons of Adam must bring their tribute forth!”

The monk laid a warning hand on Gil’s arm. “Do not answer.”

Gil whispered, “You said all men are welcome to enter by the door.”

The monk said, “It is not a man.”

The scratching came again, louder. “Open, open! Who walks abroad? It is the witching hour of the elf’s eve, and the goddess in the moon draws nigh the earth to spread her pallid madness and contagion! Who dares wake and walk? Who are you? Who is your father?”

But the monk said to Gil, “Answer not a word.”

The voice outside the door grew louder: “I smell sweat and living blood! Warm air passes out of living nostrils! I hear the thudding of a frightened heart! Open, I say, in the name of the Lord of Air and Darkness!”

Gil whispered, “You said you were rebuilding this building. Where are the tools? Do you have a hammer or something I could use to bash in his skull? I think he just called me a coward.”

The monk said softly back, “Peace! Your strength is a gift. Use it wisely, and do not shame the giver. Stay here. You will sleep until dawn, and I will keep the Winged Nightmare away. Do not fear. You will not walk in your sleep like the others. I will go and speak with the shadow.”

The door opened a crack, and the tall figure stepped through. The line of moonlight narrowed, and the door slammed shut again. Gil said, “Wait! I can’t let you face that guy alone! Hold on!”

But in the dark he could find no handle nor knob. His fingers felt a cold, hard knot in the wood, and he realized this was the head of a large spike that had been pounded through what felt like a bar across the door. He felt around and found other spikes. The door was nailed shut.

“It’s impossible,” whispered Gil to himself. He sat down with his back to the door and yawned. A sudden fatigue washed over him, and he fought to keep his eyes open.

4. The Yellow Wren

Gil woke. Rays of dusty sunlight slanted in through the leaden windows. Gil now saw that the entire interior of the church was bare. There was a pale and cross-shaped patch on the far wall where the bricks were bright and unworn, and the dust there was less. A large rectangular hole had been dug through the stones where the altar had been torn out.

He soon found he was trapped. The main doors and the smaller door in the chamber behind the altar leading into the vestry were both nailed shut. The windows were too high to reach and too narrow to squeeze through.

Gil sat down heavily on the floor, sighing. The air in here was musty. He sat in the beam of sunlight from the window, and it struck his hair when he doffed his cap to mop his brow. His hair, though white, was not like an old man’s hair. It was a shining blend of silver and pewter and snowy hues, rich and lustrous, almost luminous. His eyebrows were dark and his eyes gray like a storm at sea. There were streaks of red in his snow-bright hair from where his scalp had been cut.

A shadow flicked across his chest. There came a tap-tapping on the window. He looked up and saw the yellow shape of a little bird smaller than his hand. A wren was tapping on the window with her bill.

The little wren pecked at a spot in the old, mottled glass, perhaps thinking it was a bug.

Gil smiled. He lifted the baseball cap from his knee and spun it on his finger. “Look at that! Here is a strand of hair caught in my cap. I can give it to you if you get me out of here. I assume you want it for your nest.”

He lifted a tiny, nearly invisible strand of hair. In the dusty beam, it almost seemed to glow like starlight.

The little wren twitched her head to the left and stared at him from one eye. The bird yanked back, and dropped out of sight.

Gil stared up at the empty window, wondering what he should do next. But then he heard a noise overhead, the fluttering of little wings. Down from the rafters flew the little yellow wren and landed on his finger.

Gil said, “Wren? You get me in a lot of trouble, you know. Whenever people find out I know things I shouldn’t know, and I tell them a little bird told me, guess what? They don’t believe me! I get called a liar, and then…. Well, I cannot let them call me that!” He looked at his skinned knuckles and rubbed his bruises wryly.

The wren groomed herself and looked nonchalant. She hopped to his other finger, the one holding the silver hair.

Gil said, “Wait up! You need to help me get out of here first!”

The bird cocked her head to one side, flew off his finger, and landed on a spot a few yards away. Gil rose and followed. The little bird hopped over into an alcove and rapped on the wood with her bill. Gil stepped after and saw a narrow door he had overlooked before.

He pushed open the warped dark wood on creaking hinges and sneezed at the dust stirred up.

“Bless you,” the wren said.

“Thanks,” he replied automatically. Inside was a spiral staircase steep as a ladder.

The wren said, “This leads up to the belfry where the churchbell once hung. From there, it is a short drop to the slate roof. It you don’t slip and plunge to your death, you can cross the gable to the rear, where a very large and friendly elm tree has branches waiting for you haply to climb down.”

“Fair is fair. Here is your fee.” And he proffered the silver strand of hair.

“However, you already missed the morning bus. You will have to walk home.”

Gil groaned. It was a two-hour walk from here.

The wren nodded sagely, “Things would be much merrier for you if you only had wings. Some other members of your family do, you know.”

Gil straightened up. “What? What do you know about my family? Who has wings?”

But the wren was already high in the rafters, the silver strand dangling from her beak. “Of her we never speak!” the little bird called back. And then she was gone, out of his sight.

Gil climbed his way up the spiral staircase up to the empty belfry where no bells hung. He glanced through the hole in the floor through which no bellrope passed.

But the view from here was fine and fair. He could see the school from which he had been expelled, and, across the street from it, the gas station in whose back lot he had faced and fought the most popular kid in school.

Chapter Two: The Wandering Moths

1. Ruff

After three hours, Gil arrived home. It should have taken two hours, but he stopped and bathed in Pell Lake during the hottest part of the morning, then cut through the woods, and stopped again at Tom’s Creek Primitive Baptist Church. He asked the pastor there if there was anyone refurbishing the old Anglican Church that fronted the town square, but the little old man knew nothing. Then he tramped up Church Road through the woods to the auto repair shop.

He and his Mom lived in the second story above the garage, in a cramped apartment of rooms reached by some rickety wooden steps in the back, half overgrown with kudzu vines. The boards were warped with age and scruffy with fading paint, all but the top last four, which smelled of newly-sanded wood and gleamed with fresh green paint. Some weeks ago, when his Mother had received a healthy tip and things were looking up, Gil had bought a board, sawed it into four parts, and sought to replace the bad stairs, starting at the top. Without money for lumber and nails, the work was slow. Sometimes Gil wondered if the kudzu was the only thing holding up the staircase.

There was a crooked old Cornelian Cherry tree that grew right next to the old garage. Its roots over the years had been slowly tearing up the sidewalk, so that the slabs of concrete staggered drunkenly, with grass and weeds growing between them. With every storm it threatened to drop a branch on the roof.

The tree grew a bitter red berry the size of a cherry tomato called a cornel. Last night the tree had dropped a load of these cornel berries again, making little red bloodlike stains all over the stairs and door and the two windows on this side of the house. Mother liked the house kept as neat as possible, so Gil would have to get the ladder and scrub brushes to remove the stubborn stains.

As he reached the top step, he realized two things. First, his latchkey was in his jacket pocket, but his jacket was in his school locker four miles away. Second, he did not remember what his mother’s hours were today. She worked a different shift on different days. She might be home an hour from now, or four hours, or even eight.

He sat down on the tiny wooden landing before the door. There was a happy barking, and a dog that was half Border Collie and half who-knew-what came bounding up the stairs. He had a white muzzle and chest, black ears, black flanks, white stockings, and bright eyes with a black mask around them. However, he lacked any collar, dog tags, or fixed place of residence. He was Gil’s dog in every way but legally. Gil did not know where he went during the day or where he slept, and he thought it too nosy to ask.

Gil rubbed the dog affectionately under the chin and behind both ears. “How you doing, Ruff? How is my boy? You are a good dog!”

The dog jumped and slobbered and barked happily. He licked Gil’s face but then drew back, his eyes liquid and dark. The dog said sadly, “Eh! Eh! You were wounded in battle.”

Gil scowled. “You know that by tasting my face?”

“Yup! Yup! And there is also the fact that there are a big bandage around your head, skinned knuckles on your forepaws, and contusions all over your hide. You were expelled this time, weren’t you? Not just suspended?”

“How did you know?”

Ruff cocked his head to one side and made a chuffing noise through his nose, half snort and half sneeze. “Ha! I can smell defeat. And there is also the fact that you are here too soon in the day. You want I should lick your wounds?”

“I’d get dog germs.”

“Ha! Ha! That’s a myth. Dog spit is the best thing for abrasions, contusions, lacerations, and scrapes. A dog’s mouth is a wonder of all-natural medicinal drool!”

So, when Gil shrugged, Ruff licked his knuckles assiduously. Gil said, “That does make them feel a little better, now that you mention it. Good grief, it is hot today. There is a pitcher of sweet tea there in the kitchen window, just sitting on the sill. You know any way I could get in and get it?”

“Ah! Ha! You mean like a secret doggy path we can find beneath the mountains to the buried kingdoms of the hidden folk? Uh! Oh! No, there is nothing like that here. There is a puddle in the culvert outside town I can show you. And I found a raccoon who’d been killed by a car! I can bark and scare off the crows. Some of his guts had fluid in them, or his heart maybe. That will quell any thirst! What about these dogwood fruits?”

“That is called a Cornelian Cherry. It is not a dogwood.”

“Ha! Ha! Don’t argue. I know trees. Here, lie down, and I will lick your head. Make you feel better!”

Gil, eyes closed and covered with sweat, was supine on the landing with his feet dangling down the steps. His shirt was unbuttoned in the hope that a breeze might wander by, exposing the ruddy, purple, blue and sooty hues of the bruises covering him. And a black and white dog was busily licking his silvery hair with its leaking red stains.

Ruff said, “Oh, you gotta tell me. I am naturally curious. I am a naturally curious dog.”

“Anything, Ruff,” said Gil lazily.

“Why do you get in fights so much? Why not just, you know, flop on your back and expose your throat? It is what I do when I am outmatched. Saves on stress.”

2. The Once and Future King

“Let me tell you the story. Once upon a time–”

“Good! Good! I love stories. Especially the once-upon-a-time kind. Those stories are true!”

“Actually, it was six years ago to the day on my tenth birthday. I came home sporting a black eye and bawling like a baby. I started a fight, but I could not finish it. Well, my Mom quizzed me, and I handed her half-truths and lame excuses. She was too wise to believe me but too softhearted to punish me, not on a day when she had baked me a cake. That cake was shaped like an Eskimo hut, complete with an Eskimo made of icing crawling out the door, and coconut shavings were the snow.

“And I got a present, a telescope with a tripod, from my cousin Tom. We had a flat roof because we lived in California in those days, and it never rained or snowed, and from the first time I saw it when we moved there, I wanted to camp out on that roof. That night I got my wish. I slept on the roof in a sleeping bag under the stars and was allowed that night to stay up as late as I liked, looking at the beautiful stars through my new telescope. It was an 80-millimeter refractor on a two-axis mount. I had duct-taped red plastic over my flashlight. I saw the Orion Nebula and the three stars of Polaris. Along the arch of the Milky Way, I saw a white swan flying at night, something I have never seen since.

“It should have been the best night of my life. It was the worst.

“It was the worst night of my life,” he continued. “I was a total crybaby, and a total liar, and a total coward, and my Mom just… coddled me. I needed a Dad. Someone to beat some sense into me.”

Gil raised his hand and wiped his eyes.

Ruff said, “You weeping? Dogs don’t weep.”

Gil said, “Must be dog slobber in my eyes.”

Ruff said, “Must have come from some other dog then because I have been extra careful. Dogs are careful, careful creatures. What happened next? In your story?”

“So I picked one.”

“One what?”

“A Dad! I picked a dad for me.”

“Can you do that?”

“I did. I picked a Dad whose son was the worst son in history, a son named Mordred. He ended up killing his Dad, or almost. I promised to live up to the ideals of this great king even if he never knew. Some say he never lived, but I say he never died. Do you know who I mean?”

“Um. I am not good at riddle games. Foxes are good with riddles.”

“I read a book about him. It was called The Once and Future King. He said, ‘I don’t think things ought to be done because you are able to do them. I think they should be done because you ought to do them. Not might makes right, but might for right. After all, a penny is a penny in any case, however much might is exerted on either side, to prove that it is or is not.’ He said that as a kid, and he grew up and lived it. The forces of evil destroyed him for that.”

“Darn those forces of evil! I’d bite them. I’d bite them hard!”

“Good dog.”

“Where is he now? This guy?”

“Buried under a mountain in England, but some say three fair queens carried him to Avalon to be healed of his great wound.”

“Hmm. No. England is your better bet. Avalon? Nope. No one there.”

“So, anyway, that became my lesson. But you see the problem. I had to know what I ought to do! I had to pick my own oughts. I needed oughts that would make him proud.”

The dog stopped licking. Gil looked at the reddish glow of sunlight seen through closed lids. The warmth made him feel drowsy.

“Aha! So now you are curious, aren’t you? I made myself a promise then. A solemn and sacred vow. This is what I swore: Never curse and never cry! Never cower and never lie! Do what’s right and never shirk! Be polite and not a jerk!

“And after that, I added another line, to bring my number of commandments up to ten. No blaming another and no shaming your mother! Okay, it is not Shakespeare, but I was a little kid, and the rhyme was good enough. I never forget those vows.”

Gil lay in comfort, exhausted and aching and half-asleep, lulled by the heat, lounging on the stairs. He was beginning to realize how wonderful it would be not to have to deal with the gangs of kids at school, or the maddening teachers, or the cowardly principal any more.

But he sighed, “I just hope Mom does not get shamed by this! Maybe I should just not tell her.”

That was when he heard his mother’s voice.

“Those had better be berry stains and not bloodstains, young man,” she said. She was standing over him. How she had come up the rickety stairs without any noise of footfall, he did not know.

He opened his eyes, hoping to see anger in her face. He did not. There was nothing but a deep and abiding sorrow there, and beneath that, fear.

3. Ygraine

Mrs. Moth had one of those unwrinkled and tranquil faces which betrays no sign of age. She might have been anywhere between fourteen and forty. Gil’s craggy and hawklike features must have come from his father, for her face was oval, smooth, strong, and sharp-chinned. But his gray eyes, long and narrow, and touched with hints of green, he had from her.

She was in her dull beige uniform of the coffee house and winebar. Her silver hair was carefully hidden in a long scarf that trailed down her back, and the lacy waitress cap was pinned atop it. The tag on her chest said IRENE since no one in this town could pronounce her real name.

Ruff said, “Hi! Hi! Hello there, Ma’am! Hi, Gil’s Mom! Gil was expelled yesterday! Kicked out of school for good! You smell nice!”

She said, “What did he just say?”

Gil sighed and winced in pain. “He said hi. That I am expelled.”

She took out her latchkey and unlocked the door. “The stray dog must stay outside our home. He is most likely a spy for the elfs.”

“He also said you smell nice.”

She smiled sadly. “He still may not cross the threshold, but for his flattery, you may give him the rib bone I saved from the restaurant garbage. Say your farewells to him swiftly, clean yourself up, and go to your room to pack. Whatever we cannot carry, you must burn, and leave no trace.”

“Mom! We’re not moving again! Please!”

Her smile did not waver, nor did the sorrow in her eyes grow less. “I will decide this once I have heard the details of your adventures yesterday.”

“Can we take Ruff?” he said in a very small voice.

But she had turned away and stepped inside.

4. Questioning

Gil took as long as he dared showering and cleaning himself. He rubbed the condensation from the bathroom mirror and put his hands to his head to part the hair. It did not look like he would need stitches. Some of the bruises had already faded. Maybe the dog spit had helped. He looked doubtfully at the slight shadow of fuzz on his jawline. He had never yet needed a razor, and he wondered who could teach him how to shave.

He dressed and came shuffling out into the corridor. His bedroom door was to the right. There were two doors to the left, one leading to his mother’s room, and one to the bathroom. His fingers touched the blank patch of wall between the two. As he always did, he rapped the panel there to see if it were hollow, containing a secret passage. The wall felt solid. There was an empty light socket near the ceiling above where he rapped. As he always did, he took a moment to pull, twist, and push on the light socket to see if there were a switch or latch hidden there. As ever, there was not.

He walked slowly to the front room. The kitchen counter and sink were to one side. The swaybacked couch where his mother sat was to the other. The card table on which they ate their meals was folded carefully into the corner. There was no television set. A tall radio box whose front was carved with grinning cherub faces stood in the corner, a lace doily on its head. He took one of the folding metal chairs from the wall and sat down. He stared diligently at his bare feet.

His mother had unbraided her long hair. Had she been standing, it would have fallen past her hips. Seated, the long, shimmering, shining locks hung over one shoulder down past her knees. It looked like a waterfall of bright moonlight. She had drawn the window blinds as she always did when she combed her hair, so the light was dim. In the gloom, Gil thought he saw little sparks like fireflies following her comb as she stroked.

He said nothing but simply sat there for a very long time, staring at his feet. Finally, he raised his eyes. “You could yell at me, you know.”

She said, “What have you done wrong?”

He pursed his lips. “Nothing. I was in the right. I fought bravely, I stopped some kids from committing a crime. Heck, I even put two of them into the emergency room! Four against one!”

“Did you win?”

“Not really.”

“Tell me the tale from start to finish.”

“The PA system is broken, so every day after homeroom we all go to the cafeteria to hear whatever the principal wants to say. Announcements and stuff. I went to the other building to my locker to put my jacket away because it was hot. As I was cutting back between the two buildings to get to morning assembly, a little wren popped out of the bushes and told me a gang of boys were breaking into the locker in the principal’s office where they keep the phones and stuff kids aren’t supposed to bring to school. But yesterday one of the teachers found a stash of drugs. I don’t know what kind.”

She said, “They kept it overnight at the school rather than turning it over to the County Police?”

Gil shrugged. “I guess. Anyway, it was like the wren said. The kids were in the principal’s office, working the combination lock. I climbed in the window, surprised them, and told them to kneel and surrender.”

“You were polite?”

“Yes.”

“The window was open?”

“No. I smashed it with my bookbag and worked the latch. It was on the first floor. I held the bag by the straps and used my Algebra book like a hammer throw.”

“What was the species of wren?”

He said, “Sylvia ludoviciana.”

“Male or female?”

“Female. The males will sing about their territory, but the females only give warning cries. This was a warning cry.”

“Tell me the rest.”

5. After

She had many more questions. He spoke for a long time. After he was done speaking, she said nothing, but continued to comb her hair. She braided it, wrapped it in a scarf, and only then opened the blinds. The sunlight was shockingly bright. Gil was surprised that it was not sunset yet. It had seemed like many slow and grinding hours had gone by, but from the position of the sun, he saw that it had been less than one.

Ygraine said, “Who knows, or knows enough to guess, that you can understand the speech of birds and beasts?”

“I told Jeery.”

“Did he believe you?”

“He punched me in the face. I got ten dollars in quarters from him. He was using a roll of quarters as brass knuckles.”

“Did you take it, or did he yield it as a forfeit?”

“I took it.”

“You must return it to him and apologize for this fault.”

“A– agh– apologize! To him?”

“For the wrongs he did you. Did you not beat him? But he cannot beat you for this wrong you did him. He lacks the strength. Is justice due only to the strong or to all?”

“To all.” Gil looked at his bare feet again. He heaved yet another sigh. “If I—if he accepts my apology—can we stay?”

She stood. “I will go with you to his house, and see his eyes, and guess at his heart. If he suspects nothing, we can stay.”

He said, “But I told the truth. I did hear it from a little bird. You do not want me to lie, do you?”

“No, but telling the truth is expensive,” she said in a soft, distant voice. “And no man builds a tower without he first counts out the price, lest haply he must cease work halfway and be a laughingstock. What worth is a tower half-built and without height? And if it rest on a hilltop, who can hide it?”

Gil looked at his mother’s kind and serene face. “What do we do if they set the police on us? Mr. Wartworth said he was sending the deputies to search my locker.”

She said, “He will make no complaint to the police.”

Gil said, “Why not?”

Ygraine said, “Mr. Wartworth was the one behind the crime. He hoped to sell the package of drugs to his profit.”

Gil did not know how she had come to that conclusion, but he had never known her to be wrong before.

She peered at him closely. “What else have you seen?”

Gil had a strange, strong intuition. He said, “I saw a dark boat on the river. Like a week ago.”

She said, “Was there music of fife, with veiled maidens mourning and lamenting?”

“Yes to the lamenting, no to the fife. Who was on that boat?”

“The mementos of someone taken. A lord or lady of this area was slain. It portends that there will be a battle here over the measures and times and seasons. It means you and I must be apart for a time.”

She said, “Come! We have a long way. It is an hour’s walk to the bus stop, and from the Food Lion to Mr. Wartworth’s house is another mile. You will not return with me on the bus.”

“What? What will I do?”

“If your schooling days are done, as it seems they are, then you must find work.”

“Where? How?”

“Start searching the shops in town until you find a job. I do not mean mere chores or yardwork, but a steady and honest trade. You will not be welcome here over my threshold until then.”

“You’re kicking me out?”

She shook her head. Her voice was serene. “No. I am showing my faith in you.”

“What if I don’t find a job in one day? The sun will be setting by the time we even get there. Where will I sleep?”

“You may ask the sheriff to put you in a cell overnight. He seems a kindly man.”

6. Embering

Gil packed a knapsack, into which he put two changes of clothing, his knife and flashlight and a few other things he thought he might need, such as a ball of string, a roll of tinfoil, a shaker of salt, and a bar of soap.

He went into the kitchen to get a few cans of beans or a loaf of bread and maybe an empty bottle to fill with water, when he came across his birthday cake. It was coated with blue frosting sculpted into waves and decorated with images of the Monitor and the Merrimack, with cannonballs made of sugar-paste. He wondered how old the sailors had been aboard those two Civil War riverboats. A weird twinge of pride ran through him then, and he decided not to eat any of his mother’s food, not even a morsel, until he had earned his own bread himself. He left the cake untouched, the candles unlit, and no wishes made.

Gil did not speak again until they were out of the house and had been trudging down the hot road for a long while. Gil squinted up at the sun and pulled his baseball cap low over his head.

“Why do we keep moving all the time?”

She said, “We may not be moving again, not now. When I was young, hitchhiking was safe, and many a car would stop to pick up a penniless traveler. In those days, no one locked his door or failed to open his hand to the poor. These days it is far different. Each time we move, I find a place where the old ways linger. Even as late as fifteen years ago, there were still places where a young mother with a babe in her arms could find sanctuary. But the pools of light are drying up and dying, and the places are fewer and farther between. And a youth of your size should not take the bread away from whatever babe’s mothers younger than I now beg for.”

“You did not answer me.”

“No, that is true; I did not. The answer would crush your bones beneath its weight. Leave the matter alone.”

He was silent for a moment, then said, “Last night I was locked in a church. I think a ghost locked me in there.”

S“That’s unusual. Ghosts tend to avoid hallowed ground.”

“Everyone in town was out last night, walking in the dark, carrying stuff. What was that?”

She didn’t look surprised. “The black spell.”

“What? What is that?”

“It is the source of all the woes man does not bring upon himself by his own devising. This is the first year you have ever remained awake when it fell. It is sad, but not unexpected.”

“Sad? Why?”

“Sad because it means you cannot blend in easily with ordinary people, not if you are seen awake among the hosts of sleepwalkers. The next time it happens, you must remain out of sight, and tell no one what you saw.”

He said, “Mother, tell me what is going on! What is the black spell? Who casts it?”

She shook her head and would not reply.

He tramped down the road, frowning. A short while later, he spoke again.

“Can I sleep in the extra room? The attic?”

“There is no attic in which to sleep, my son.”

“There is an attic! There is a door that appears and disappears. Sometimes it is there; sometimes it is not. It is always when the moon is full, but some months it does not come at all. It has a glass doorknob and a big old-fashioned lock you can see through. The top of the door is curved, not straight. When the moon is bright, through the keyhole, you can see the stairs leading up to an attic. In this place, it shows up between your door and the bathroom door. But in that place we lived in Utah, it showed up at the end of the hall next to the broken window. Before that, in California, it appeared in the back of the closet door in my room, but only when I was alone. I have asked you about this before. You never answered. Well? If I am old enough to work, I am old enough to know. Don’t I get a birthday present?”

She smiled sweetly. “It is a poor gift, for I know nothing of the glass-knobbed door and can guess only a trifle. But I grant it.”

He said, “Sometimes I put my ear to the keyhole and listen. Once or twice, I have heard the dim noise of trumpets blowing in the distance. Whose trumpets are those?”

“It is an echo from another world.”

“What is that door? Who made it?”

“I know not.”

“Why did you never talk about it or answer me?”

She said, “I would hide the door if I could, but I have not the art, nor can I open it. To speak of such doors is unwise. Sometimes they hear, and they come.” She shivered. “I thought we had left it behind in Ophir.”

“The door is following us, isn’t it?”

Ygraine pursed her lips, “Not quite. We bring it with us, unknowing.”

“Is it magic?”

“An odd question! The art of weaving the unseen is not of man’s world, but it has it own rules to keep. This glass-knobbed door is not diabolical if that is what you mean. Nor is it of Heaven. The door-maker did not mean for his door to do the harm it one day must.”

“What harm?”

She merely shook her head. “Think on today’s evils and leave the morrows’ be. The closed door is like a buried memory; it is kept from us. No need to unearth what is best forgotten.”

“Why does it appear and disappear?”

“There are days of the year when the mists are thin, and such hidden doors open. But even then, the door is unseen and unopened if the full moon shines not.”

“What days?”

“Ember days, quarter days, and cross-quarter days.”

“When is that?”

She gave him a sidelong look. “Your schoolmasters never taught you the calendar?” Then she chanted:

Fasting days and Emberings be

Lent, Whitsun, Holyrood, and Lucie

He said, “What calendar is that?”

She seemed bewildered. “Our calendar. Everyone’s calendar.”

“The Gregorian calendar?”

“The Men of the East spell time differently, by the moon, but the Sons of Europa count by the sun. The Wednesday, Friday, and Saturday after the Feast of Saint Lucy are the Embertide; and again, after Whitsunday; after the Exultation of the Cross; and again in Lent. The cross quarter days are Candlemas, May Day, Lammas, and All Hallows. The quarter days are Lady Day, Midsummer Day, Michaelmas, Christmas.”

“The school does not mention any of these.”

She suddenly looked frightened. “Have men truly forgotten how to keep time?”

“Except Christmas. But they call it Winter Holiday now. And you have to mention Chanukah and Kwanzaa whenever you talk about it.”

She said, “This is an ill omen. Some great lord or lady has been tithed or a fair king slain, and the days and seasons have lost their true names.”

“What does that mean?”

“It means the darkness gathers.” She swallowed, and her eyes were bright with unshed tears. “It means I cannot protect my son.”

He put his arms around her. “Mom! It is time for me to protect you.”

She put her face in the hollow of his shoulder, for he overtopped her now.

Gingerly, he patted her on the shoulder. He said, “Don’t be sad! It is just the school calendar! It does not mean anything. And there are plenty of other holidays, like Earth Day, and, uh, Recycling Day.”

She murmured something softly, but he could not hear her words.

“What are you afraid of? What is following us?”

She did not reply, but instead broke down and wept, trembling in his arms, and his heart was filled with pain. He whispered, “I will protect you, Mother! I will!”

She wiped her eyes and drew back. “You are too tender yet.”

“I promise!”

She shook her head. “You know not what you vow.”

He said, “I have vowed it all the same, and I cannot take back my word!”

She shook her head again, grieving, saying nothing.

“Mom. I know we are hiding from someone. Who is it? Why can’t we face them instead?”

“The sea rises high and higher. What sword can frighten back the tide? The storm is come. Who can outrun it? The Old Night rises. Darkness gathers.”

“What does that mean?”

“Who can escape a darkness without end? What cup can bring a light long-dead to life again?”

“Not your riddles, Mom!” Gil groaned in exasperation. “Not riddles again! I never know the answers.”

“We cannot face the sea, the storm, the night, the dark, for these have no faces.”

He said, “Who are you hiding from?”

She answered softly, “It is not myself I hide.” And she said no more, but turned from him and trudged down the road in the bitter, merciless heat.

Chapter Three: Town and Wood

1. Job Hunting

As it turned out, even after Gil apologized, Jeery was afraid to step close enough to Gil to take the roll of quarters back. And ten dollars was enough to buy a membership, for someone his age, at the local YMCA. He had a cot for the next seven days and use of the gym, tennis court, and swimming pool.

He stayed the night and woke hungry before dawn the next day. He had no money for food.

At dawn, Gil waited next to the newspaper box at the bus stop corner and politely asked the first man who bought a newspaper if he could have the want ads. Then, he walked to the north side of the town of Blowing Rock and began working his way, street by street, past every shop and each address listing anything he thought he could do.

Now, many hours later, he sat on the curb with the paper at the south side of town. All the buildings were behind him. The lonely highway wound down the slope into the forest before him. There was not a car in sight.

Ruff came trotting up, with a dead squirrel in his mouth. The dog laid the squirrel carefully in the gutter at Gil’s feet and sat back, bright-eyed and wagging his tail, and he barked, “Look! Look! I brought a squirrel! A squirrel!”

Gil folded the newspaper and threw it down into the gutter.

Ruff said, “Hi! Hi! You can eat it. I brought a squirrel you can eat!”

“Thanks, Ruff. You are a pal. Good dog. You are a good dog!” And he scratched the dog behind the ears.

Ruff sniffed the newspaper, and his ears drooped. The tail stopped wagging. Ruff looked up with a mournful expression into Gil’s face. “Oh, no! Oh, no! It is a day of failure. You failed. Didn’t find what you were hunting, did you?”

“How did you know?”

“I can smell failure.”

Gil looked up. “Really?”

“Yup! Yup! Well, and there is also the fact that you are sitting in the gutter looking glum rather than flipping burgers or changing tires.”

“There was one guy who wanted to hire me for carpentry. I showed him I knew how to pound a nail and hang a door. Another guy at the shooting range needed someone to clean the guns, mind the customers, and lock up at night. Even the car wash needed someone. But not me. I am not in the union, not old enough, don’t have a birth certificate. Cannot prove I am allowed to work. The old lady who runs the flower shop wanted someone just to sweep up the place, pick up dead petals and leaves, and take out the trash, but she said she could not pay me ten bucks an hour. I said I would work for half of that. She said she was not allowed to pay me so little. Not allowed! In her own store! Who has the right to tell her she can’t hire me?”

Ruff jumped up, his ears high, “Oh! Oh! I think you should sneak into her shop at night and do all the work she wants without telling anyone! Then, if she likes the work, she will leave a bowl of cream out on her back doorstep for you. And on All Hallows, she has to sew you a new suit of clothing. And then you vanish and never come again.”

Gil said, “What?”

Ruff’s ears drooped again. “Oh, no! I thought that is how things like this were done.”

“Maybe in Dog Land. The way they are done in Burke County is less exciting. If you stand on the corner at the library, sometimes landscapers will come by to pick you up for a day’s work with a shovel or a rake. But Mom said honest labor. Does honest labor mean I have to obey laws about carrying paperwork and being old and whatever else? Because that I am not allowed. Or does it just mean your full effort for a full day with no slacking and no backtalk? That I can do.”

Ruff said, “Hey! I have an idea! Why not go to Dog Land?”

Gil looked at the mutt in surprise. “Is there really such a place?”

Ruff cocked his head to one side, so one ear was up and the other down. “Um! Um! You just said. You said how they do things in Dog Land. I thought it sounded like a swell place. Swell! Because of the dogs.”

Gil scowled at the road. “I asked some of the birds to tell me what my mother was up to, but they would not tell me.”

Ruff cocked one ear.

Gil said, “Don’t you think it strange that she wants me out of our place, not even to sleep there?”

Ruff said, “I saw her walking around the place counterclockwise, three times. Maybe she is trying to summon the Greater Tree.”

Gil said, “What is that?”

“Well, you know the World Tree?”

“Nope.”

“This is greater. Greater than the world.”

“What is it? What does it do?”

“Beats me. But if she is doing something that might draw attention to herself, she wants you out of the way.”

Gil said, “So the whole getting a job thing is a trick? We should go back and protect her.”

Ruff shook his head. “Maybe. Or maybe you should listen to your mother. I always listened to mine. Except when I didn’t. Then, it did not go so good. Besides, you need to work to eat, right?”

Just then a jeep came barreling down the street, pulled out onto the empty highway, and took the turn to head toward Knob Hill, where the State Park was. Behind the wheel was a boy about Gil’s age.

There was a six-pack on the seat behind him, some fishing rods, a knapsack of camping gear, and a strawberry-haired girl with a big smile and freckled cheeks sitting next to him, chatting. They both had their cellphones in their hands and their earphones in their ears, so it was not clear if they were talking to each other or to someone else. It was also not clear how the driver planned to survive the trip since he was looking at his gizmo and not at the road.

The girl pitched a paper bag decorated with clowns out the back of the jeep. It fell near an oil stain in the middle of the road not far away. “Hey! Hey!” barked Ruff, trotting quickly over to the bag and sniffing it.

Gil stared glumly after the retreating jeep, wondering silently why kids no different than he had gas to burn and camping trips to go on.

Ruff said, “Wow! Wow! There is half a burger in here!”

“You know,” said Gil, “I have never eaten junk food.”

“Wow! Are you missing out! Junk food is great. There are some fries left too, but I don’t like fries.”

“I guess that guy’s dad bought him stuff. Taught him how to fish. You know.”

“I know! I know! They are made of potato. It is like boiled potato. Boiled in oil, and salted. I like the salt.”

Ruff lifted his nose out of the dropped bag. There was catsup on his nose. “I’ll lick the fries, and then you can eat them. I’ll lick the salt! You want some?”

“Let me cook the squirrel first, and I’ll see how I feel about eating someone else’s trash that a dog licked. But I’ll share the half a burger with you.”

The dog picked up the bag in his mouth and trotted back over.

2. Job Tracking

It was about an hour later, and the two were in the woods, out of the heat. The sun was low in the sky, and it was an hour before sunset. Gil had made a fire with his magnifying glass, using pages ripped out of his Algebra book for tinder, and skinned and eviscerated the squirrel with his knife. Ruff got the head and entrails. Gil sharpened a green stick, and held the rodent over the fire, smelling the savory smell of meat and watching the blood and fat drip. The flames were almost invisible in the shaft of sunlight that fell through the leafy branches.

Gil said suddenly, “I wonder if that was his sister or his girlfriend?”

“Who?”

“The couple in the jeep.”

“Yup! Girlfriend.”

He looked at the dog. “Don’t tell me you can smell the difference between a girlfriend and a sister?”

Ruff shrugged. “Eh? There are smells in the air when humans want to mate.”

“And you smelled–? In a passing car? That those two were thinking about–?”

“No, that is Erica Lee. She is editor-in-chief of the yearbook at the High School you just got kicked out of. She was a varsity cheerleader for two years. Jack Merritt is their star quarterback. They are an item. Prom King and Prom Queen this year. Say! Say! How come you are not moving away?”

Gil said, “I’m not sure. Mom spoke to the principal privately in his house, and there were no birds in the bushes or anything I could ask to eavesdrop. But you know how his face is red as a beet? It was white like ashes when she was done. Wonder what she said. Anyway, she told me we could stay.”

“I’m glad! I’m glad! Your Mom threatened him.”

“Not likely,” said Gil.

“She had her teeth in his throat. Otherwise, he would have filed a police report, and you would have been named in the papers.”

“What papers?”

“Papers! Papers! Humans always have tons of papers around.”

“Records? Police records?”

“Humans write things down so you don’t forget. You have terrible memories.”

The thought of his Mom with her serene face and gentle voice threatening the principal warmed him. He knew what it was like to be on her bad side. Gil almost felt sorry for Mr. Wartworth.

Gil gnawed on his rodent dinner. With a little salt, it did not taste bad at all.

He tossed a scrap to the dog and then peered at Ruff closely. “If you animals are so smart, how come you don’t have any civilization?”

Ruff said, “I’m different.”

“Because you are a spy for the elfs?”

Ruff said, “Something like that.”

“Tell me about elfs.”

Ruff looked wary, and he put his head down. “You know! You know! Not really wise to talk about them. Not really safe. Enslave you at night, make you do work, take your stuff, and then put mist in your eyes so that you all think it is because your taxes are high. It is not. Just the thieving elfs at their games. More than half of human toil goes to them, and you blame each other, or the economy, or the weather. But they walk unseen and can dwindle to hide in a cowslip or ride a bumblebee. So they might be listening. Shh! Shh!”

Gil saw this made Ruff nervous. So he said, “Fine, you are special. But back to my other question. Other animals talk. At least to me. Normal people should be able to see you all animals are smart even if they cannot talk to you, shouldn’t they?”

“Nope! Nope! That is not how it works. Beasts live for the day and don’t fret about the morrow. You lost that when you left Eden.”

“Foresight, you mean? Sounds like a gain, not a loss.”

“Trust. You lost trust. You think tomorrow is not trustworthy, that the story of the world is not in good hands. Nope. Nope. You lost a lot.”

“We’re civilized.”

“You don’t have good noses, though.”

“I still don’t get why if animals can talk to me, you are not smart enough for humans to notice.”

“Beasts are smart only when humans love us. That makes us smarter. It improves our nature but does not change our nature. So we are not going to start thinking about tomorrow and building forts and factories and stuff.”

“How can human love change animals?”

“It’s their authority.”

“Normal people love dogs, but cannot talk like you and I do.”

“You must have more authority or something. Besides, normal people have their eyes held. They cannot see their world.”

“Their eyes held? What does that mean?”

“Mist. Mist in their eyes. In their brains. Darkness in their brains. Makes them stupid. Not see things. Forget things. Forget what is important. Men are fools. How you guys ended up in charge, who knows?”

Gil sighed impatiently. “Only got six more days at the YMCA. I cannot even grab a bus to get to a bigger town that might have more work.”

Ruff said, “Hey! Hey! I have an idea! I know a job you’d be good at. Great at! Great!”

Gil stared in surprise. Ruff was bristling with excitement, hopping on all fours, wagging his tail, practically dancing.

Gil said, “Well, you knew who the prom queen was dating, so maybe you know everything. Where is there a job for me? What job?”

“Be a knight!”

“You mean, enlist in the Army? Hmm. That’s not a bad idea. I hear they pay for college. And they would certainly be more my kind of people than–”

“No! No! Didn’t you hear me? A knight! A knight!”

“I am not sure there is that much money in knighthood, these days. And who is hiring?”

“Plenty of money!”

“There is something in the Constitution that says the government cannot grant titles of nobility or something.”

“Come on! Come on! If Ringo Starr the Beatle can be knighted, Gilberec the Moth can, too! We need to find someone to train you, though. Before your six days are up. Boy!” Ruff jumped up and put his muddy paws against Gil’s chest. “What a good idea! What a doozy of an idea! Great! Great!”

Gil said, “Ruff! Nice dog! Down, boy!” He stood up, lest Ruff knock him over. “I don’t think there is much call for knights. I do not think it is possible.”

“You are a kid who talks to dogs and busts up drug rings, and you are going to tell me what is and is not possible? You’re impossible! And I don’t mean that in a good way!”

Gil chewed on his cooked squirrel thoughtfully. “Who could train me? Where would I find a horse and lance and stuff?”

“Beat someone up and take his horse! Ha! Ha! Dogs get along with horses. I like horses! But– let me see. Training, eh? You don’t have a father.”

Gil let the last morsel of cooked squirrel drop to the ground. “Thanks. I noticed.”

“Yup! No dad. No dad for you! Because you are a bastard.” Ruff sniffed the dropped morsel and then snatched it up happily in his jaws.

“Thanks. I know.” His tone was flat.

“What about a grandfather? Your mother’s dad?”

“I don’t know his name. Mom never talks about her family, except to say that it is really, really big.”

Ruff said, “Yeah! I heard that, too. The Moths are everywhere. The Moths get into everything.”

Gil brightened. “Wait! Really? You know about my family? What have you heard?”

“Ah. That the Moths are everywhere. Like I just said. Just now.”

Gil’s smile faded. “Anything else?”

“Sure! Sure! The Moths get into everything. Anyhow, I thought of someone.”

“Someone who?”

“To train you how to fight!” Ruff jumped excitedly back and forth. “Come on! Come on! You coming? I am going, so you had better be coming!”

“Who? Tell me his name.”

“He does not have a name. You get to pick a name! You coming?”

“Yeah. I am coming. Give me a moment.”

He threw the useless newspaper on the campfire and then began piling dirt to smother the flames.

3. Rabbit

Gil had fashioned himself a hiking stick by finding a likely length of wood and trimming off the twigs. As they hiked, Gil said, “Are you sure there is a need for knights?”

Ruff said, “Sure! Sure! Anyone can tell you. Ask anyone!”

Gil thought it actually might be a good idea to ask around. Gil looked at the long grass in the meadow, saw a rustle, and perceived it was a rabbit. He called the rabbit over, telling Ruff to stand a bit away.

The rabbit sat up on its hindquarters. “What can I do for you, my good sire?”

“Um. I am looking for a job.”

“Everyone is welcome in the warren! How are you at digging holes? Plenty of clover this time of year, the does are in heat, and no need to worry about the wolf. You see, you don’t need to outrun the wolf; you only need to outrun your brother.” The rabbit wore a smug look. “That is a saying we have! When danger comes, abandon your loved ones! So, will you join? The more among us, the merrier! The more targets for the hungry wolf, the better our chances to stay alive!”

“No, not a job as a bunny. I was thinking of being a knight. Have you heard that they have any openings? Um– within walking distance of Blowing Rock, North Carolina?”

The rabbit scratched his ear with his hind leg thoughtfully. “I heard something about knights over around Pisgah National Forest. Something in the wind. Winter knights and Summer knights getting ready for Michaelmas. But I think they were elfs. You know, the hidden people, the Night Folk.”

“Elfs? What can you tell me about them?”

The rabbit shivered. “Nothing. I mean, they steal human beings from the daylight world. Put the come-hither on them. Take you down into their warrens. More targets for the hungry mouths, so more chances to stay alive if you get me. A lot like rabbits, elfs. The more, the merrier.” The rabbit shivered again. “Say nothing! They have sharp ears and many spies.”

“Yeah, I think I met one.”

“They don’t like people talking about them. It is better to call them ‘the Good People’ or ‘the Kindly Folk’ or ‘The Rich Ones’ or something like that.”

Gil said, “Are they real? Where do they come from?”

The rabbit said, “Kindly and good and rich. Like I said. Don’t talk about them. As for knighthood, stupid idea. Knights wear metal for their fur, and they fight. Outmoded, outdated, old-fashioned idea. The latest and best way is to study how to run away!”

Another rabbit, this one smaller and with a nose that never stopped twitching, emerged from the grass just then. “Sire, I could not help but overhear the conversation. Knighthood is one of those theories whose days are past! Rabbits are forward-looking! It is not for nothing that we have such ears, to hear of all the latest trends in the newest thought! Running away is the new fashion!”

Other rabbit voices now came from the grasses. “Quite so! Everyone agrees,” said one, and another said, “Always listen to rabbits! We have the more recent and most profound ideas on all matters!” and a third, “A consensus has been reached! The debate is over!”

Gil said, “But rabbits always run away. Always have. Isn’t that like your thing you are famous for? How is that new?”

But then the two rabbits he could see froze, ears high, motionless as statues. In the near distance was a thrumming noise of a rabbit rapping his hindleg against the ground, their warning signal. The two visible rabbits bounded away with astonishing speed and were gone, and no rustle was heard from the grass.

4. Wolf

Gil looked up and saw a wolf across the meadow, grinning. Gil beckoned him over. The wolf, tongue lolling, came trotting closer but slowed warily and stopped several yards away. The wolf sat down on his haunches.

“Well, you have a strange smell about you,” said the wolf, “A scent not of this world. You look like a Son of Adam, but I think you are a Son of someone else.”

“Who?” asked Gil. “Whose son am I?”

“Cut off all your fine silver hair, and give it to me, and perhaps I will tell.”

Gil said curtly, “No.”

The wolf stood up, and his ears flattened. “You do not know where my pack is or how you are surrounded, do you?”

Gil said, “Pardon my manners, Brother Wolf. Your request took me by surprise. I am not able to cut off all my hair at this time to present to you, for I promised some to my friend, a wren who is using it to line her nest. Please tell me why you want it.”

The wolf sat on his haunches again, green eyes glinting like flames. “You are well spoken, Brother Man-cub. But it would be rude of me to tell you the secret of your own hair that grows on your own head.”

Gil said, “What if I cut a handful of it and present it to you as a gift?”

The glitter in the wolf’s eyes changed, growing less dangerous but more greedy. “That would be noble courtesy indeed, Brother Man-cub.”

Gil drew his knife and cut off a tail of hair from behind his ear. He opened his fingers, and the strands floated down to the grass just before him. The wolf stood up and started to step forward but then paused, as if measuring the distance between the knife still in Gil’s hand and himself. He looked then at the silver hair on the grass, then at Gil’s eyes, and then back at the knife.

Gil said, “What, pray tell, is the matter, Brother Wolf?”

“You still have your knife in your hand, Brother Man-cub.”

“So? It would be discourteous not to offer my hair to your pack mates as well. Have them come out of hiding and show themselves, and we will exchange gifts and secrets of noble worth.”

The wolf said, “No, not so, my packmates—which are many in number, and ferocious fighters—would deem it untoward to impose on a generous heart like yours.”

Gil said, “Come, Brother Wolf. Please take these strands of hair as a gift.”

The wolf stepped slowly and warily toward the spot at Gil’s feet where the hair lay gleaming. Very gingerly, watching Gil and Gil’s knifehand with both eyes, the wolf lowered his head and gently took the hairs between his teeth.

Gil tightened his grip on his knife. It was a tiny, almost invisible motion, but the wolf froze. His head was still down, and he was very close to Gil, but not in any position to spring.

“True courtesy,” said Gil softly, “would be truly satisfied if we both performed as we said. Have you no gift to offer in return?”

The wolf’s eyes were locked on the knife, whose blade gleamed brightly.

The wolf spoke in a husky whisper, moving his lips but not his teeth. “Ask me three questions if you please. That will be my gift.”

“Thank you,” said Gil.

“You are most welcome.”

“Whose son am I?”

“I know not.”

“But you said–”

“The scent of death is upon you, which marks you as a Son of Eve and Adam. Yet also the scent of the mists of otherworld around you, which follows the Sons of Titania and Oberon. Yet you are not of one nor of the other, neither of the Day-born nor the Night-kin. You are one of the Twilight Folk. You are a son of Moth. Your family is called Moth.”

“That does not tell me much, Brother Wolf.”

“You did not give me much hair, Brother Man.”

“What makes my hair precious?”

“Long ago, were men who were my brothers, wolves who walked on two legs and who walked through the wood as warily and swiftly as do I. They worshiped many spirits, including the great wolf spirit. They danced the Ghost Dance, to turn the bullets of the white men away. Those who had hair like yours to weave into their ghost shirts had charmed lives, and the weapon they most feared, the weapon with no dreams, would not bite them. So it is for you: you will not die by firearms.”

“What? Am I bulletproof?”

“Ask your third question, kindly and gracious brother, for I must be away!”

“Uh, sure, uh. What about knighthood as a career? Are there any jobs open?”

“For that profession?” and now the wolf made a low and ugly chuckle in its throat. Then, the wolf recited:

And ever and anon the wolf would steal

The children and devour, but now and then,

Her own brood lost or dead, lent her fierce teat

To human sucklings; and the children, housed

In her foul den, there at their meat would growl,

And mock their foster-mother on four feet,

Till, straightened, they grew up to wolf-like men,

Worse than the wolves.

“What does that mean?” asked Gil. “Uh, if you please?”

And the wolf answered, “If you please, dear brother, it means that in the land of wolves, there is always a need for wolfhounds. In the land of darkness, there is always a need for lanterns of light. The pay is poor, however. Glory is the payment, glory and death. Farewell, young knight. You have been courteous to me, an enemy of your race, and given me a boon beyond your reckoning. I will tell others of my kind of your gracious spirit if you will tell me your name, and I will glorify it.”

“Tell me your name first.”

“Beasts have no names. You may call me Krasny Volk Odinokyy, the Lone Red Wolf.”

“Lone? So there is no pack surrounding me?”

The green-eyed wolf grinned. “I am ecumenical and cosmopolitan. I consider all wolves wherever in the world to be my pack. Think about it. From any spot on the globe, if you look in any quarter, north or south or east or west, and if you are willing to look far enough, eventually you will find a wolf! In a figurative sense, I think of all men as surrounded! A striking image, is it not?”

“Poetry worthy of a nightingale, dear brother.”

“Thank you, good brother. Will you honor me in turn with your name?”

“I am Gilberec Parzival Moth.”

The wolf looked startled and almost dropped the hairs. “The son of Ygraine of the Riddles? How can this be? How? They said you were dead! They said your mother was flown away, far away, on swan-wings to the place in the Summer Stars!” He twitched his ears and turned his frightened eyes left and right. “I take my leave of you, good sir.”

“Wait a minute! Who? Who said that?”

But the gray wolf had slunk away swiftly into the dark wood and was gone.

“Who said I was dead?” Gil shouted toward the trees.

There was no answer.

5. Thrush

Even as he stood looking after the wolf, wondering, a thrush flew down from the branches overhead and landed on Gil’s shoulder. “I could not help but overhear. Are you indeed Gilberec Moth?” piped the bird.

“Sure, that’s me. I am looking for a job. You heard anything?”

The thrush said, “I have heard.”

Gil brightened. “About a job?”

“No. I heard the voice of your cousin under the river water.”

Gil frowned, wondering if this were some bird joke. “Drowned? Or swimming?”

“Both.”

“How did you know it was my cousin?”

“You are the son of Ygraine Moth, Ygraine Silverlocks of the Many Riddles, Ygraine of the Wise Reeds, Ygraine of the Celestial Cloak. All birds know her, but of her we never speak.”

“Where is she from? Who did she marry? What is she?”

“Of her we never speak.”

“But you just– argh!– okay, whatever. What about my drowned cousin? You heard what? Yells for help?”

“I heard the song that was sung. Know you the waterfall called Linville Falls?” the thrush asked.

“Sure. It’s in the national forest. At the head of the gorge.”

“The Cherokee would slay their prisoners cruelly by throwing them over these falls. Only one man ever survived a plunge over it. The ghosts of the dead are thick in the gorge beneath. The door to the other world can open there. Your cousin entered through the opening, having heard that there are lights on Brown Mountain at night, not lit by human hands. One of the best vantage points to spy these lights, Wiseman’s View, is one league from the falls as the thrush flies. So said the song that was sung.”

“Well– wait a minute! There is a door in my house I want to open. He knows how to do it? What is his name?”

The bird said, “Whose name?”

“My cousin!”

“Moth.” And with this, the thrush flew up and away.

6. Wise Reeds

Gil beckoned Ruff, who came trotting over. Ruff said, “So, you talked to the rabbits. What did they say about my idea of you being a knight? Said it was great! Said it was great! I am sure! Everyone agrees!”

“The rabbits said knighthood was a terrible idea.”

“Bah! Nah! Don’t listen to rabbits. They never know what they are talking about.”

“The rabbits also told me not to talk about elfs.”

“Yup! You should listen. Rabbits are wise. Also, I saw you talking to a wolf. Never trust them. They only speak lies.”

“The wolf said being a knight was always something that is needed, a lamp in a dark land, but that the wages were glory and death.”

Ruff nodded. “Very wise. Always listen to wolves. They know what is what!”

“And you heard what the thrush said? Cousins and ghosts and lights on Brown Mountain and never talking about my mother. And the rabbit said something about the winter and summer knights at the national park. It sounds like something is up. What was that all about?”

Ruff said, “Yeah! Yeah! I know!”

“What do you know?”

“I know something is up. Something must be up!”

“What? What is up?”

Ruff sat and scratched and bit a flea on his hindquarters. “Dunno. Dunno. But something!”

“Wow. Brilliant.”

“Hey! Hey! I am a dog. You want brilliance, talk to a fox. They will swap riddles with you like a sphinx. You want to hunt the fox, talk to me. Who is more brilliant in the long run then? The dog or the fox?”

Gil just scratched the dog’s head. “Dog!” he said. “Best animal ever.”

Ruff looked proud.

Chapter Four: Tough Training

1. Bruno

They hiked and rested and hiked some more. The heat of noon had passed, and the sun was in the west, high in a cloudless blue sky, when Ruff led the way down the rocks of a gorge. As Gil descended from rock to rock, sometimes walking, sometimes going on all fours, he could see a slender waterfall, endlessly roaring. It fell in a series of three great steps from shelf to woody shelf into a deep pool it had carved out over the centuries. One rock, taller than the others, stood up in the middle of the water.

Around the pool was a fringe of rushes and cattails, brilliant in the sunlight with insects and the scent of mud. Beyond was a circle of waist-high grass and man-high rocks that had fallen in ages past from the surrounding green cliffs.

A stream meandered from the pool into the surrounding wood. The trees to either side of the stream met overhead, forming a living colonnade with a leafy roof, as shadowy and solemn as the nave of a cathedral. Brilliant glints from slanting sunbeams that pierced that canopy danced on the moving carpet of the waters like flakes of fire.

Gil walked toward the pool until his feet started making sloppy, wet noises in the grass. He looked down at Ruff. The dog was almost invisible in the tall grass but had his nose sticking up like the periscope of a submarine.

“There! There!” said Ruff.

Ahead, Gil could see nothing but a brown lumpish rock looming up between the reeds near the shore of the pond. It had an odd texture. It seemed to be coated with moss that looked brown, as if it had dried up in the sun. But the moss was quite bristly.

“I don’t see anyone. Is he here? Whoever we are looking for?”

“Right there!” said Ruff.

Gil stepped closer, wading through the waist-high grass, his footsteps sinking a bit into the muddy soil. There was something odd about the rock. It was rounded in its main mass, with a smaller hump above that and two lumps to either side that almost looked like shoulders. In fact, the whole mass looked almost like….

Then it moved.

The lump was a bear, who was facing away from Gil. The beast straightened up and turned and looked over his shoulder. Instead of a right eye, there was only a mass of scar tissue about an empty socket. In the bear’s muzzle was a live fish, still twitching and dripping pond water.

The one-eyed bear turned massively and padded forward. Gil backed up step by step but took his hiking staff in both hands. The bear stopped, lowered his head, dropped the fish, and put his paw on it. Gil could not see the fish under the tall grass, but he saw the grassblades shaking as the fish flopped.

“I was about to eat my lunch,” said the bear. “But here you are, stomping and tramping up like a blind thing. Ready to step on me, eh? You’ve riled up my food.”

Gil bowed his head without taking his eyes from the bear. “I beg your pardon, Master Bear.”

The one-eyed bear stared at him without speaking for a while. Then, its small ears twitched. “I was not riled up. I heard your racket coming down the cliffs. You should apologize to the fish.”

Gil said, “I am not apologizing to your lunch.”

“Really? What if I say you must?”

Gil drew a breath and set his feet and tightened his grip on his hiking staff. “Who knows? Try it and see. But ask yourself if the answer is worth it. Curiosity gets men into trouble all the time. Bears can be wiser.”

“A good answer, but I can smell your fear.”

Gil nodded warily. “I can smell it, too. But you cannot see my back because I am not running.”

The bear grunted. “Also a good answer. So. You think you can take me?”

“No, sir. That thought honestly never entered my mind. But I think I can hurt you, maybe poke out your other eye before you kill me, and I was thinking what a shame that would be.”

“Why is that a shame? If that happens, I win.”

“Yes, sir. But at what cost? Is it worth it? I have heard that no man builds a tower without he first counts out the cost, lest he leave off with the tower half-built and be a laughingstock!”

“Bears don’t build towers. What does it mean?”

“I am not sure, but I know it is wise.”

“Hmm. What are you doing in my part of the woods? Man and bear eat much the same stuffs, and I don’t need the competition.”

“I was following my dog.”

“Where is he?”

Ruff came crawling forward on his belly, head down, through the tall grass toward the bear, whining and letting his ears droop. “Sir! Sir! We need someone to train my boy here, see? What do you think? What do you think? To be a knight!”

The bear sat down heavily on his haunches, still keeping a forepaw on the flopping fish. “Me? I don’t know about stuff like that. Why should I? He smells like an elf, a little bit. What is he? A mongrel? Half an elf? I don’t like elfs. Thieving little pests, elfs.”

Ruff whined piteously, rolling his eyes, and belly-crawled another foot forward, “Yes! Yes! But what if he beats up some for you? What then? What about that?”

The bear twisted his head to bring his one good eye around to glare at the crawling, sniveling dog. “You’ve eaten elf food, Son of Old Hemp.”

“I was hungry! I was hungry!”

The bear brought his head back up to stare coldly at Gil. “You are the boy who talks to beasts, aren’t you? I heard the rabbits yammering about you.”

“News travels fast,” said Gil. “What is your name?”

“Beasts do not have names until a Son of Adam names us,” said the bear. “But, yes, I am the one you were looking for.”

“What did the rabbits say about me?”

“Great ones for gossip, rabbits,” continued the one-eyed bear, with no change of expression in his cold eye. “You can step into a meadow with rabbits, and they will ignore you and just go on chewing clover. Even come right up and talk to you if there are a bunch of them, to swap rumors and such. Only come up in pairs, though. Each one thinks you’ll eat his brother first, see. No sense of loyalty. Which is the rabbit you can trust?”

Gil sighed. “My Mom always asks me riddles like this. I would say none.”

“Good answer. Why?”

The bear had not relaxed his gaze. Gil, however, put the heel of his hiking staff to the marshy ground and leaned on it, for he supposed the bear would not attack while waiting for an answer. Gil said, “Rabbits will always say what other rabbits say because they are afraid to disagree, but they will never check to see if what they are repeating is truth.”

“And bears?”

“Sir, I expect bears to tell the truth.”

“And why would that be?”

“Because I expect no bear fears a disagreement.”

The bear nodded. “Good answer. I like you.”

Gil breathed out a pent-up breath he had not realized he was holding.

“Not sure I can help you, though. The rabbits said you are looking to be taught how to fight?”

“To be trained as a knight.”

The bear shook his head. “Knighthood is something men did not learn from any beast of the earth or spirit from below, so I cannot train you in its mysteries. Not me. I can show you a few moves, maybe some basic physical training, but chivalry is really not my field. Let me chow down and think this over. If I agree, what name will you call me?”

“Um. You are brown. How about Bruno?”

“I was hoping for something more like bee-wolf.”

“Master Bear, I can call you Bee-wolf if you like.”

The bear gave him a cold look. “That is not how it works. To fight, you have to think like a beast, think about what is before your nose here and now, not looking over your shoulder. No regrets, no hopes, no fretting about tomorrow. You named me my name, and you cannot take it back. If you land a blow and break a bone, you cannot take it back. See?”

“Yes, I see.”

“And Bruno is a good name. Sounds solid. Not like Moth. That is a name that is neither here nor there. Always flitting, moths. Hmph.”

“How did you know my name, ah, Bruno?”

The bear was not listening and did not answer. Instead, Bruno spoke, as if musing aloud, “A good name giver means you have a good eye. So you might make a good fighter. I don’t know. Lots to think over. I’ll be back again after lunch if you are still here.” And he bowed his head, picked up his fish, and moved away heavily but silently through the tall grass to a point near the cliff where the westerly sun was already casting a narrow slip of dark shade.

2. The Basics

Lesson One was in how to awe and terrify. Bruno showed Gil how to rear up and raise his arms overhead and roar at the top of his lungs.

“This part is important,” said the bear. “Critters get stupid when they fight. If you hold your forepaws up like that, you look like you are ten-feet-tall. Also, make as much racket as you can. That shows you are not scared. Do you have any pots and pans to bang together? Works wonders.”

While Gil was practicing waving his arms overhead and uttering shouts loud enough to echo off the canyon walls, he heard a lilt of girlish laughter in the distance.

Gil looked.

Kneeling on the rock in the middle of the pool was a shapely young woman in a skintight black wetsuit.

She had long hair as dark as her suit which she lay over her shoulder. Even from a distance, Gil recognized from her arm motions that she was combing her locks. Her face and hands, by contrast, seemed very white, white as a lily petal. Her feet were bare.

And she was giggling at him.

Without warning, the bear cuffed Gil smartly, knocking him from his feet. “Not paying attention, is it? Look sharp! Keep up with the practice. Roar!”

The length and thickness of the grass and the softness of the muddy, marshy soil beneath saved Gil from any broken bones, but the blow had dazed him. “But there is someone watching us!”

The bear growled, “Let ’em!”

So Gil continued to roar and shout and wave his arms, painfully aware of his audience. Time went by, but whenever Gil stole a glance toward the girl, she was still combing. He wondered how long it took this girl to do her hair. His mother had hair twice as long, and she did not spend hour after hour combing it.

The bear said, “Now for Lesson Two. Fleeing. Run up a slope if you want to get out of reach, but down slope if you want to wear them out. Bears and horses aren’t built for running down sharp slopes. Bears can climb trees, but knights on horses can’t. Ready to run?”

Lesson Two lasted a long time. The girl combing her hair on the rock watched as Gil was chased by the galloping bear round and round the pool, splashing through mud and water, trying to lift his heavy legs out of clinging and sticky soil, being lashed in the face by stubborn reeds and grass.

This running took Gil nearer the pond, and he got a better look at the girl. She wore a pair of round mirrored glasses that hid her eyes, but, strangely enough, they seemed to be sunglasses, not swimming goggles.

There was a flash of brightness in her hand as she stroked her hair, and Gil realized her comb was a comb of gold.

She pushed her glasses to the top of her head, revealing eyes that were large, dark, and with very thick lashes. She waved cheerfully when she saw Gil turn his head her way.

Then, she hid her mouth behind her slender white hand when the bear slapped Gil off his feet, and the peals of her silvery laughter echoed from across the water and mingled with the music of the falls.

“Look sharp!” bellowed the bear.

Lesson Three was in how to play dead. Gil, now coated in sweat and mud and bruised from where the bear had cuffed him, was taught how to back up while avoiding eye contact and then throw himself supine. “Don’t resist if a bear flips you over,” said Bruno. “And keep in mind, playing dead only works on my folk. We don’t eat dead meat.”

Gil said, “What if I fight someone who does eat dead meat?”

“Play live.” And the bear smote him again, for talking while he was pretending to be dead.

“But how do I actually fight?” asked Gil.

“Fight? A man fight a bear?”

“Yeah.”

“You got a cannon? A big gun of some sort? All the humans I meet carry guns.”

“Nope,” said Gil. “Nothing like that.”

“A sword? Knights have things called swords. Like a knife, but bigger.”

“I got a stick,” said Gil.

So Lesson Four was staff fighting. The sun, by this time, had traveled beyond the cliffs, the whole gorge was in shadow, and the air was cooler.

Bruno said, “Beasts like me get confused when you humans hit us with something at a distance. Best to use a stick. It is like magic to us. Hold it like I told you. Remember, the hand and leg should agree, which means whichever leg is forward, the same hand should be forward on the staff. No, you are holding it wrong….”

There followed another long, long period of the bear effortlessly blocking Gil’s best blows and slapping Gil easily to the grass. The bear spoke while Gil struck again and again with his hiking staff.

“The key is to hit the head, the eyes, the snout, and the chest. Those are the weak spots. A swift kick or hard blow to the foe’s left hind leg is good. Or aim for the top of the neck, just below the jawline. That could stun ’em. Then run away because anyone you knock down like that is not going to be too happy when he gets back up.”

Gil glanced over at the rock, but the shapely raven-haired maiden was gone. He felt a moment of strange emptiness, but then he saw that she had merely moved to a smaller, flatter rock nearer to the shore. But then the bear swatted Gil again and sent him flying into the wet grass. “Look sharp!” bellowed the bear.

When the staff broke, it was time for Lesson Five: grappling. “This is a simple move, and it always works. Rear up on your hind legs, get your forepaws around the prey, and hug him. This will crush his lungs and break his ribs. And rip off his face with your teeth while you are doing it; that always demoralizes him.”

Gil and the bear wrestled, or, rather, the bear crushed Gil helplessly while Gil struggled pathetically. Because the bear could not sheathe his claws, despite his attempts to be careful, Gil ended up with many long, shallow, and very painful lacerations on his back. And each time he climbed up out of the muddy grass, coated with blood and black with contusions, the next bear hug was even stronger, lasted longer, and drove him nearer to blacking out. The final time he did not even remember as the crushing grip was so powerful and so painful.

But he did remember that he heard the girl laughing a merry peal of laughter as he flopped once more to the soggy, trampled grass and mud. Then, he passed out.

3. Chow

When Gil regained consciousness, he leaned forward and shrugged out of the remnants of his torn shirt. Ruff came out of the grass and licked the claw wounds on Gil’s back. Bruno said, “We’re almost done for the day. Come back every day here before dawn, and we do this until the first snow falls, and you might start to get the hang of fighting.”

The bear was talking about a period of time between ten and fourteen weeks. Gil sighed a long, sad sigh. “I would love nothing better, Master Bear. But my Mom says I have to find honest work. How do I make money?”

The bear said, “Money? What is that?”

“You use it to get food.”

The bear said, “Oh! Come on. I’ll show you.”

They waded through the reeds into the water of the pool itself, about chest deep on the boy, waist deep on the bear, who was a foot or two taller. “It is a little early in the season, but there are fish here. They are easy to catch, and this is good training for your speed and hand-eye coordination. Don’t try slapping the fish out of the water onto shore. That is a showoff mistake. The fish, even if it is dead, could fall in the water and be carried away by the current. The important part is to snag the fish with the front of your muzzle when you strike, and then hold the fish against the crook of your elbow. This lets you grip the body securely with your molars and carry the fish to the shore.”

They were closer to the brunette on the rock than they had been all day. The girl, by this time, had finished combing and was starting to braid her hair. She looked quite pretty kneeling on the rock with her elbows above her head as she braided a French braid on herself.

When she saw Gil once again looking at her, she put her nose in the air and turned partly away from him. Once, he caught her glancing sidelong over her shoulder curiously at him, as if she wanted to see whether he had noticed he was being ignored.

And then Bruno hit him in the face with a fish. “Look sharp!” bellowed the bear.

Gil splashed and lunged and slipped and slid and grabbed. Again and again he plunged into the water with his hands or threw himself into the mud, pursuing some elusive shape.

He looked down and saw, there beneath the waters, her pretty eyes hidden behind the round lenses of her sunglasses, the face of the girl. She stood up, and water sluiced from her head, shoulders, and arms. She had her hair up in a jeweled snood or hair-net so that a bun of twined hair, about the size of her two fists, was held at the back of her neck in a shape like a lobster’s tail. The interstices of the snood were set with pearls and opals, and little scales or flakes of gold and lapis lazuli hung at her temples and ears and between her dark eyebrows.

The mirrored sunglasses hid her expression. In her hand was a living fish, writhing and gasping. She tossed it lightly to Gil, who, surprised, slapped the slender silvery fish in midair, let it slip out of his grasp, and watched it fall into the water.

He jerked up his knees in a convulsive motion, lunging through the mass of stubborn water, and threw himself after the fish. He slapped at the darting shape with his hands and managed to yank it toward his mouth. The only way to retain his grip was to clutch the fish with both hands and bite into it with his teeth. The frantic tailfin slapped him in the left cheek and eye as he splashed toward shore.

Ruff hopped up and down in the tall reeds of the shore, barking, “Toss it! Toss it! I’m open!”

Against his better judgment, Gil threw the twitching fish with both hands. Ruff leaped up into the air with an athletic bound, snapped his jaws shut on the fish, landed, and jerked his neck back and forth to worry it. The fish slipped out of his jaws and flopped energetically, but Ruff pinned it with both forepaws and bit off the head.

Gil threw both arms overhead and uttered a war-whoop of victory, raising little waves around his knees as he jumped. He turned, hoping to see the swimming girl’s expression. But there was no expression because there was no girl.

She was gone.

Chapter Five: Daughter of the Deep

1. Being Schooled

The next day, to get to the gorge before dawn, he woke at 2:30 in the morning, took up the cot he was renting, slung it over his sore and aching back, and set out with Ruff. The pair hiked for four hours through wood and meadow, thicket and grass, following the deer trails. Once or twice when Ruff lost the way, Gil asked a morose crow or hectic squirrel for directions. Linville Gorge itself was on the lands of the National Forest, but Gil saw no sign of campers, park rangers, or any other soul. He wondered if he would be seeing the skin-diving girl again.

Gil found a narrow cave mouth in the gorge wall that led down a steep and crooked passage to a wide and sandy floor. He managed to wrestle the cot in through the cramped opening. Gil was not sure if training with a bear counted as having an honest job. The only payment he could see coming out of this would be lacerations, bruises, and sprains, frequent plunges into mud, reeds, cattails, and murk, and a fish dinner when he could catch it.

Gil looked around the cave with satisfaction. There on that rock he could start a campfire with a friction bow, which was something he had learned in the Boy Scouts. He had been a member of Troop Two when they lived in Tillamook, Oregon. Perhaps he could cut a likely treebranch into a trident to help catch fish. Ruff helpfully urinated outside the cave mouth to show that the cave was theirs.

The birds were twittering in the pre-dawn gloom, praising the coming light, and talking about their territorial claims or boasting about their mates. Gil could smell the freshness in the air. He stepped out of the cave, ready to start his first day of work.

That day, the girl reappeared on the rock at about noon. This time, he saw her appear. She swam up out of the deep part of the pool beneath the waterfall and climbed the rock nimbly. She took off the jeweled net or snood holding her hair bun at her neck and then undid her hair and shook it free with a toss of her head so that flying droplets caught the sunlight like jewels. She arranged her combs and long gold hairpins, her small silver mirror, and other toiletries on the rock before her.

She stayed and watched all afternoon while Gil practiced roaring, fleeing, playing dead, fighting with a stick, wrestling, and fishing. She sat watching him and his exercises and antics in the hot or blistering sun and in the wet or suffocating mud.

Unlike before, when she had watched and laughed, now she merely slept on the rock most of the day, coiled on the sunny stone surface like a graceful cat, her cheek upon her elbow. After her nap, she sang to accompany the sound of the waterfall, but Gil heard only a faint echo and could not make out the tune.

She only became interested after the day’s practice was done, and Gil once again attempted to catch a fish with his hand. She crept to a closer rock and peered around the side impishly, showing only her eyes above the waterline. She had pushed her mirrored sunglasses back on her brow, or so Gil assumed, so he could see her roll her eyes.

That day, Gil caught nothing except a sea lamprey, which bit him. The girl laughed until her cheeks turned pink.

Gil asked Ruff to swim across the pool and find out who she was, but the dog gave him an odd look and pretended not to have heard him.

On Thursday she was not there at all.

On Friday she returned.

2. Water Sports

She watched carefully that day, applauding whenever the bear smote Gil to the ground, clapping her hands prettily.

After playing dead practice and before stick fighting practice, Gil begged the bear for a lunch break, so he could go talk to the girl. “At least I want to find out her name!”

The bear said, “Fine. I am going to go mug some bees and eat their honey. You have until I get back.”

So at noon, Gil took off his one remaining shirt and swam out to the cluster of rocks near the middle of the pool. The wind was blowing across the top of the gorge, so a little fine spray from the waterfall was raining down onto the rocks every now and then. However, when he got to the big rock in the middle and climbed up to the top, he found it empty. She was gone.

Ruff, from the shore, said, “Hey! Hey! She’s behind you! Look!”

Gil turned. There she was, seated on a second rock a little ways across the water behind him, tucking her hair into her jeweled cap, facing the other direction, paying him no attention. He called out to her, but either the noise of the waterfall drowned his voice, or, more likely, she was ignoring him.

He ran across the flat upper surface of the tall rock and dove like an arrow, hitting the water cleanly with little splash, and swam rapidly toward this second rock with his best overarm stroke. His head broke the water, and he clung to this second rock and shook the drops from his eyes.

He looked up. No one was here. This rock was now empty.

Ruff was barking. Gil looked back at the first rock. There she was, draped across the high, stony surface, resting on one elbow, holding up a mirror in her hand, the two smaller mirrors of her sunglasses hiding her eyes. Over the sound of the fall, he could hear her humming to herself, a serene, strange, tuneless melody of trills and drifting, dreamlike notes.

Gil wondered if there were a trick involved. How had she gotten over there so quickly?

So he dove and tried again. This time, when he reached where she had been lounging, he looked up and found her standing among the reeds of the shore, doing what looked like ballerina practice. She held her arms in the air, stood on one toe on the marshy ground, and lifted one leg so high her naked foot was over her head. It was incredibly graceful, but with her eyes hidden and expressionless, Gil could not tell if she were mocking him or fleeing because she was shy or simply crazy or what.

So he swam toward shore. This time, he saw her move. She made an astonishing leap, like something an Olympic athlete would make, from the shore into the pool, and then he saw her legs kick high above the surface as she dove under.

So with his best breaststroke he splashed toward that spot, only to find she was below him, swimming upside down, paralleling his course, peering up at him curiously. Gil wondered how she kept her glasses on her face when she dove and swam.

He drew a deep breath, kicked his legs in the air, and dove down toward her. Her face was expressionless as she drifted in a leisurely fashion into the deeper part of the pool, near the column of the waterfall. Gil could hear a throbbing in his ears. He did not know whether it was his heartbeat or the falling water.

The water grew darker as the two sank away from the sun. Gil was swimming forward with the whole of his considerable strength, and the girl was always just a little ways out of reach below him. She swam backward, waving her arms slowly in the water with her stroke, almost as if beckoning him. She could swim backward using only gentle, casual motions of her hands faster that he could swim forward with all four limbs and furious effort.

Then, she drew out her small silver mirror and looked at herself critically, pouting and pushing a hair strand neatly back into her gem-studded snood. And, somehow, she could still swim faster than he could, and deeper, using only her bare feet.

Gil was surprised at how deep the pool was in this spot. In the gloom, he could see a wall of rock to his left and his right. He saw the columns and pyramids of stone that rose to form the rocks of the surface. But he saw no bottom.

His lungs were aching, and his vision pulsing with a creeping darkness around the edge. So he turned, and, clawing with his hands and feet, he made for the surface. A streamlined shape darted up from underfoot, swift as a dolphin, and torpedoed past him. It was the girl, of course. He saw her silhouette above him, outlined against the wavering and wobbling image of the sun seen through the rippling water. She looked over her shoulder, her eyes hidden in her glasses, but she wiggled her fingers at him in a playful salute, kicked her legs once, and was gone in a spray of bubbles.

He broke the surface and stroked wearily toward shallower water. He heard Ruff bark. “There! There! There he is!– Say, Gil, I was sure you were drowned!”

Gil’s feet found the muddy bottom, and he raised his head. The girl was nowhere in sight. The one-eyed bear was waiting in the reeds, honey stains on his chest, but a grumpy look on his muzzle. “Are you going to play all day like an otter, or are you going to get to work? Look sharp!”

3. Tool-Using Creature

On Saturday Gil found himself unable to rise from his cot, overcome by the wounds and sprains of his rough training at the hands, or, rather, paws, of Bruno the Bear. For his lunch, he relied on what Ruff brought him. They ate a rabbit. Gil said, “I hope this is not the one I talked to. Maybe I should become a vegetarian.”

Ruff shivered from nose to tail. “Brr! Don’t joke like that. You give me the creeps. Besides, if we don’t eat the lunchmeat animals, soon there will be too many of them. You should see what happened in Australia.”

Gil spent the time writing a letter to his mother. Ruff wagged his tail and eagerly agreed to make the long trek back to deliver it. Gil wrapped the letter in some tinfoil he carried in his knapsack so that the dog could carry it in his mouth without wetting it.

The one-eyed bear looked him over and sniffed his various wounds. “I have some business to see to today anyway. Rest up. In the afternoon, do a hundred laps around the pond, alternating walking and running, forty push-ups, twenty squat-thrusts, twenty battlecries, and twenty play-deads. Your claws are too small. See what you can do about growing them bigger.”

Gil stared at his fingernails doubtfully. “Men use knives. Speaking of which, may I today use that fishspear I made?” For, earlier this week, Bruno had strictly forbidden him to use it on the theory that barehanded fishing was good for developing his hand-eye coordination.

The bear said, “You Sons of Adam with your tricks and tools do not understand that strong tools make you weak.”

“We need tools to conquer nature.”

“Nature would have served you unconquered had your fathers not rebelled and eaten the food of angels before it was ripe, inviting death into the world before they were granted the authority to banish it. The mother of your race sought a crown above her station in the Night World, and the Night Lords answered and came. Too late now! Men have misplaced their names and do not know whose sons they are!”

Gil said, “Whose son am I?”

The one-eyed bear said, “You are not a bear cub, so how should I know? You must have the iron claw and iron hide called sword and hauberk to be attired as a knight. What I can teach is not fit for you. Another teacher would be better.”

“I am not a quitter, Master Bear!”

“You cannot get the honey if you are too thin-skinned and bee-fearing to pry open the hive, but if it is a wasp’s nest, there is no honey to get. I will tell you my verdict when I return after I talk with a wiser heart than mine. So, in the meanwhile, use your fish spear, Son of Adam!”

The one-eyed bear climbed out of the cave, turned, and thrust his head back in the cave mouth. “There is watercress downstream and honey in the hive by the old oak stump. Mind the bees. Try to grow your fur thicker to fend them off. That little bit you have on your head and chest is pathetic.”

Bruno lumbered off.

4. The Mermaid

Later that afternoon, Gil was sitting on the one comfortable spot on the shore that was free of reeds and pebbles. A small stretch of golden sand, less than two yards across, formed a comfortable place to sit or nap, and he could put his elbows on the shore and lower his bruised body in the water and let the cool sensations soothe his many aches and sprains.

He took off his shirt, folded his arms behind his head as a pillow, closed his eyes, and rested.

When he opened his eyes again, the sun was in the western half of the sky so that the shadow of the cliff cut the vale neatly in half. The part of the pool near him was in shadow and looked as opaque as a gray mirror, in which the high blue sky was caught, and the far side of the pool was in sunlight and shined and moved like a restless living thing. Concentric ripples washed endlessly out from the pillar of the waterfall, going both into the light and shadow.

He saw the girl in the black wetsuit under the water a few yards away, looking up at him with her mirrored spectacles. She hung motionless in a deep part of the pool, almost touching the sand of the lakebed. Gil wondered why her body did not bob to the surface because she was not making any motion with her hands or feet to counteract her buoyancy. As he watched, and a minute went by, and then five, and then ten, he wondered how long she could hold her breath.

He knew it was good manners to stand up when a lady entered the room but did not know what the rule was when she entered a pool. He decided that a polite wave of the hand would have to do.

She must have taken his hand-wave as an invitation, for she darted with the grace of a seal to the shallower depth and stood up, the water sluicing from her black outfit. She wore her jeweled hairnet with its glinting scales of gold and pearl.

She pushed her glasses up onto the top of her head. Her eyes were very pretty, but he was not sure he liked the mirth he saw there. Was she laughing at him?

She said nothing, just looked at him a moment. He continued to sit with his body in the water and his head propped up on the sand of the beach, his brawny arms folded behind him, his silver hair shining.

He said, “I would offer you welcome, miss, but I think you were here before me.”

She shook her head, bit her lip, and looked uncertain. “Where is the pooka?”

Gil raised a puzzled eyebrow. “Pardon me, miss, but did you just ask me where the poker is? I don’t play cards. But, um, I can show you how to play mumbly-peg.”

She scanned the shore, as if seeking something. Then, she turned back toward him and said, “I have an ointment.”

Gil said, “Yes? I am sure it is nice to have an ointment.” He suddenly found himself flummoxed. He had no idea what to say or how to say it without sounding like an idiot.

She took a few steps toward him so that the water was at her thighs, then her calves, and then her ankles. She wore a flat and narrow purse of folded leather on her leg, held in place by straps circling her upper thigh and knee. This was no doubt where she carried her mirror of silver and combs of gold and her other dainty gear. She was undoing the mother-of-pearl buckles as she walked toward him.

Her head for a moment blocked out the sun. Then, she stepped over him and knelt behind him on the sand. Gil was startled by this, wondering why she was getting so close, and he did not like having her behind him where he could not see. He sat up and would have stood up, except she put her hand on his shoulder.

“Sit!” she said, “This will mend your wounds, and it will not sting.” In her hand was what looked like a silver clamshell about the size of a lady’s compact.

Gil was not sure he trusted the look he saw in her eyes. She seemed to be having rather too much fun. “Is this medicine?”

She said, “I am the daughter of Glaucon and Narissa. Of course it is medicine, most virtuous and potent.”

Gil turned around and showed her his back. “Go ahead. If you say it won’t sting, then I– YEEOOOW!” He gritted his teeth and splashed water on his face to hide the tears of pain gathering in his eyes. It felt like someone had taken a lit match and run it down the scratches and lacerations on his back. “I thought you said it would not sting!”

She said, “What you feel is a bracing tingle. I have admixtures more potent that cause convulsions, hairloss, vomiting, and paroxysms. They sting. This is nothing. Hold still and stop whimpering. Let me spread this.”

He could feel her fingers and palms running up and down the wounds on his back, and the painful sensation of heat spread and grew calm and sank into his skin. Her hands were incredibly soft.

While she spread the gel over his back, she began to sing. It was a strange, wordless song, lilting and warbling, with loon-like moans and high arpeggios. It did not seem to be on a diatonic scale but sounded more like something from ancient Japan, or perhaps from India.

The warmth and the calm were very relaxing, even mesmeric, but he resisted the temptation to fall asleep. He said, “Miss, we have not been introduced.”

She said, “I have, but not you.”

That strange sensation he often had of neither understanding nor being understood, as if ordinary words had gone on strike, now overcame him again. “You have what?”

“Have been introduced. I did it myself. Were you not paying attention? I have seen the bear many a time smite you for this fault, and it makes me laugh. Your eyes bug out wonderfully when you fall on your face or on your behind, and your arms and legs jerk this way and that!”

“Who are you?”

“I am the daughter of Narissa, who is the daughter of Nausithöe, and she in turn is the sister of Danae of Arcadia, who married Pelenore of Listenoise and bore him Dandrenor the Grail Maiden; and she is the sister of Elyezer of the Broken Sword and also of Elaine of the Sea (who married Garis le Gros son of Nichodemas the Fisher King), and, of course, Dandrenor is also the sister of….”

This all came out in one long, happy rush of unknown names and strange titles. “Miss, hold up. You did not actually introduce yourself.”

Her voice was suddenly flat. “Ha! Well, I like that! You interrupted!”

“Do you have a name?” said Gil. “Or should I just call you Chatterbox?”

“I am of the Vespertine. You can call me Nerea.”

“Nerea.” He rather liked her name. “Nerea, if I may ask–”

“What is it?”

“–are you human?”

“Well!” she replied. He could practically hear her rolling her eyes. “What kind of question is that?”

“It is just that, well, you cannot be a camper, and you can hold your breath for so long, and there are no parents driving you here in a station wagon or anything, but you have jewelry and gold that most girls from North Carolina don’t have. So I thought you weren’t human.”

“I cannot hold my breath very long.”

“When you were swimming, you did not surface for fifteen minutes. Even a pearl diver cannot do that.”

Nerea said, “I don’t see how– eh?– well, now you’ve confounded me! What makes you think I was holding my breath while I was under water? I was breathing just fine. There! All done!” And she slapped him on the back.

There was no pain at all. He stood, craning his neck to try to see his own back. He reached around behind him with his arm and felt with his fingers. There were no tender spots nor bruises, and the long savage cuts had vanished. He felt no scars either.

He looked down at where she knelt. She had placed her purse on the stone and unfolded it into a larger shape and was tucking the little clamshell away. He wondered if his eyes were deceiving him because the folds of the purse fit into a smaller space than should have been possible.

“What kind of ointment is that?” he asked.

“It is made from the glands of a kraken who dies on Christmas Day and from the venom in the tooth of a sea serpent, mingled with mephitic and chthonic fumes that leak from the sub-sea volcanoes standing over the ruins of Atlantis, whose walls and fanes of gold and orichalchum the sea cannot corrupt. My father mingles it.”

“You’re a mermaid!”

She looked up and squinted. “You are a strange one! What strange things you say!”

He said, “My name is Gilberec Moth.”

She nodded, but her eyes were not on him. She took out of her purse some phials made of ruby in which glowworms writhed, and other small glittering objects he did not recognize, such as an orb of luminous crystal and a gold instrument smaller than a pocketwatch. Then, she put them back in again and folded the purse flaps once more, as if trying to get her gear to nestle properly.

“I know who you are,” she said absentmindedly. “I was looking for you.”

“Looking for m– why?”

“We are cousins. No one in the family knows you are alive, but me.” She took up the purse and its belt and buckled it around her waist and thigh once more.

“What family?”

She looked up, a look of surprise on her features. “If your mother did not tell you, I am not sure if I should say anything. She is known to be wise, so she must have a reason.”

“Do you know who my father is?”

Nerea shook her head. “No one knows that.”

“What about my grandfather?”

Nerea cocked her head to one side, a gesture oddly similar to Ruff’s. “I did not forget him. Pelenore of Listenoise.”

“What?”

“Pelenore Moth. He is the father of Dandrenor the Grail Maiden. Didn’t you hear me? And Pelenore is the father of Elyezer, Elaine, and Ygraine. It is important whenever you meet another cousin, always to give your lineage, to see how close you are. We share a great-grandfather, which makes us second cousins.”

“Then you are a member of the Moth family.”

She squinted, which made her eyes glitter like amber. “You– it is very creepy that you did not know that. Your mother told you nothing? I had better not say anything either. She might—who knows?—hit me over the head with a riddle or something.”

If Gil had entertained a doubt that this mermaid girl knew his Mom, the doubt evaporated at that moment. “At least tell me what I am! Who I am? Who are the Moths? And don’t just tell me that we are everywhere and get into everything. I already heard that!”

She seemed frightened by his intensity, but there was also pity in her eye. Nervously, she looked over her shoulders to the left and right, as if she feared eavesdroppers, but then she shrugged. “I suppose I could tell you that. Very well! The Moth Clan is the largest in the world, the largest of all time. You have relatives in all the worlds. Fairies and Phantoms, Elfs and Efts, Woodwoses and Wolfensarks, Verminlings and Vampires, Lamia and Lilim, Mermaids and Monsters of the Sea, all roam the world unseen of Men. And there are branches of the family who married all of them.”

Gil was confused. “What does that all mean?”

“It means the Family always takes care of its own,” said she, and there was a prim but solemn note in her voice. “No one else will help us. The humans fear us for our elfin blood, and the elfs mock us for our mortal blood. We do not take part in feuds between the other talking races that escaped when Atlantis sank, because we have blood kin on every side of their quarrels. So we belong truly to no world. But we have kin in all.”

“You mean worlds like in outer space? Mars and Venus and so on?”

“No. My cousin Mathonwy Moth, who is the greatest sorcerer of our generation, says no one lives on those frozen or boiling orbs except the ghosts of long-dead and monstrous civilizations, utterly given over to evil, whose graves and prisons must never be disturbed. My cousin Tomorrow Moth—everyone calls him Tom—flew once to the dark side of the moon, to the haunted ruins, in his father’s aether-ship made of Cavor alloy mined from Laputa, greatest of the sky islands. Tom returned, but possessed by a morbid phantasm from outer space, and strange voices spoke from his mouth. He had to be saved by my gentle cousin Matthias, who is learning the art of quelling ghosts from a Holy Father.”

Gil scowled. “So I have cousins who are mermaids and sorcerers, space pilots and ghostbusters, and I get to live in a cave, unemployed, in North Carolina?”

Nerea shook her head energetically. “Tom stole the aether ship! He is a very naughty lad! To venture into the upper void is forbidden. No Moths live there. When I speak of other worlds where we sojourn, I mean worlds like in the other hemisphere beyond the human two or the deeper levels of the mist. Lands of dream or death, or elflands or ogrelands. Places like that. Undersea. The Night World. You have the second sight, so you can see things that are not fully in the world of Daylight, the World of Men. Do you understand?”

“Not really,” said Gil, perhaps a little crossly.

“We have the best family ever and the biggest. We get into everywhere.”

“Why don’t you have a fish’s tail if you are a mermaid?”

She said, “I have a fake tail I can wear like a skirt on formal occasions.”

“Why do you need a fake tail?”

“Like you, I am half and half. That is why I have to wear spectacles. I cannot see in the darkness far below the waves as well as my sisters. I also need my mermaid cap to breathe water.”

“What keeps your glasses on your face when you dive or swim?”

“That is a dumb question.”

“I am a dumb kid, and likely to stay dumb if no one answers my questions. What keeps them on your face?”

“Magic.”

“What kind of magic?”

“Sea magic.”

“What kind is that?”

“The kind that asks the elements of the world pretty please not to knock my glasses off my nose when I dive or swim.”

“Why do the elements listen to the charm?”

“Because it’s magic! I don’t know. Why do animals listen to you?”

“I don’t know.” But then he frowned. Hadn’t Ruff said something to him earlier this week about that? “Something to do with love.”

She smiled a smug smile and nodded. “All good magic ultimately boils down to love. My cousin Mathonwy told me that! He is a magician.”

“Do you know any magic?”

She shook her head. “I know it is dangerous. If you traffic or talk with dark powers, they come to live with you, in your house, whether you know it or not. And even the good magic is unlawful for true humans. There are some things people like us are allowed to do if we are discreet, but there is always a price. Even something as simple as never losing your glasses.”

“People like us?”

“The Twilight Folk. We are neither of Dark nor Day. The Moths are the most numerous, and we are attracted to the light; the Cobwebs to the darkness. There are two other great families, the Peaseblossoms and the Mustardseeds, and several lesser ones, such as the Smithwicks. Twilights can interbreed with Daylights, and their children possess the second sight or selkie blood.”

“Daylights are normal humans?”

“Yes. In times of old, certain noble families or doomed heroes were children of Melusine or serpent queens or pagan gods. Some of their descendants are also counted as Twilightish. The purebred selkie or elfs look down on us. Even the sad pagan gods look down, what few are left. In their worlds, we can only be servants and menials. But in a way, we have the best of both worlds because we can travel, explore, and invent like men of the Day world do and also work some magic like elfs of the Night world and behold their unearthly splendors and get away with it.”

“There is a door in my house I want to open. It follows my Mom and me around when we move. It leads to an attic that is not there. Can you open it?”

Nerea shook her head and shrugged. “I don’t know anything about such doors. I mean, I know they exist, but that is an elf magic. They open and close according to the times and seasons and the stars, into places that were left over after the first garden was destroyed.”

“Left over?”

“The cosmos is a made thing.” She raised one arm and pointed at the mountains, trees, grass underfoot, great blue dome of the sky overhead. “All of it. All this. An artifact, built like a house is built. The Sons of Israel were told the name of the builder, but they never wrote it down. When all the paths to the first garden were blocked and the mountain on which it stood was thrown into the sea and lost, the whole world was jarred off its axis, and many things originally meant for joy turned into pests and plagues. The world started to age and fall apart. There were passages like servants’ corridors hidden in a house where those dread powers tasked with the construction (and, now that it was marred, the repair) of the many chambers and mansions of the house were allowed to walk. These corridors were hidden behind secret doors or unsolid walls. The stars turn and keep the time, and the doors open and close.”

“A bird told me you knew how to open a door like this.”

“Not like this.”

“How is it unlike?”

“The door you describe is controlled by the stars. We of Undersea know little about the stars. Our magic is of the whalesong and raging waves, of far horizons and of the deep where winds do not blow and sunbeams not reach. The Sea Fairies have different doors and different paths we swim. The star magic is not for us. The elfs have no charms against drowning in the waters, and only thus are we free from their wicked meddling.”

“But you can open your door?”

“It is controlled by the tides. Yes. There is a passage leading from certain unhallowed ground nearby to a river in the dreamworld, which leads past gates of horn and ivory into the Witch City of Ys, and from there into Cantriff Gwylodd and Aegai and the lands beneath the sea. But the passwords I have for the one door I know will not work on any others. And I cannot make the doors move from here to there, as yours can do. That sounds like magic of the highest and most ancient blood to me. So, I answered your questions, you admit, cousin Gilberec?”

“Yes,” he agreed. “But I have more. Lots more.”

She held up a slender finger and gave him a look of mock sternness. “Fair is fair!”

“What is your question?”

Nerea Moth pointed at something Gil could not see. Then, he realized she was gesturing toward his cave.

“I am going to have to bring that cot back tomorrow,” he said.

She said, “That is not my question. What is all this? What are you doing? Why are you living in the woods? With a bear? And letting him pummel you?”

“He is teaching me how to be a knight.” He peered at her. “You are not laughing. You do not think being a knight is ridiculous?”

She shrugged her shoulders. “I do not know how surface dwellers do things, but being squire to a bear seems perfectly reasonable to me. You can never be a squire to an elf because you are a Moth and thus of mixed and impure blood. Although I had heard that in cases like this, the teacher is never seen, and the prentice is supposed to give him a bowl of cream on the doorstep every night. And make him a new suit of clothing before Michaelmas.”

“You know when Michaelmas is?”

“Of course. Didn’t anyone ever teach you the calendar?”

“Apparently not.”

“How did you squire yourself to a bear?”

“I was looking for a job. A trade. You know, when you do work for money….”

She nodded. “I know. We have toil and trade in Undersea. My father ran an apothecary shop before he became the court physician to Queen Amphitrite.”

“Sorry. I am used to talking to animals.”

“But being squired to a bear is not a trade.”

“I am not his squire. In fact, I think he is having second thoughts about training me.”

“Well, of course. The squire owes fealty to his knight and liege, and it is a lifelong bond. Your bear probably cannot carry out his side of the bargain. I guess he is having trouble finding you arms and armor and a horse and such.”

“You seem to know a lot about knights,” he said.

The comment clearly pleased her because she looked down and smiled and said, “Oh, no, not really.”

“Is knighthood still around in your world? Can I go there?”

She shook her head. “There are indeed knights in Undersea, and they are terrifying to behold because their weapons are typhoons. Our knights ride in coracles of shell, in chariots drawn by the hippocampus, or go upon the backs of war-trained whales in barding and plate like unto an ironclad, or in towers built upon the spine or brow of the mighty sea-serpent. You cannot go, not unless you learn to breathe water. And if I may ask…?”

“Go ahead. Fair is fair.”

“Why do you want to be a knight?”

Gil did not need to pause to find words. “Because my Mom and I have lived in some pretty poor places, and in some pretty bad neighborhoods, but I never saw one which would not have been better if the people had helped each other out more. Usually, poor people do that, and a lot more than the fatter and happier people I’ve seen. But if they cannot trust each other, they stop. Stop helping each other, I mean. And if they prey on each other like wolves eating rabbits, they cannot trust each other. Every place I’ve lived, from California to Utah to here, if there were only someone to beat up the strong and protect the weak, then the neighborhoods would not be so bad, and the poor would not be so poor. It is as simple as that.”

She said, “Why don’t you go to where the knights are? They will scorn you because of your mixed blood, but if you watch them unseen, from a hidden covert, perhaps you can learn their arts. This can tell you more of their mysteries than any bear.”

Gil said, “Real knights? In this world?”

“Somewhat.”

“Do you know where they are found?”

Nerea Moth nodded eagerly. “The summer knights and winter knights shall meet in tourney over by Brown Mountain on Lammas Day. I know not the causes of the dispute, but the Summer King and Winter King both fear a general war would shatter the world, and so have agreed to allow heaven to judge the outcome of their quarrel by the omen of the tournament. However, if you come, you must be very stealthy and subtle of foot! The Night Folk are not to be trifled with!”

But then she straightened up and pulled her glasses over her eyes. There was a click of noise from the lenses, and they both rotated and changed from silver-white to rose red. Then, the lenses clicked again and became a vibrant blue.

“The pooka returns; I see his heat patterns. Do not tell him we talked, please! I might get in trouble.”

The warm sensation from his back now seemed to enter into his heart. “Miss, if you are in trouble, I will protect you.”

She touched him shyly on the cheek with her hand. “That is sweet, but this is something that needs your silence to protect me, not your strength. Can you offer me that?”

“But you said the Moths always looked out for each other. I can be silent. I promise.”

“Then don’t tell the pooka that we spoke or where we are going. I will return when the day is right and not before. Don’t bring the pooka with us! He is of them! More than a moon must pass before we meet again.”

Gil said, “More than a month!”

She smiled archly.

Gil was not sure why she was so pleased.

“I return Lammas Eve,” she said. “On the night of the Feast of Saint Calimerius, who protects against droughts, and so he is beloved, along with Nicholas, of the sea people. Look for me then!” She waded from the shore into the deeper water, dove, and vanished.

“Wait!” Gil called after her. “What date is that on the real calendar?”

5. The Pooka

A few moments later, Ruff came bounding through the reeds and tall grass to the little patch of beach. “Hi! Hi! Your Mom says you have to come with her to church tomorrow because it is Sunday. Sunday is tomorrow. And she is glad you are not dead. Also, remember to eat vegetables and not just fish. And change your underwear every day. I think that is it. Oh! Oh! There is one more. She loves you. I told her you found a job wrestling bears and had your own place to stay. I don’t think she understood what I said, so I kind of had to act it out with pantomime. She said you have to dig a proper latrine and smother your campfires completely. Uh! Uh! I think that is it.”

Gil said, “Ruff? What is a Pooka? I have never heard the word before.”

Ruff said, “An animal spirit. Ireland is mostly where we come from.”

“We?”

Gil’s heart sank. He had not realized that he had promised Nerea not to tell Ruff.

“Sure! Sure! I have relatives in Brittany and Aragon and Basque lands, and some in Germany, and I have heard of a tribe of us around the shores of the Caspian Sea. Why do you ask?”

Gil sighed, “Because I just think I did a really unwise thing, and I made a promise, but I don’t want it to come between us.”

Ruff sat down and let his tongue loll out. “Sure! Sure! Nothing can come between us! We’re best friends! No secrets between friends! Share and share alike!”

Gil petted the dog, but a gloom was in his heart, and his face was sad. “Maybe everything will turn out okay,” he said softly.

“Anything happen while I was gone?” asked Ruff brightly.

Gil wondered when keeping silence was the same as lying. It certainly felt as rotten in his stomach as a lie would feel. But he did not know how breaking a promise to the girl would feel either. “Do you know when Lammas is?”

“Sure. Feast day of Saint Peter in Chains. The Feast of the First Fruits. The Blessing of the Loaves. Everyone knows that! I am a smart dog! I know things like that!”

“When is it?”

“First of August.”

“Well, I got a place I have to go when that date rolls around. You can’t come.”

The dog’s ears drooped. “If it is dangerous, I can bite them. I can. Is that why?”

“No. That is not why.”

“Then why?”

Gil only shook his head and sat down with a sad sigh and put his arm around the mutt. “I made a foolish promise. I cannot break a promise.”

Immediately, the dog brightened up, and his ears stood up like little flying flags. “Oh! It’s one of those honor things! I got it. Dogs know all about honor. Don’t worry! You didn’t hurt my feelings!”

And to prove it, he licked Gil’s face.

Chapter Six: The Lights of the Haunted Mountain

1. Lady Day to Lammas

Weeks turned into months, and the days grew hotter, then scalding, and then hellish.

He saw the mermaid girl, Nerea, only once more as June turned into July, and then only at a distance because she fled when Ruff barked at her.

Gil outgrew his shirts because his biceps were bigger as summer passed away. He was not handy with a needle and thread, so he merely ripped the sleeves off. The exercises grew easier, almost as if the distances he ran and the weights he lifted grew smaller.

The bear he wrestled every day seemed never to grow any weaker, however.

The only count of time he kept was his Sundays, when he would trek back to church to meet his mother there before services. She did not let him spend even one night under her roof, which convinced him that she was up to something.

She rarely had much to say and answered obliquely when he asked about mermaids and exorcists and cousins flying to the moon. She did, however, buy him a thick leather jacket to wear to protect him from bear claws.

He did not tell her about his date with Nerea. He began marking off the days with a bit of chalk on the walls of his cave.

Gil wondered how to keep Ruff from simply following him.

2. Lammas Eve

Finally, the night came. Ruff was curled on his cot next to him, snoring. Gil slipped away, taking his clothing in a bundle, and then only making the noise and motion of getting dressed once he was out of the cave in the cool night air.

He went to the waterfall. The moon rose and painted the cloudy sky silver, and Gil saw the girl’s slim silhouette rise from the waters of the pool. In the dark, her mirrored lenses shined like the eyes of a frog.

She waded toward shore, saying, “Well met, cousin. This is for you.” She drew a pin from her hair and proffered it to him.

He looked at it in the moonlight. It was a nine-inch-long needle of solid gold, topped with a pearl.

“What is this for?” he asked.

She smiled, “We Moths always look out for each other. Sell it for rent money or groceries.”

He proffered it back. “I cannot take a gift from you.”

She would not take it. “Wages then. As my protector. We go into danger.”

Gil folded the pin into his handkerchief and put it in his coat pocket. “Which way?”

She said, “I have brought an herb from the bottom of the sea that will enable you to breathe water until the stroke of midnight. You must be out of the water by then and not a moment after! All charms end at midnight! We have many miles to go, and it is upstream the whole way.”

Gil said, “What? We are swimming? Why not hike?”

“The watchful Night Folk walk the air unseen after dusk and have allies among the insects, especially those that eat their mates or mothers. The oak, the ashtree, and the willow, and any tree to whose ancestors in ages past human blood was spilled in grisly sacrifice is theirs. They would not wish their melee seen by common eyes. They are a proud folk and proud of their noble blood, pure and fine. Take and eat this herb. It is bitter on the tongue but sweet in the stomach.”

The two of them climbed the rocks beside the falls. Gil started below the girl, scampered up the rock to pass her, and at the top held out his hand to help her up.

She said shyly, “That is not really necessary….”

He picked her up and put her on firm footing. “Consider it part of the services you paid for. Protecting you from falling.” The moon was visible here now that they were above the shadow of the gorge, and it was full and bright, touching the trees and waters with silver light and blue shadows. He could see her face and saw her twining a strand of hair nervously about one finger.

He said, “Don’t be embarrassed! You are stronger and faster at rock climbing than any of the girls at my school. My former school. None of them could get to the top of the peg board.”

She giggled. “Were we competing? I would have picked a different contest. Do the girls of the surface world think there is shame if a tall boy made mostly of muscles has more strength in his arms than they do? I would be more ashamed if my fine and pretty arms were all thick and hairy like yours.” Nerea held up her black-clad arms, one overhead, the other flung out at shoulder height, in what looked like a ballet pose. “Are my arms prettier than those of your girlfriend?”

They were interrupted. In the moonlight, they saw a large bulk emerging from the brush near the lip the cliff. It was the one-eyed bear.

3. The Parting

“Farewell!” said the bear solemnly.

Gil said, “Wait. What are you saying?”

“I spoke with Francis, and he told me you would go to look at the elfs. He said that once that happens, the training is done. You should return to the house of your mother after this.”

Gil felt a stab of unexpected sorrow in his heart. The bear was better company than most people he knew. “Why? What have I done wrong?”

“Nothing wrong. You are not meant to be an apprentice to a bear. But tell your mother you put in a good, solid summer of work, the labor was hard and honest, and that your master was satisfied. You will find your wages on your doorstep when you return.”

“Who is Francis?”

“He is a man who rebuilds old and broken churches. He was born a Son of Adam but now has a better father. The beasts of the wild are in his charge. He and I are old friends. Anyway, it is time to part. My heart tells me we will not meet again, Gilberec Moth.

“Remember your lessons and learn to look sharp. You are too easily distracted.”

4. The Upstream Way

Gil had a thousand questions to ask Nerea, but even though the herb allowed him to breathe under water, it did not allow him to talk. It tasted truly terrible, like a combination of lemon juice and Tabasco sauce. It also did not prevent him from suffering a terrible, nightmarish choking sensation when the water first entered his lungs.

For hours and hours he swam against the stream, watching the girl dart ahead of him and then fall behind. She rarely used her arms and kicked with both legs together. When he paused for a break, as he did every half hour, she would swim in a circle around him, tickling fish and doing loops.

On land her playful demeanor vanished; ashore, she was frightened and crouched, sneaking from shadow to shadow to go from one branch of the river to another, trying to stay out of the moonlight. But she shushed him when he tried to talk.

They stopped halfway in their journey to eat. Nerea had disappeared ahead of him, and when he came around a bend in the stream, he saw she had spread a white cloth on the sand of the streambed and had two fish, one in either hand. He was surprised to see that she cooked her fish. She took a small crystal stone out of her pouch and thrust it into the fish’s mouth. The stone grew red-hot: the light of it could be seen shining through the flesh of the fish, and steam bubbled from its mouth. She took out something that looked like a cross between a switchblade and a two-pronged fork. It had two parallel blades, and she used one of them to skin and gut the cooked fish, which she proffered to Gil.

It was weird eating under water, but the fish had a sharper and more delicious taste here. Obviously, there was nothing to drink.

Then came more swimming.

Eventually, they reached a place where the stream was narrow, shallow, and swift. He put his eyes above the water but kept his mouth and nose under the surface. He saw her head next to his, the jeweled net in her hair glittering, her eyes invisible behind the round silver disks of her glasses. Silently, she raised her wet and black-glistening arm from the water and pointed.

There, huge in the moonlight, was the mountain peak. At the side of the stream were tall and silent trees. Between the trees, not far above them on the slope, were strange lights shining like a line of red-colored lanterns.

Gil heard trumpets blowing.

5. The Portcullis

Gil had excellent night vision, and the moonlight was bright enough to show him where not to put his feet, so he was able to rush up the slope without stepping on twigs or rustling leaves.

His heart pounded in his chest; his breath was short, but this was more from excitement than exercise. The exertion helped warm his body, which was cold in the dank, dripping clothes he wore.

On he ran, seeking the source of the silvery horn calls and the strange lights. He glanced over his shoulder. He could see the barefoot mermaid in her black wetsuit loping after him. The lenses of her spectacles were dark, perhaps turned to the setting she used in unlit sea-trenches, for she lithely avoided thorns and brush in the night under the trees.

She hissed a warning. He looked back. She was frantically gesturing to him to get down, to hide, and she jumped and rolled beneath a likely bush herself. He crouched down, wondering what had startled her.

The ground was trembling. He could feel it in his fingers beneath the grass. It was like a small but continuous earthquake, or the murmur of vast subterranean machinery.

Then he saw a huge slab of the ground, bearing trees, rocks, underbrush, and all, tilt down into the ground and form a ramp. Starting from the top, a sunken wall of rock was revealed. The rock was rich with geodes and crystals. In the midst of this rock wall, a vast open gateway was dug, leading into an underground corridor of polished onyx through which veins of cobalt and silver ran. From somewhere deep in the corridor came a golden light that rippled and swam. It was not firelight nor electric light, nor anything Gil knew.

When the lip of the tilting slab touched the bottom of the sunken gateway, there came another blast of silver trumpets, and up the ramp of grassy ground came floating lamps carved of titanic emeralds held in golden frames, as weightless as balloons, serene as fireflies, lifting themselves up into the night air, shedding light on the leafy trees.

Gil crept closer, straining for a view, ignoring the frantic whispers of Nerea telling him to stay back. He heard the tramp and stamp of marching men and the hoofbeats of cavalry.

A she-lion, gold of eye and gold of coat, came into view, and on her back was a naked child wearing a crown of white roses. In the child’s hand was a banner of green. On the green field was the image of a lioness rearing up to claw a golden disk of rays.

Four warlords of the hidden world next emerged, their silver helms gleaming, plumes nodding, and their habergeons of white metal were set with emeralds and opals, crusted with diamond dust, and their spears of solid moonlight and silvery fire were inset with chalcedony, smargads, crysoberyls, and malachite green as blown glass. Their steeds were of some slim and lightfooted breed with tails and manes of white and tawny coats like creamy gold. At the feet of their prancing steeds sported swift and slender hunting dogs with silver collars and red ears.

The steeds moved in step. Bells on the harnesses rang with a strange hypnotic chime that sounded as if it were coming from beyond the horizon countless miles away, but also from a point inside Gil’s head beneath his ear, both at once.

The steeds wore barding of silver mail and breastplates set with diamond-hued sparks of light. They wore helms fitted to their equine skulls, with crests and plumes to match those of their riders, and each was caparisoned and adorned in the colors, patterns, and images of the riders, shields, and surcoats: the first was a knight of roses, with images of the red rose on his shield and breast, and a coronet of sharpened steel blooms, set with thorns, was on the crest of his helm; the second was of lilies, adorned in purple and white; the third was the forget-me-not in blue; the fourth was the brilliant sunflower in yellow and black.

Behind were four more knights, adorned with the heraldry of hawk and hippogriff, falcon and martin-bird. But their mounts were some strange and graceful creature with the body of a horse, the tail of a lion, and the head of a stag. These steeds had split hooves like the hooves of a deer.

Behind them were four more, and on their shields and coats were images of apple, pomegranate, olive, and clustered grape with vine leaves; but these four were riding what seemed horses with the heads of rams. And the next four rode ibexes and were adorned with images of stars and crescent moons; and knights even more fantastically caparisoned on beasts even stranger came behind.

Gil saw windows cut into the sides of the underground corridor set with grilles of silver wrought into intricate floral shapes. From these windows leaned maidens of unearthly beauty in robes of woven moonlight. They showered flower petals onto the parade of knights.

There came a shout, and the elfin knights began to sing. Their voices were deep, beautiful, and sad, and Gil could not understand the words.

Now came a figure adorned in green and gold, and on his helm was bolted a kingly crown of golden tines set with emeralds, and on his shield was the image of a she-lion rearing, a golden sun caught in her claws. His horse was a massive black Clydesdale with a black mane and socks of white. He wore a face of gold with a beard of silver as the faceplate of his helm.

On four sides of this figure rode knights in black and gold mounted on leopards, each holding up a wand, and between the wands a canopy adorned with figures of stars and constellations hung over the head of the crowned horseman. Before them came a black chariot with diamond wheels pulled by a yellow lion in whose car rode a herald with a silver trumpet as long as his arm. Behind the crowned horseman came two massive and silent creatures that looked like walking trees of black bark and silvery leaves, with the faces of wrinkled old men solemn with beards of leafy twigs peering from the bark, and lanterns hung in their branches. Incense was mingled with the lamp-oil, and a savory fume in lines of blue smoke ascended from the tree-creatures.

The cavalcade moved down the slope of mountain, and Nerea and Gil followed at a distance, creeping from tree to tree.

6. The Tourney

Nerea said in fear, “I was not expecting to come across the portcullis to the underkingdom! We are too near….”

Gil said, “Not near enough, you mean! But now that I know where it is, I am coming back here….”

“It is never in the same place twice.”

“How can it move?” asked Gil.

“How can the stars move? Keep your voice down! You must take care not to be seen! Be less reckless!”

Gil’s voice trembled with awe and wonder. “Why is there a host of supernatural beings living underground in the National Park? How can these things be? Why does no one know about them?”

Nerea said, “Because they enchant or slay those who glimpse them! At least cover up your hair! It shines in the moonlight!”

Gil had crammed his Gamecocks hat in his back pocket during the long swim, so now he stuck it on his head, wet and sopping. Gil took Nerea by the wrist and pulled her along after him, and she was unwilling to speak any complaint. Perhaps her eyes were flashing with anger at him, but behind the opaque black disks of her lenses, Gil did not see.

The two of them followed the marching cavalcade and floating lanterns.

They came to a meadow beyond which the wooded slope rose to a dark crest where a stand of conifers grew. A wide circle of the hills and gorges was visible over the shoulders of this crest, and unwooded peaks hung above them like clouds, gleaming in the moon, for the meadow was halfway up the slope of Brown Mountain, which was a very great mountain.

Between the trees were a line of red lanterns of black metal, floating motionlessly. They were the lights in the distance Gil had seen during the trip upriver.

A blare of trumpets, harsh and brassy, and the sound of gongs and drums answered the silvery shrill horns of the knights who followed the banner of the lioness.

From the pine trees now emerged a line of knights in silver and black, following the banner of a white wolf on a black field. In the cloaks and caparisons of the cavalry the winter constellations shone like bright diamonds on sable fabric. On their shields and helms were images and crests of pinecone, spruce bough, and mistletoe leaf. Many of the knights following the banner of the white wolf were mounted on horses, but some rode wolves or reindeer or polar bears. One was seated on the back of a monstrous snowy owl larger than a barrel.

Forth from the pine trees now came a woolly mammoth white as snow, and on his back was a tower where a throne of white glass was erected. On the throne was a figure in a dark mantle. His mask was a featureless visor of white metal, and his crown was a rack of antlers.

All about his person strange lights like St. Elmo’s Fire or Will-o’-Wisps were seen. He raised his black scepter, and, at that motion, a chariot pulled by a polar bear and carrying the banner of the white wolf rolled forth into the empty field between the two armies.

The king in gold and green raised his hand, and the chariot pulled by the lioness and carrying the banner of the lioness likewise came forth.

A youth in white standing in the chariot of the bear winded a semicircular trumpet of brass and called out in a clear voice, “The High King of Winter, Imperator of Elfinkind, Erlkoenig of Evergreen, hath decreed that the cold and dark shall descend upon the cities of men before its season this year, the first snow to fall on the Feast of Martin, and the crops be poor so that the wealthy nations of the earth wax fat and proud while the poor quarters starve in despair and misery, given over to envy. Such is his decree!”

The herald in the lioness chariot winded his trumpet and called, “The King of the Summer Country, Alberec of the Leaves, calls rogation and defiance and says the winter snow shall not fall until Candlemas, that the warmth of the world shall grow and the cities of men suffer floodwaters. All plagues and bugs and pests that thrive in the overwarmth shall be unleashed on mankind, much to their hurt, that they may blame their benefactors, that ire and hate, riot and tyranny, descend upon the fools.”

The youth in white called out, “Then His Imperial Majesty Erlkoenig of Evergreen, the High King, calls insubordination, breach of peace and insolence upon His Majesty, Alberec the King, and will prove the same by force of arms; no untoward nor uncouth practice shall be permitted here, nor chanted spell, nor sleight, nor miracle of the dark arts, but feats of arms alone! Let he who cannot hold the field yield him gracefully and without reserve!”

“So be it! Summertide accepts the terms!”

“The wood and wind, running stream and starry welkin are the witnesses! Look to yourself, thou wicked and stubborn-hearted King!”

The horses neighed, and lions roared, and bears growled, and all the chivalry of the gathered elfs sang and chanted a paean of war.

The two lines of knights readied themselves, and, at the signal given, charged. The lines met. Horses reared. Spears broke, showering sparks of moonlight. Riders were thrown headlong. The warriors drew their great swords, maces with heads like comets, or slender axes with long necks, and lashed with grace and fury. Blood and ichor flowed from steed and cavalier, and all was uproar.

Gil climbed a tree to get a closer look. Nerea crouched near the bottom of the tree and called up in a soft voice, “Now you have seen the knights of the seelie court and the unseelie. Come away now! I had not known the kings would be here!”

Gil was staring avidly, astonished at the spectacle. The bear-riders had broken through the line of chivalry at one point, and swift riders with crests of holly whose spearpoints shined with moonlight rushed in the gap, turning left and right to take the knights crowned in the flowers and feathers of summer in the flanks.

The chance of battle pushed the melee to one side of the field, and now it was practically under Gil’s feet. Had he dared, he could have leaned down and touched the brilliant plumes of the struggling warriors.

Nerea climbed quickly up the branches and clung to the far side of the bole, not daring to look out, as the shouts and screams, beast-roars and clash of metal sounded just below her naked feet, and the dreadful, clear-voiced singing of the elvish knights, who chanted paeans and poems as they slew.

7. The Knights of Rose and Mistletoe

One stalwart knight, he who had been in the front rank and bore the heraldry of the red rose, came charging in, but had his horse slain under him. A knight adorned from head to spurs in gold and bearing the crest of the she-lion in his helm, came to the aid of the rose-red knight and levered him free from his horse, all the while striking left and right with a mighty sword, and no knight in the pale and sable of the Winterking dared approach. The rose-red knight came to his feet and fought on foot and rushed against one of the bear-riders.

They were close enough to where Gil hid that he heard their words. The rider on the bear had a mistletoe on his shield and an ermine studded with white diamonds rearing from the peak of his helm. He called out to the rose-red knight, “Withdraw! There is no shame for an unhorsed rider to stand away from battle!”

The rose-red knight called back, “I defy you! Face my blade, which is named Perledor!”

The first called, “That name is known to me: a valiant blade. And yet with ease might I charge and trample thee, Knight of the Roses.”

“Who treads the rose shall feel its thorns, Knight of the Mistletoe!”

The Knight of the Mistletoe laughed and dismounted and lightly tossed his spear aside, instead drawing his own sword, which was made of black metal, in which silver runes curiously wrought caught the lantern-light and shined. “You are brave, sir! Then let us meet blade to blade, equally, that if you fall none will demean my name.”

“Well spoken, sir!” said the Knight of the Roses and saluted his foe with his sword.

The two clashed, their blades ringing like bells, and the moonlight reflected from their silver armor grew brighter. Their shields were soon marred and dented, coats slashed, mail shirts torn, and copious ichor, brighter than mortal blood, steaming with heat, flowed from many wounds.

The Knight of the Roses dealt a ferocious blow to the helm of the other. The Knight of the Mistletoe staggered and fell to one knee.

“Gentle right!” called the kneeling Mistletoe Knight. “Will you grant me the gentle right?”

The Knight of the Roses was blowing and panting and did not answer but staggered with weariness. Another of the Winter Knights, crowned in a wreath of holly, seeing all this, galloped forward on a doe, lance ready, singing a death hymn, but the Knight of the Mistletoe called out, “Avoid! Avoid! This fight is mine!”

The Holly Knight reigned back his steed so sharply that she reared on her hind legs. The Holly Knight called, “Are you mad? He will defeat you! You are fallen! Forbid me not!”

“Back!” called the bleeding, kneeling knight.

“Proud folly!” shouted the Holly Knight. “The shadows will claim you this night!”

The Rose Knight called to the Mistletoe, “What is your name, Sir Knight?”

“I am Balin of Darkmere, youngest son of Bolverk. This sword is Woebrand, and it was forged by Weyland in Ultima Thule.”

“I am Callidore son of Coll. You are of gentle blood. Rise. I will not strike until you have found your feet.”

The Mistletoe Knight stood, pale ichor dripping from his arms and legs, leaning on his black sword.

Sir Callidore called, “Look to yourself!”

Sir Balin called, “I am ready!” and with a great groan lifted the black sword on high. But Sir Callidore of the Roses smote so fiercely the blade was dashed from his hands, and, falling, smote a stone, and broke in two pieces.

“I shall not yield!” called Sir Balin.

“Folly!” shouted the Holly Knight.

But Sir Callidore put his own blade, pale and shining Perledor, across his forearm and proffered it hilt first to his foe. “Sir, if you will not yield, nor will I disgrace you by granting you an unasked mercy. Take my blade, and we shall continue.”

The Holly Knight said, “Ask for quarter, Son of Bolverk! Yield yourself, Sir Knight, for his might is greater than your own, as is his prowess!”

But instead Sir Balin of the Mistletoe took up the white sword. “I vowed to my father neither to retreat nor beg quarter this night. I cannot take back my word. Yet will you battle with nothing but a misericorde in your gauntlet, Sir Callidore?”

Gil saw that Sir Callidore had drawn a long knife from his belt and was prepared to do battle with it.

At this, the Holly Knight dismounted from the deer he rode, and came, and knelt, and proffered his sword to Sir Callidore. “I see you are a true knight of noble blood! Let it not be said that a Knight of Erlkoenig fought a man armed only with a dirk. This blade has no name, but after this night, poets shall call him Deathgift.” The sword was adorned with holly leaves about the hilts and rubies shaped like holly berries in the pommel.

So the fight continued. Other knights looked on, but none interfered. By strange mischance, it was Callidore who fell, struck through the heart. He called out, “I am undone! Mine own blade takes my life which so long defended it! Sir Knight! To you I yield my steed and sword and armor, as is yours by right of victory. Other goods and lands, have I none. Sir Knight, see to my widow, Pastorella. I leave her in penury.”

Sir Balin knelt and cradled the dying man’s helm in his lap. “Let the stars witness mine oath unbreakable! Never shall I feast when she is in want nor call two coins mine own save one is in her hand. So swears Balin of the blood of Bolverk! And may all shame until the end of time be mine and my blood if I am forsworn!”

And he doffed his helm, and removed that of the dying man, his enemy, and kissed him on the cheek a peaceful kiss. Callidore breathed no more. And Balin sobbed.

Knights now came forward, awed and silent, and laid the corpse upon their spears, knights in green and gold upholding the right side, and knights in silver and sable upholding the left, deadliest foes putting aside their quarrel to honor the fallen.

And slowly they walked from the battlefield, bearing the dead knight gently aloft, and the floating lamps of gold or black, gleaming ruby or emerald, followed after.

8. The Discovery

Where the procession passed, battle was halted, clang of sword and battlecry fell silent. Friend or foe alike solemnly flourished lance or sword before his eyes to salute the dead, or lifted his visor on the backs of his fingers, or doffed his plumed helm entirely.

The lanterns that descended to follow the procession were now low enough to cast light into these open helmets.

For the first time Gil saw the elfin features. Their faces were those of youths, but fairer and nobler, unblemished and without spot or mole, with eyes shining with cruel wisdom. A strange and wild spirit hung about them like an inaudible music. Some were fairhaired, or dark, or had hair of blue or green, hues not found among men. Many were sharp-featured, with high cheeks and pointed chins and ears.

Not all had human faces. Gil was puzzled to see the face of a red-whiskered fox with a pointed muzzle and white teeth peering from the helm of one knight; another had the brutal features and blue cheeks of a baboon. Some who removed their helms had horns or antlers Gil had thought were part of their helmet crest.

Unfortunately, as the lanterns floated down to stream through the air after the procession, they passed near the tree where Gil sat, and the fighting in that quarter of the battlefield had ceased and was silent. So it was that when one sharp-eyed knight pointed at the tree and gave a cry, it was loud in the silence, and many eyes turned toward Gil, and the beams of the lamps of green and scarlet turned toward him, too. He was transfixed, as if with a dozen spotlights.

“Whoops,” he whispered.

Nerea slid from the tree to the ground with acrobatic grace and began running with lithe, swift steps downslope toward a nearby stream. Gil came down from the branches more clumsily but just as swiftly when the tree branch to which he clung suddenly sagged and gave way. The branch broke, and he dropped.

There came a harsh cry from behind him. He saw one of the Winter Knights, a shape in silver armor mounted on a polar bear, bearing down on him, deadly lance-head pointing toward Gil’s chest, with all the speed and weight of the charging beast behind it. Gil still had the branch in his hand, a long and stout length of wood. He parried the lance head, knocking it aside just enough so that it passed to one side of his body without piercing him.

Then, remembering his lessons, he played dead and flung himself on the ground. The rider, startled, reined up short.

Gil leaped to his feet, waved his treebranch overhead, and shouted an earsplitting shout. The bear steed reared up, shocked. With the branch, Gil smote the bear at the tender part of the neck just below the jaw, with all the force of his body, shoulders, and arms, just like a batter’s best homerun swing. The bear-steed stumbled and threw the rider, who fell over the bear’s head into a thornbush, and yowled.

Gil knew it would be wiser at this moment to run, perhaps to outdistance the bear on the steep downward slope leading toward the stream (for they were no longer in the flat meadow where the battle had been), but he did not run.

Instead, he tightened his grip on the stout branch in his hand and stood his ground.

The bear was rearing up on its hand legs and roaring. The elfin knight called on the thornbush to release him, and the branches moved and thrust the knight upright.

He faced Gil. In one hand was a shield painted with the image of a leafless tree, and in the other a pale sword. In the moonlit gloom, the eyeholes of the helm seemed as empty as the eyes of a skull.

Of a sudden three more knights crashed through the brush toward them. One was mounted on a horse; the second rode the strange deer-headed steeds of the elfs; the third, a ram. The steeds and men wore matching livery of silver and azure with the image of a winged gold cup. But each shield bore a different charge along the upper border: the first a crenellated label, the second a crescent, the third a star.

The first spoke, “My brother Sir Lamorak! My brother Sir Dornar! Behold a wonder: Sir Grimnir of the Dry Tree honors this ruck of common clay by dismounting to fight him afoot. The noble courtesy of Sir Bolverk so recently displayed has inspired this clownish mock!”

The second said, “Well spoken, Sir Aglovale: for I see the son of dirt repays the courtesy by assisting him dismount!”

But the third spoke in a bitter tone, “Jest not. This wretch and villain must be enchanted now or slain, for he uncouthly and knavishly smites the mount, not the man.”

Gil shouted at the third rider, “Who calls me knave I call a base liar! I struck that bear fair and square! He was part of the attack!”

The third rider said, “Dare you address me thus, baseborn son of a whore?”

Gil stepped forward and struck the ram-faced steed in the skull right between the horns like an axman who cleaves a log in two with one stroke. Despite the armor protecting its head, the animal staggered and reared. The third rider wrestled with his reins, trying to bring his nervous, dazed steed under control.

The third rider shouted something, but Gil shouted louder, “Sir! Dare not to speak ill of my mother, who is the finest and noblest woman of the earth, lest you be made to pay for your foul tongue with your heart’s blood!”

But the second rider said, “Who is this boy? He speaks not like a mortal man.”

The first rider said, “What boots it, Sir Lamorak? By chanted spells let him be cast into sleep, and locked in the heart of an oak to grow up around him, and slumber until the day when all the seas cast forth their dead to judgment.”

The third rider, who had regained control of his steed, shouted, “Thine is too mild a punishment for mortal insolence, Sir Aglovale! Let darker songs be sung, his limbs to shrivel to palsy, his hands and feet to swell, the pest and worm to torment his innards!”

Gil raised the tree branch again and called, “Who is this who uses tricks and spells to undo his foe? Knights trust in their arms and might, their courage and force! Are there no true knights among the hosts of Alberec and Erlkoenig?” For he had heard the heralds say these names not long before.

The Winter Knight, Sir Grimnir of the Dry Tree, chose that moment to sling his lance aside, draw his sword, and attack. He ran toward Gil, his shield high before him, and elbow high and sword behind his back, ready for the stroke.

But Gil recalled what the bear had taught him, so he struck the shield midmost with the butt of his tree branch and brought the branch overhead to block the downward stroke of the blade. The knight was strong, and the blade bit into the wood.

In one motion, Gil twisted, yanked, and struck. The blade was caught between two branches and forced out of the knight’s surprised grip just as the branch came down and struck the knight on the side of the helm with such force that the Winter Knight staggered, his proud plumes broken.

The bear steed now roared and lunged, but Gil was quicker. He dropped the branch, knocked the shield aside, and stepped breast-to-breast to the dazed knight. Gil pinned the other man’s arms in a vast hug, just as he had been taught. Then, Gil swung the other man’s whole body toward the oncoming bear’s jaws. The bear reared, confused, and raised its forepaws but could not strike for fear of striking its master.

The Winter Knight writhed in the hug, kicking his legs, and sought to draw his dirk from his belt, but Gil tightened his grip until the rings of the mail groaned and shattered. The elfin knight was as helpless in his handgrasp as a child.

The third rider, the one who bore a star above the winged cup on his shield, now lowered his lance, but Gil put his back against a nearby tree. The knight charged nonetheless, perhaps hoping to run his spear through Sir Grimnir and through Gil as well, but the bear-steed reared up to protect its master, roaring, and the ram-horned steed shied aside.

A cloud of black mist now came suddenly with a great noise of wind from the open meadow into the thicket of trees and parted Gil from the three knights. The mist turned white and then transparent, and here on a huge black horse sat a kingly figure in green and gold. His shield was adorned with the image of the lioness. In his other hand, a truncheon of gold set with pearls. “Halt this strife! Who mars the melee of the elfin kind with the gaze of mortal eyes?”

The third rider pointed toward Gil and said, “Sire, ’tis he! Stinking and swaggering, this son of a dirt pile, exiled of Eden, accursed, baseborn, and low, has the effrontery to intrude into our solemn tourney! How shall the oracle of victory be read if the fight was meddled with?”

The Elf-King Alberec turned his helm toward Gil. His faceplate was carven into a solemn mask of a hawk-nosed and bearded youth of craggy features; perhaps this was a true image of the face beneath, or perhaps not. There was no eyehole on the right. The eye within the lefthand eyehole was as green as the sea. “Unhand that knight!”

Gil tightened his grip until the silver-clad knight groaned and fainted. Gil opened his arms, and the body fell into the underbrush with a great clash of armor and did not rise.

Gil said boldly, “Your Majesty, with all due respect, your knight called my mother a name too vile to repeat, and I demand he stand against me for it and satisfy my honor!”

The Elfking Alberec turned his head and said to the bear steed, “What is he?”

The bear was still crouching tensely, his nose pointed at Gil. It said, “I don’t know. He smells a bit like a human and a bit like something else—but a bear taught him to fight, and that is not normal.”

The Elfking Alberec turned back to Gil and said, “Sir Dornar of Corbenec is the son of Alain le Gros, who is the son of Garis. In his veins runs the blood of the Fisher King. Why can he not call a man of no birth whatever hard names he will? Of what birth can you boast? Whose son are you?”

Gil said, “Sir, I cannot say.” But he now picked up the dropped sword and shield of Sir Grimnir.

The second rider, who bore a crescent above the cup on his shield said, “What discourtesy is this? Why does this mortal son of the dirt befoul the celestially tempered weapons of elfland, rune-begirt and gem-beset, with the touch of his hand of clay?”

Gil said, “Pardon my impatience. I could wait until Sir Grimnir wakes and faces the choice either to yield them to me or to forfeit his very life, but I fear traitorous and unvaliant attack might come at any moment from your discourteous and rash brothers, Sir Knight.”

The second rider said, “Discourteous, indeed?”

“Your brother Sir Dornar sought to spear me. There was no call, no challenge given, no defiance, no equality of weapons; I was merely set upon as a farmer might set his dogs upon a chicken thief. I would be imprudent to speak with rogues and highwaymen without a weapon in hand since there are no knights here to defend the innocent.”

The first rider, with a growl of anger, now lowered his lance. “Is Sir Aglovale of Corbenec a rogue? The slander is not to be borne!” Gil, his face frowning but unafraid, held up the shield and gripped the sword as he had seen Sir Grimnir do, holding the blade back behind his spine. He set his feet so that his shoulders were pointed in a line toward his enemy.

“Halt!” cried Alberec, and with his knees urged his huge black horse to step between Gil and Aglovale. Gil now stood with sword and shield in hand, a tree bole at his back, and a dazed knight at his feet, and the great black horse before him. The gold-trimmed green cloak of the king fell across the steed’s flanks like a tent. The three knights, Aglovale, Lamorak, and Dornar, were on the far side of the horse, and Gil could only see their plumes and spears.

Turning his golden mask toward Gil, the Elfking said, “Why comes this mortal here, who dares to trespass where the feet of the Sons of Adam are unwelcome and the eyes are blind?”

“Majesty! I climbed yonder tree to behold the splendor and courtesy of your knights, harming none and willing ill to none, and was suddenly beset by your loyal minion, who no doubt mistook me for an interloper.”

“You say you came to gaze upon our splendor and courtesy. How is this not a trespass?”

“Sir, I was invited.”

“By whom?”

“Sir, by the rumors in the forest, who praised the glory and greatness of your knights. I will not insult Your Majesty by claiming I had any ability to resist such an invitation, sir, since that would imply your glory is less than irresistible.”

“You speak in a comely fashion, more elfin than mortal. But why did the rumors lure? What are the knights of Elfinland to you?”

“Sir, I seek to be a knight.”

There was a murmur of laughter from the knights there, and even the bear steed snorted. Alberec, however, did not laugh, and his expression beneath his gold-faced mask could not be seen.

Alberec said, “We are Oberon son of Uther, called Alberec and Liosalberec, Elfking and Lightelfking. Child, you address one greater than any monarch of earth. Remove your cap.”

“Pardon the discourtesy, Majesty, but I was beset by your knights in an unmannerly and uncouth fashion. I did not have a free hand.” Gil brushed the cap off his head with his wrist, not releasing the sword in his hand. The cap fell to the grass.

Gil’s silver hair shined in the gloom. The king’s eye narrowed, but the other knights saw not what he stared at, for the king’s huge mount blocked their view.

The first rider called out, “Sire! Why do you bandy words with this creature made of clay? What is he, that he claims we owe him courtesy?”

Alberec said, “Mortal boy, depart this place. Our world is not your world. Our ways are not your ways. Leave the weapons you took on the ground; Sir Grimnir did not yield them to you. Yet I see, even now he stirs. I hear his groan. You have been gracious enough to spare his life. It would ill beseem if a king of the summer elfs did not return the grace in like kind. I grant you your life.”

But Sir Dornar spoke up, “Sire! If I may! That worm spoke proudly to me! I wish to smite him!”

Alberec said, “The eagle does not catch flies, Sir Dornar. Exchange pardons with him and grant him peace.”

Sir Dornar said, “Sire! That is a command I cannot obey. Is it not honor that demands a vassal obey his lord the same that cannot accept such slights from lowly born?”

Gil threw down the sharp sword and shining shield he held. “I will obey the word of the king even if his own ruffians dressed as knights do not. Sir Dornar, I both beg pardon from you and grant it.”

Sir Dornar sang out a word of rage in a strange language and spurred his steed, which lowered its horned head but could not charge because the king’s tall horse was in the way. He began to circle around, trying to find a way to come at Gil.

But Alberec sang a song as well, words that hissed like snakes and climbed note by note through strange warbling pitches. The steed of Dornar staggered and fell, fast asleep, into a heap right at Gil’s astonished feet, and the elf knight also sagged in the saddle, toppled slowly, and collapsed to the grass. Snoring came from his helm.

Gil saw what he thought were green snakes writhing and reaching upward, but then he saw they were vines of ivy. The king’s song grew wild and strange, rich with passion, and mount and rider alike were twined in vines, hidden beneath ivy leaves.

Gil looked up. A mist blowing along the ground covered up the elfking and his knights. When the mist passed, they were gone, and the winter knight as well, steed and all. Only Dornar was left, breathing softly beneath a shroud of innocent-seeming leaves.

Gil picked up his baseball cap and retreated down the slope. He heard the noise of trumpets and the clash of arms in the distance, but he was not tempted to look.

When he came to the stream, he spent a while looking for Nerea but did not find her. From the stars, he knew it was after midnight, and her charm granting him the power to breathe water was gone.

He hiked across the hilltops beneath the stars, heading home.

Chapter Seven: The Glass-Knobbed Door

1. The Shop

He walked without sleep, hour after hour under the stars. He returned first to the waterfall and the cave. By moonlight, it seemed so very empty that Gil knew Bruno the bear would not be back. Ruff was not in the cave. It took Gil only moments to pack his gear.

Gilberec Moth carried the folded-up cot on his back carefully through the empty streets of Blowing Rock, opened the door to the YMCA with his key, left the key and the cot in their proper places, and returned into the night.

He had marched through the night already; and he had another two to go before he reached his mother’s apartment above the garage. The streets were eerie without any pedestrians, cars, or noise. Rows of unlit windows looked down blindly on the deserted streets. When the traffic lights all changed in unison from green to red or from red to green, Gil thought it strange that there was no one to stop or go.

He saw lights in one window halfway down the street, in a little shop crammed between two larger buildings. The front door was set back from the sidewalk by a small plot of carefully tended garden, including a line of pots in which miniature bonsai trees grew. Three gold balls hung above the door.

Gil pushed open the door, which set the small bell above the threshold ringing. Inside was a crowded shop that reminded Gil of the inside of the principal’s contraband locker. It contained shelves overflowing with gizmos whose names he did not know, but also fur coats, wristwatches, umbrellas, toolboxes, appliances. There was a glass counter displaying jewelry to the left, beneath a line of hanging jars, vials, glasses, and bottles. An old oriental man with long white hair, longer white eyebrows, his face as wrinkled as a prune, gazed at him with bright eyes. He wore an immaculate black suit with a thin black tie. A pair of pince-nez glasses, tied to his top button by a long black ribbon, was perched on the very tip of his nose.

“Welcome to Yung’s Very Good Fortune Pawn Shop. I am Mr. Yung. How may I serve you?” he said in flawless English.

“You’re open really late,” said Gil. “Or really early.”

The wizened old man nodded, his wrinkled mouth puckered into a polite smile. “Some of my customers prefer the nocturnal hours, for they are discreet and wish to avoid indelicate questions.”

“Are you human or elfin?”

The little old man nodded again. “This is one of those questions where the question is more interesting than the answer. I am human, most human, sadly so. Are you seeking to pawn or buy?”

Gil unfolded the gold hair needle from his handkerchief and laid it on the counter. The old man tilted his head backward and stared through the glasses balanced precariously on his nose.

“This is fine workmanship, young man. May I?” he said, pulling a very bright goose-necked lamp with a built-in loupe in its hood over to peer at the ornament.

The old man swabbed a fluid from a bottle on the needle and peered again. He took up the needle and weighed it on a delicate balance scale against weights as small as flakes he dropped onto the other pan with tweezers. He placed the needle in a metered flask, drew out some water with an eyedropper, and weighed this against an empty eyedropper. “The alloy is also fine quality. The pearl is unusually large.” He rubbed the pearl against his front tooth, licked his teeth, and peered at the ornament closely.

Eventually, he sighed, and spoke: “Aha. I would be remiss, young sir, if I did not tell you that there are others who could offer you far more than I can, such as the acquisition agent for a jewelry shop or a private auction house. Far more.”

“A mermaid gave it to me.”

The old man nodded sagely, his face showing no surprise. “Jewelry, I hold for thirty days. During those thirty days, anyone who returns with your ticket and the redemption value may take possession. After, the item is mine, and I may sell it to anyone I wish at any price I wish. You understand?” The gaze of the old man became sharp and cold, staring Gil squarely in the eye, unsmiling. “If you return here one minute after midnight on the thirtieth day, young man, the item is no longer yours, but mine, and you have no claim on it. I wish there to be no mistakes, no ill feeling.”

“I understand. All charms end at midnight. But I would be remiss myself, Mr. Yung, if I did not warn you that the elfs take steps to hide their existence from men. I do not know if this needle will attract their attention or what they will do if it does.”

The old man nodded again, “Sad memories, curses, and misfortune often follow pawned goods or adverse claims of ownership. For this reason, I have adorned all walls and windows, roof and floor, with many talismans and images of good luck, painted in lucky colors on lucky days. But if an elf returns with the ticket and the redemption price within thirty days, it is his.”

Mr. Yung used no cash register. He wrote out the receipt ticket in a crisp, clear hand on a slip of paper adorned with frogs and dragons. Then, from a locked metal box in the floor, he counted out five hundred dollars in twenties, fives, ones, and Susan B. Anthony coins, and insisted Gil count the amount again so that there was no mistake. He had Gil countersign the receipt and pushed the money across the counter to him.

Gil put the coins in his pocket and swept the money into his cap, which he plopped on his head. He stepped toward the door, paused, and looked over his shoulder. “Mr. Yung, if I may ask: you do not seem surprised.”

“One gets a wide variety of clients in shops like this, at hours like mine. One soon develops an acute instinct for honesty and a stronger instinct not to be curious about whatever strange persons enter the shop on nights when the haunted lights of Brown Mountain are seen.” He sighed sadly. “I have lived in many odd corners of the world and met many odd persons, including those who cast shadows that do not match their shapes. I do not ask them if they are not human as you so boldly did. I dare not.”

“Why not?”

“Count out the possibilities. Either he lies, or he does not. Either I believe him, or I do not. If he lies and I believe him, I am a fool and do not know it. If he lies and I do not, I know he thinks me a fool, and I am shamed. If he does not lie and I disbelieve him, I am doubly a fool.”

“And what if he tells the truth and you do believe him? How is that bad?”

“I may hear an answer that those who walk in the night hours would prefer I had not.” The old man took off his eyeglasses and wiped them carefully on his shirttail. “My life is behind me; therefore what little remains, I wish to remain unexceptional and uninteresting. No man can draw the tear back into his eye. Your fate is otherwise.”

Gil said, “What is my fate?”

“Your fate is something you cannot pawn. As I said, I have lived here and there in the world. The places where the old tales are remembered are best, of course, but the very oldest tales are very sad. And it may be that the old ones are also found in such places, who draw near to hear what tales men tell of them. It is wise to be polite to all. Good morning.”

2. The Homecoming

It was dark, and even the earliest of birds sang no song in the hour when Gilberec Moth returned home. He climbed the creaking, vine-choked stairs, shuddering with the memory of seeing vines something like these close over the snoring helm of Sir Dornar. The gnarled old Cornelian Cherry tree tossed its branches in an unexpected night wind, dropping hard berries on him, and the leaves whispered. Gil flinched with the desire to throw himself prone and to play dead, but he restrained it.

He opened the door with his latchkey, stepped over to the kitchen counter, sighed, and set his knapsack down on the tile floor. He did not turn on any lights. He piled four hundred of the dollars neatly on the counter. One hundred he put in his pocket.

He saw that there were jars on the counter and also on the folding chairs that were now sitting on the kitchen floor. It looked like every cup and bowl they owned was sitting out, all covered with Saran Wrap. In the gloom he could not see what was in them. He picked one up and stepped over to the sink. He put the jar into the beam of moonlight falling in through the window above the sink. A honeycomb floated in the thick fluid inside.

In the sink was a papery shell or broken sphere. He realized it was a beehive that had been hollowed out. It was the wages he had been promised by Bruno the one-eyed bear. No doubt the hive had been left on his doorstep, as promised, and his Mom had laboriously put all the honey and honeycomb in containers to preserve it. How she had shooed away the bees, he did not know.

He put the jar on top of the money as a paperweight.

Gil stepped into the corridor, hoping to see the mysterious glass-knobbed door. It was the night of a full moon after all. But the blank spot of wall below the light socket was only a wall. He put his hand on his mother’s door and listened. He could hear her soft breathing beyond. He raised his fist to knock, but hesitated, and then lowered his hand again.

He found his room. Already he thought of it as ‘his old room.’ In the gloom, it seemed too square and too stuffy compared with his cave, and the wooden floor was harder than sand. He carefully avoided stepping on the floorboards he knew squeaked and climbed into bed. The bed was much softer than any cot, and he was asleep instantly.

3. The Next Morning

He woke, bone tired, at the sound of his mother in the kitchen. He sat up and saw that he had forgotten to undress when he had fallen into bed. He was still wearing the same clothes, wrinkled, damp, torn, and muddy, he had worn during the long swim upriver to Brown Mountain and during his fight with elf and bear.

Gil fought off the impulse to roll over and go back to sleep. Instead, he rose, changed, combed his hair with his fingers, and walked into the front room. His mother was dressed in her waitress uniform, her hair hidden in a scarf. She was cutting fruit and bread with precise, delicate motions of her hand and packing herself a lunchbag. The lunchbag already held a jar of honey.

“Welcome home, my son,” she said. “Why are you here? Were you fired?”

He said, “No. My boss quit.”

“It was not clear from your letters or what you said on Sundays, exactly what your job was.”

“Knight,” he said heavily. He looked around for a place to sit, but all the folding chairs had bottles and bowls of honey on them. He hopped up onto the counter and sat on that, his shoulders sagging wearily. “I am a knight.”

His mother froze in mid-motion, her eyes wide.

He saw her look, and said, “Sorry, Mom! Didn’t mean to scare you.”

She prodded the scarf with her fingers in a nervous, unconscious gesture, as if afraid a stray strand had escaped. Then, she smiled sadly, “Do not apologize. I have lived with fear for so long I have become friends with it. What lord do you serve? What lands did he grant you?”

Gil put his hands together between his knees, pressing his knees together and leaning forward. “You see, that is what I want to talk to you about, Mom. Any other mother in the world, if her kid came home and said he was a knight, she would ask in what TV show or movie or something. She would not say what lord do you serve? Would she?”

Mrs. Moth said in her soft but firm voice, “Other mothers may speak or not speak and may raise their children in whatever haphazard way they wish, but mine has been raised to answer when his mother asks a question.”

Gil looked ashamed. “Sorry, Mom. My job is knight, but it was only for one evening. I have not been knighted and have sworn fealty to no one. But I protected a damsel. And she paid me.” He nodded at the pile of money lying on the counter.

“What damsel?”

“Her name is Nerea Moth. She is my cousin. She is the daughter of, um, Glaucoma. He is the physician to a queen of the mermaids. Nerea’s mom is named Nor’easter. Or something that begins with N. Anyway, we have a great-grandfather in common. Pill Ignore of Listerine. Nerea told me the names of a bunch of my cousins and uncles and stuff, but I did not recognize any of them, including two aunts and an uncle. Ebenezer of the Broken Sword. You have two sisters. Dramamine and Elaine. Elaine of the C. Am I getting any of those names right, Mother? Even one?” And now an angry and sarcastic note began to creep into his voice. “You see, I have not been over to my aunts and uncles every Christmas and Mistmas and Thismas and Thatmas, whose names I also cannot remember, so I don’t even know what they look like or what their names are!”

“Elaine of the Sea is her name. She is much older than I. She married Garis le Gros, and it was hoped the wedding would calm the quarrel between the Fisher-King of Sarras and the Sea Fairies of the Aegean.”

“Sea Fairies! Great! So there is an intelligent species of humanoid supernatural beings living in the Mediterranean that I happen to be related to, and you never mentioned it to me. And there are other groups living under mountains, fighting over the weather, and what day it is going to snow because one side wants to cause starvation and the other side wants diseases.”

“No. One side wants pride and envy. The other wants wrath and sloth.”

Gil leaped down from the counter and landed on the kitchen floor with a bump loud enough to set the honey jars rattling. “Why did I have to find out all this from a mermaid in sunglasses and getting my butt kicked by an elf-knight riding a bear, and almost get speared by three brothers until Oberon came–”

Her whole body trembled in shock. “Hush! Do not say his name! Titania is gone. He has lost his old crown and now wears a lesser one. Call him Alberec.”

“Why, mother? Why?”

“It attracts less attention.”

“No, I mean why did I have to find all this out from talking to stray wolves and random mermaids? There is a world out there, worlds beyond worlds, in the sea and underground and who knows where else? Other hemispheres beyond the mortal two, whatever the heck that means! And I am a member of the largest and best family in the world, and you never told me! Why did you never tell me?”

She said softly, “Do not take that tone with me. I am your mother, and I gave you life. I surrendered my life to save yours.”

Gil said, “I am the one you are hiding from them. From the family.”

She said, “From the family and from others.”

“From the elfs?”

“And from worse than they.”

“Why do they want to hurt me? And do not tell me the tale is too heavy for me!”

“Your foes are strong and terrible, my son, my precious son.” There was a sob in her throat, and her eyes were wild, but her face remained calm.

“If I cannot face my foes, how can I force my mother to face them for me?”

Ygraine shook her head. “The time is not right for the telling. We must pack, and…”

Gil shook his head. “I am not leaving. I have a bear cave where I can live now… except… uh… well, I am not leaving.”

Ygraine picked up her lunchbag. “But I must if I am to catch the bus. Walk with me to the stop.”

Outside, the red rays of the newborn sun painted the fields and trees a delicate cherry hue. The heat of the day had not yet come.

Ygraine walked rapidly along the empty road, but her voice was always calm. “Tell me more. Who saw you? What was said? You said you protected your cousin Nerea. From what did you protect her? How did you get this money?”

“From her. She gave me a gold hairpin, and I pawned it in Mr. Yung’s shop on Blackstone Street.”

She sighed sadly, and he realized that she knew the shop. His mother must have also pawned her possessions.

“Tell me more,” she said.

“Nerea and I climbed Brown Mountain. Swam up, actually. We watched the elfs fighting. They looked like something out of a storybook, mother. Like something from… from… from another universe, a brighter and better universe than this one. From a world where people keep their word, even to their enemies.”

“It is the same world as this. Only the falsehoods and illusions differ. But, yes, the elfs are too proud to lie.”

“We were found out, and Nerea ran away. I did not run. I stayed behind and fought them! They were armed with spears and swords, but I beat them with just a stick from a tree.”

“For what reason did you not flee?”

“They were on horses. Or on something horselike. There were four of them. They would have simply outrun us before we got to the stream to get away. So I had to stand up against them.” Gil looked proud of himself, and he put his fists on his hips as he marched along, hoping his mother would praise him.

She peered closely at her son’s face. “Did you think of this at the time or later?”

Gil’s face sagged, and his shoulders slumped. “Well, later. Much later. But it still counts. Doesn’t it?”

“For what reason at the time did you not flee?”

“I could not run away. I saw how brave and noble they were. They would not have run away. I want to be like them. I want to be one of them.”

His mother asked no more questions. They walked for a time and came to the sign and the shelter for the bus.

She stood, peering down the road.

“How did you escape?” she asked.

“I am not sure. Their king, Alberec, appeared in a wind of mist. I had crushed one of the Winter knights with a bear hug. The Winter knights belong to–”

“I know to whom they are sworn.”

“–And Alberec’s three knights were being rude. One of them called you a vile name. I told him I was going to thrash him for that. Maybe Alberec felt ashamed at how his men acted, or he liked that I downed someone on the opposing side. He told me to swear peace with Sir Dornar–”

At that moment, her lunchbag slipped from her fingers. There was a loud snap as glass shattered. Golden, sticky fluid darkened the paper bag and began to seep from it.

Gil looked down sadly and then looked up the road. He could see the bus in the distance. “Well,” he said with sigh, “At least you can buy your lunch for once.” And he held out a hundred dollars in twenties.

She whispered, “What was on his shield?”

“The shield was divided into blue and silver quarters. In the middle was a gold cup sprouting wings. At the top was an upside-down star. His brothers had the same shield, except for the top part.”

She said, “You must forgive that knight whatever hard names he calls me. Any curse he throws on your mother will doubtless return to land on his own. The label is born by the firstborn son, the crescent by the second, the star by the third. It is the heraldry of the Lord of Sarras, the High Country, and they claim descent from the sister of Joseph of Arimethea, who brought the most holy and sacred Grail to England in the days when Nero burned Christians as torches alive in Rome. They are in exile on Earth, for Sarras has fallen. It is most passing strange that Sir Dornar and his brothers should be beneath Brown Mountain only a few miles away. Too strange to be mere happenstance.”

The bus was coming.

She said, “Tell me who else knows of you. Either you and I climb aboard this bus, and we go to Spartanburg and leave all things here behind, or else I climb aboard and work my work and return this evening, and all is well.”

Gil said, “Why didn’t you tell me not to tell anyone my name?”

She said, “I sent you to look for a job in Blowing Rock, not in the woods, nor under the waters, nor under the mountain. I did not foresee that the dog would tempt you to go deeper into the older woods, where the mist is thin.”

“How did you know that it was Ruff–?”

“Speak! The bus is nigh.”

Gil said rapidly, “Nerea said she was the only one who knows I am alive. The wolf said everyone thought I was dead. After that, I did not tell my name to anyone, not even the bear, because it kind of freaked me out that the wolf knew me.”

“What wolf?”

“Canus rufus. But he called himself Krasny Volk Odinskyy.”

“It is better that you should name any beast rather than they name themselves. But we are safe for now. He has no pack and has no reason to speak to the Elfinking.”

“Wait. What? How do you know that?”

“Who else learned of you?”

“A thrush and a mermaid. Oh, and the bear told me he had talked with a man named Francis, who told him I had to go back to my mother’s house. He must have told him my name.”

“Which Francis?”

The bus pulled up just then. With a shrill squeal of breaks and a dismal sigh the bus came to rest.

Gil said quickly, “The bear told me he rebuilds churches and watches over all the wild animals. Whoa! What is wrong?” And he put out his hand, for it seemed as if his mother were about to faint.

Ygraine took a breath and recovered her composure. Two bus doors swung open, one in the front and one in the rear. They were next to the rear door. A metallic smell seeped out.

“If it were Francis who told the bear to send you home, I dare not gainsay it. I see the hand of providence moving, though I cannot see the deep design. Some call me wise, but all I have learned through all my long years is how little we know. What does the mite who hides in the feathers of a sea mew know of the sea?”

The bus driver honked his horn and called out impatiently.

Gil said, “So, can we stay? Or go? Go or stay? I don’t want to move! Mother, I–”

But she stepped aboard and smiled sadly. The bus sighed again, and the doors folded shut. Through the streaks of the door window, he saw her lips move.

Stay.

4. The Stairs

He watched as the groaning bus lumbered off. It was only when he was walking the long walk back to his house that he realized that his mother still had answered none of his questions. That made him feel more angry and more weary at the same time.

This time, as he walked up the rickety, creaking stairs to the apartment, he stomped with his feet very hard, grinning savagely, hoping to break a board or two. Because there was four hundred dollars still sitting on the kitchen counter, and, no matter what else his mother wanted to spend it on, he wanted to spend it on more boards and nails.

He was too tired to walk all the way into his room. He collapsed on the swayback couch and fell immediately asleep.

5. The Visitor

Gil was wakened by a loud noise. Startled, he rolled smoothly to his feet to leap out of bed, or tried to. But he had forgotten he was not in his own bed. The couch was narrower, and the smooth roll was interrupted halfway by an unexpected drop. He fell upon the floor with a painful thud.

Disoriented in the dark, he looked up. Light from the full moon was slanting in through the front window, illuminating the small, chubby faces on the standing radio and making their eyes glisten. Outside the window, in the dim and lunar light, the Cornelian Cherry tree looked like a many-armed monster.

The smaller square window in the door was darkened by the silhouette of a head in a low-crowned wide-brimmed hat. A matching rhomboid of moonlight fell on the threadbare carpet, so the shadow of that unseen face was almost touching his foot.

The sound came again. Someone was knocking.

Gil stared at the shadow in the window, his mind still fogged with sleep. Not only could he think of no one who could be calling at this hour, he could think of no one who would call at any hour.

Was it the police? Had something happened to his mother? Usually, on days when she left early, she returned early. If she had been asked to work a double shift, which sometimes happened, she could not phone home. There was no phone here. For the first time, Gil wondered whether this was due to their lack of money or due to his mother’s caution. Perhaps she did not want her name on phone company records.

There was a click. The front door swung open silently and slowly.

Gil rolled to his knee and tensed, ready to spring. He was sure he had locked the door. Sure of it! He had fallen asleep without taking off pants or belt, so he drew his knife, putting the blade in the moonlight and holding it at an angle so that the man at the door would see it.

The moon was behind the stranger. He was tall and broad, in a black hat and voluminous trenchcoat. The reflection from the knife blade fell right across the man’s unblinking eyes, which were deeply set and bright as the eyes of a hawk, as green as the sea. The rest of his face was in shadow, as if a mist were clouding it.

“Fear not!” The voice that spoke was as deep and low as the echo heard in a cavern hidden below the roots of a mountain, as timeless and distant as if ancient years and far-off kingdoms were speaking.

“Who are you?” Gil growled.

“Your father sends me. He wanted you to have this.”

The silhouette took the lapels of the dark trenchcoat, one in each gloved hand, and drew them apart. On his chest was a fine chain, and hanging from the chain a white and glittering shape no bigger than a table utensil made of green glass. He took the chain in both fists, and yanked them apart, shattering it. The links fled outward in all directions and popped like tiny golden bubbles, vanishing. The glittering green shape was flung forward, spun through the moonlight, and fell to the thin carpet with a distinct chime of noise.

Gil’s eyes, against his will, were yanked to the glittering object, but he dared not touch it. It was an old-fashioned key as long as his forefinger, with wards as big as the teeth of a rabbit, and the bow was a cross of Celtic design, made all of intricate interlocking spirals. It was made of green glass. A tracery of gold wire twined through the transparent depth.

“Is this a key? Is this the key?” Gil asked in wonder, his fear forgotten.

“What was your father’s is now yours. This day you are a child no longer but are come into your legacy. Claim it!”

With a bang, the door slammed shut. The shadow of the head against the window nodded, and the deep voice called out. “Act in haste, before moonset, ere the door you are destined to open is lost!”

Gil jumped to his feet and tugged on the front door, but found it locked. He worked the latch and yanked the door open. The empty night was beyond. The man was not on the stairs nor on the lawn. Gil looked up, wondering if the man had jumped to the roof, or into a tree, or flown away on the midnight wind. He saw no one.

He turned.

The glass key was sitting quietly in a pool of moonlight, glittering and waiting.

6. The Door

Gil touched the key gingerly with a forefinger, wincing, as if he expected it to give him an electric shock. It was cool and smooth to the touch. Snatching the key up, Gil ran around the corner to the spot halfway between his mother’s bedroom door and the bathroom door.

For a moment, the wall seemed blank.

Moved by some unknown instinct, he opened his bedroom door behind him so that a rectangle of moonlight from the full moon entering from his bedroom window fell into the hall. He thrust the glass key into the moonlight. Immediately, the reflected and refracted beams of silver light outlined the rectangle of the arched door. Then, like an optical illusion, he saw or thought he saw a slight discoloration, a hint, a shadow, forming two uprights, a threshold, like the hint of a door, half hidden in the texture of the wallpaper. The top was a curved semicircle. The sides were about an elbow’s length apart. There was even a bright spot at the right height and size to imply a doorknob.

The key grew brighter, as if it were gathering the starlight also and casting that against the wall. The door was half-visible as if seen through a fog of mist. As the light from the key played over it, the mist grew thin, and the door grew solid.

Then it was there.

Gil touched the doorframe and the handle, noticing the little scars and whorls in the wood-grain and the tiny hole where someone had removed a nail. He touched the glass knob. Below the doorknob he saw the letters GPM just where he had scratched them one moonlit evening with his knife eight years ago. There were also marks about the latch where he had once tried to pry the door open. There were no hinges visible on this side. Had there been, Gil would have tried to remove them with a screwdriver years ago.

He knocked with his knuckles. It was solid. It was real. Finally.

The keyhole was shining with light, and the glass doorknob caught the reflections in the many triangles of its surface and glowed. He knelt and put his eye to the keyhole. The staircase beyond was made of dark wood. The passage was paneled with alternating vertical planks of light and dark wood. A banister hung from little brass curlicues paralleled the staircase flight. From this position, he could see only the lowest strip of the threshold above. There was a line of light, brilliant light, white light, coming from under an upper door.

Gil stood. He inserted the key in the keyhole. It fit. He twisted.

The key did not move. It seemed to be jammed.

Gil licked his lips, not sure what he should do. He looked over his shoulder at the window behind him. The full moon was very near the dark horizon and would soon set. It would be another month at the earliest before the door appeared again. And there were months when it did not appear at all.

Gil applied more pressure to the key, trying to turn it. It stubbornly did not move. He twisted even harder.

The glass key exploded into tiny fragments. The loop cracked beneath his fingers. Glass dust fell from the keyhole.

An agony of grief jarred his body, like a hammer blow running from his spine to his skull. His disbelieving eyes were filled with a torment of frustration. He shouted, “NO!” at the top of his lungs and then, a moment later, whispered a little sob of noise that was the same word again, very softly, “…no….”

He slumped, banging his forehead against the door.

It opened.

Gil was up the stairs in the moment. The upper door was also arched at the top, but it had no doorknob, merely a sliding bar with a peg in it. Gil yanked it impatiently open.

The attic beyond was filled with sunlight. Gil blinked, blinded, waiting for his eyes to adjust.

Facing him across a dusty floor was an oblong box. It looked like a coffin standing upright on its end.

Chapter Eight: Attic in Elsewhere

1. Cabinet

Gil stepped forward nervously. Bright sunlight was pouring in through a set of small holes piercing the closed shutters of two dormer windows to his left. To his right were empty shelves and a pile of broken barrel staves. The floorboards were bare and covered with dust and prints of mouse tracks. Overhead was a main roof beam, with naked beams sloping down to the left and right. Gil noticed the boards were hammered into place with spikes, not carpenter’s nails.

He turned first to the windows and found a simple brass hook to flip to open the wooden shutters. There was no glass in the window. He looked out upon the treetops of a rolling, hilly landscape. Below was a valley and a line of mist hinted that a river ran through. The trees were half leafless, half covered with green fur or tender leaves of early spring. Some patches of lingering snow could be glimpsed on the ground beneath the tree canopy. The sun was in the sky, and it was the same size and hue as the sun he knew, so he supposed he was still on Earth.

In the distance was a tower made of a material and set in an architectural style he did not recognize; the blue-green substance of the tower’s conical top shined like metal, but there was also a sail or cowl that rose above the tower top to overshadow it, as if the architect were impersonating the look of a Jack-in-the-Pulpit.

Of the house he stood in, he could see nothing but the tiles of the roof, which were painted in a zigzag pattern of white, green, and blue. He saw a bronze roof ornament shaped like an owl at one corner of the eaves and at the other, a falcon carved of black stone.

Gil resisted the temptation to climb through the window and to explore this strange landscape. He did not know how long he had before the glass-knobbed door vanished or what would happen to him if he were trapped on this side when it did.

With both window shutters open to let the sunlight in, he turned back toward the attic room.

He was startled when he saw a man at the door. But no, there was no man. It was only his own reflection in a full-length mirror attached to the back of the upper door. This was not a glass mirror; it looked like a sheet of silver foil, laboriously hammered flat and polished.

The cabinet loomed large in the otherwise empty room. The disturbing impression that it was just the right proportion to hold a man’s body did not leave him. It was brightly painted in silver and black, green and gold, with images of white swans swimming in green waters amid tall, thin reeds or flying though the night sky among waxing and waning moons, seven-pointed stars, or silver clouds where an angel bearing shield and spear stood watch.

In the four corners of the doors of the cabinet were carved and painted images: a sword surrounded with fire, a ring in the clouds, a chalice floating on the waters of a fountain, a wand standing upright on a mountain peak. Midmost in the carving, where the two leaves of the lid met at the latch, was an image he had seen before of a golden cup with wings.

Along the bottom of the panels, between the images of the cup and the wand, was a picture of a hairy apelike monster carrying off a screaming maiden by the hair. The hair was silver.

Gil touched the latch. The doors of the cabinet fell open.

2. Armor

Inside was a suit of armor made of a silvery-white metal that shined like starlight-shine on snow. There was a hauberk of closely-woven rings, hasped and clasped at the joints with clews of dark blue. Over this was a solid breastplate, with straps leading to the vambraces, pauldrons, and gorget. Gauntlets hung by the sides. These were made of white metal chased with tracery of black, tiny chips of diamond, and set with gems of jacinth. Beneath the skirts of mail were greaves of jointed metal, likewise adorned with ruddy jacinth stones and tiny diamond chips.

A pair of black leather boots was there with silvery shin-guards or greaves running from knee to ankle. There were straps around the boots to hold a set of spurs in place, but no spurs.

On a mushroom-shaped orb of wood sitting on a shelf directly above the armor rack was the coif and helm. The helm was a single piece without a visor, with eyeholes and noseguard set so close to the cheek-pieces that they nearly touched. The empty Y-shape where the soldier’s face was supposed to peer forth seemed spooky, and it gave a grim and frowning aspect to the helm.

An ivory swan with eyes of jet and a bill of gold peered regally from the crest of the helm. From the earpieces of the helm rose silvery swan-wings. Gil could not tell if these were real wings or if a blacksmith had formed each and every separate feather from black and white metal strands. A fan of metal like the tail of a lobster hung down the back of the helm to protect the neck.

Hanging on two pegs on the inside lefthand door of the cabinet was an azure surcoat. On the chest was dazzling needlework. Here was the image of a gold-beaked and gold-footed silver swan with wings outspread, and above the sleek head of the bird hovered a gold crown.

Hanging on two pegs on the inside righthand door was a shield, flat at the top and pointed at the bottom, large enough to cover a tall man from shoulder to knee. The shield was painted blue, made of curved boards over a metal frame, and bore the same image of the crowned and silver winged swan as the surcoat.

Gil had studied in school as a matter of duty but had no love for books. He knew snatches and glimpses of history but not enough to put a name to armor in this style. It seemed half Norman and half Greek. The helm seemed Corinthian, decorated as if by Norsemen but with craftsmanship more like that found in Renaissance Italy.

Finally, in the highest place, hanging on two pegs above the helm, was a belt of silver studs. The buckles were of an unearthly blue-green alloy that shined like a polished aquamarine stone. The leather was tooled with images of flying swans and shooting stars.

He found the linen leggings and tunic quilted with padding folding in a drawer in the foot of the cabinet, and woolen stockings. In another drawer were a set of hammers and studs and pliers, a tin of polish, a shoehorn, and a set of spare buckles, rings, and straps as well as brushes and paint. A small box contained a jeweler’s kit.

Gil did not remember deciding to try the mail suit on. Usually, making a decision requires some sort of debate or looking at options, weighing the urge to do something against the reasons not to. In this case, since every part of this mind was unanimous, there was no debate. He took off his pants and shoes and put on the leggings, breeches, and padded tunic first.

He knew that in times of old, knights need squires to help them get into their gear. But whoever had designed this seemed to have wanted to make it possible for a man to dress himself. The back of the mail shirt was drawn together across his spine by a clever system of straps he could yank from his shoulders, something like the straps on a backpack. The mail coif had a leather cap for padding. It went over his head and rested on his chest, shoulders, and upper back. The breastplate and backplate went over the head like the two halves of a clam and likewise tightened with two straps near the waist something like how a lifejacket is donned.

The helm was heavy and buckled with a chin-strap, and he could not turn his head very far left and right. But the weight somehow, in his heart, made him feel taller.

He took up the shield and inspected his reflection in the silver mirror. Both the mere mirth of wearing a masquerade get-up bloomed in him and a much more sober sensation of coming at last to see what it was he was born to do.

A weird feeling troubled him. He was sure he had seen a man dressed like this, the Swan Knight, earlier in his life. It had not been during the battle on Brown Mountain. It had not been in any movie or cartoon about King Arthur. Perhaps it had been in a colored plate in an old story book? Perhaps in a dream?

3. Arms

The sword harness was heavy with studs and buckles, and consisted of a baldric running from shoulder to hip and a belt that wound three times around his waist. He took off the metal-plated leather gauntlets because he needed his fingers free to work the buckles.

He drew the sword. It rested easily in his hand, weighty but well balanced. The heft of it sent a rush of sensation up his arm, as if his nerves and muscles from shoulder to fingertip suddenly were more serious and alert. Gil felt now, looking at this sword, the way he felt looking at the claws of a bear or the jaws of a wolf: this blade was the fang of man.

The pommel was a node of milky aventurine, the leather grip was white and set with silver nails, and the cross-guards were silver plated. The sword itself was a strange material, blue-white and mirror-bright, clear as silver and hard as titanium.

Foolishly, he tested his thumb against the edge, and found it as sharp as a scalpel. This drew a drop of blood from his thumb, but the blade was so keen he did not, at first, feel the cut. He jerked his thumb back in surprise, annoyed at himself. Would he have stuck his thumb into the mouth of a bear to test the sharpness of his tooth? He reminded himself never to take this blade lightly, never to draw it save in some cause grave enough to kill for or to die for.

Then, he saw a wonder. The drop of blood clinging to the very edge of the glassy blade changed color from red to black, hissed, and burst into flame. There was a flash like magnesium burning, too bright to look at, and an angular shape in some strange alphabet appeared in the depth of the blade, burning with blue-white light, and part of a second letter.

He only saw the letters when he blinked and beheld their after-image like ghosts behind his eyelids: The first letter was two triangles kissing, and the second looked like an N with two diagonal strokes instead of one.

The fire was white, not red, and was spreading slowly up and down the shining edge of the blade. The flames did not hiss or roar but made a low whistling noise, almost like a musical note, like what Gil had often heard putting too green wood on a campfire.

Holding off panic, Gil peered in the closet frantically. Surely anyone who owned a fire-hazard would always keep method to douse it close at hand? He saw nothing like a fire extinguisher among the jeweled gear and mystical elfin carvings. Then, his eye fell upon the scabbard. He saw that there was some sort of dark substance, shining like glass but gray as lead, coating the inside of the leather scabbard. He quickly slipped the sword back in place. The hilts slammed against the mouth of the scabbard as he drove it home. The blinding white fire was gone. The deep-toned whistling hum stopped.

In the sudden silence, he heard a noise behind him: a cry of surprise or pain. He spun. There was his mother, her face pale with shock, having come to the top of the stair while he was staring at the sword. She took two steps into the room, her eyes looking odd and unfocused, her pupils like pinpoints, and she swayed and started to fall.

4. Downstairs

Gil shouted in alarm and leaped forward, worried that his mother would fall backward and plunge down the stairs and break her skull. Instead, she slumped forward, and he caught her and eased her to the floor. But now he could see down the stairs the doorway leading into their apartment above the garage, where it was night, was beginning to fade and look blurry.

Taking up his mother gently in his arms, Gil rushed downstairs. The door was wavering like an image seen through water, but it was still real. Across the hall, through the door of his bedroom, he could see his bedroom window. The moon was touching the treetops to the west, but it was not yet out of sight. Was their time for more? He decided to risk it.

Up the stairs he ran. The cabinet itself was too heavy to move, but he yanked out the lower drawer containing the tools and cleaning polish, threw the gauntlets into the drawer, put the shield atop it to act as a lid, and leaped back downstairs three at a time, with the drawer and shield hugged to his chest. The sword and scabbard barked against his legs unmercifully, but the boots, greaves, and long mail skirt saved him.

He leaped back into the hallway just as the glass-knobbed door slammed shut, turned pale and ghostlike, and grew invisible, leaving the familiar blank spot on the wall behind.

Gil sighed. His shoes and pants, complete with his favorite knife and his latchkey, were still in the impossible attic in the other world. And the glass key to open that door was gone forever.

5. Church

Gil laid his mother on the couch, wrapped her in a blanket, and tucked a pillow under her feet. Only then did he remove the winged helm, which he placed atop the standing radio. He wanted to sit on the couch and take his mother’s hand in his but found the sword was in the way. He did off his war belt, hung a strap over the nose of one of the cherub faces carved into the old radio, and propped up the shield next to it.

A sigh from behind made him turn. Ygraine had her eyes open, and she was looking at the helm and shield draped over the radio box.

She said softly, “Never lay your sword aside, except only to sleep, and even then, let it be within the reach of your hands.”

He stood and stepped over to her. “Mother, how are you?”

She said, “I would be better if my son would heed my words. Never lay your sword aside, except at your lord’s command. Keep your blade with you at all times, keep it with you when you sit down to ea,t or when you dance, and even in the bathroom when you take a shower. You drew it, and you have seen the fire of the blade. It is part of you now.”

She closed her eyes. Her expression was one of great grief, and a sob escaped her lips.

Gil knelt by the couch and took her hands in his. “Mother! What is wrong? I am here. Everything will be all right. I will protect you.”

She spoke without opening her eyes. “I would be more comforted if my son opened his ears. If you love me, then do as I say.”

Reluctantly, he released her hand. Impatiently, he jumped over the end of the couch to where the radio stood, grabbed the sword and scabbard, and jumped back.

She sat up. “I will bind the sword on. It is the custom.”

“Whose custom?”

“Our custom. The civilized custom. A mother who does not buckle a weapon onto her son never knows the day and hour when he was a child no longer. Stand and spread your arms.” With practiced hand she wound the belts around his waist, and the strap over his shoulder. The weight rested more comfortably and more snugly than it had before.

He put his hands on her shoulders and looked steadily into her eyes. He said, “Mother, if I am no longer a child, now you must tell me.”

She sighed. “Walk with me to the church. We will talk there.”

Gil thought it was too late in the evening, or too early in the morning, for the church to be opened, but he did not object. He took up the shield in one hand and the helmet in the other and then stared mournfully at the doorknob. “How did people in the old days get around in all this gear?”

“They had servants,” she said. “Men were more willing to serve those who protected them in those days.” She showed him how to sling the shield properly on his back so that it sat comfortably but could be taken up quickly.

Then she stepped away into her room. He heard her moving boxes in her closet. Out she came again. In her hands was a long gray cloak or mantle with a hood. There were tiny strands of silver and little beads like dew woven into the gray substance of the cloak, and shadows clung to it in a fashion that was baffling to the eye. She threw it over his shoulders and told him to draw the hood up.

They walked in the gloom toward the little church on Westerfield road, less than a mile away. The birds were awake and singing, negotiating territorial claims and gossiping about where the juiciest bugs and worms could be found, but there was no sign of pink in the eastern sky.

Ygraine walked to the main doors of the church, which were not locked, and let herself in nonchalantly. Gil followed uncomfortably.

There was no light in the sanctuary and only starlight in the eastern windows. For the first time, he wondered if his mother had night vision as sharp as his because she did not stumble or hesitate. She knelt facing the altar, made the sign of the cross, rose, and went to sit in the back pew. She undid the scarf around her hair, shaking out the silver tresses, and then took a small lace veil like a doily and laid it across the crown of her head.

Gil followed and stood next to her. “Mom, this is a Baptist church. They don’t do those things here.”

She said, “If they will forgive me for remembering the old ways, I will forgive them for forgetting them, and heaven will be pleased with both.”

“Aren’t we trespassing?”

“The day any town where we have sojourned learns the habit of locking the doors to its church, it is time to depart to find one that has not. There is no trespass where all are welcome.”

“Should I leave my sword outside?”

“Never put that sword by you. I have now told you three times.”

“And what you tell me three times is true!”

“Don’t be sarcastic to your mother in church, young man.”

He sat down, putting the helm down on the pew next to him. The scabbard like a big metal tail hung from his hip, and he had to guide it with his hand to lay it down next to him. It stuck out past his knee and bumped the back of the pew in front.

He said, “I just found out everything I thought I knew is false. And you know what is true. Talk to me. Tell me about the elfs, about my father, about you, and about me. Who am I? What am I?”

She gave him a sharp look. “What are you?”

He said, “A knight!” The answer came out suddenly, automatically.

She pointed at his boots. “Where are your spurs?”

“Well… I am a squire then.”

“Whom does a knight serve?”

He growled. “Mother, this is not the time for your riddle games. Tell me what I need to know.”

She said, “First things first. You asked whether you should leave your sword outside this house of peace, and it is not a foolish question. The Church Militant is and has always been an armed ark in an ocean of deadly monsters seeking to sink her and drown the world in darkness. Show me the sword. No! Unhook the scabbard from the belt and hold it up. The scabbard is like the bridal gown of your bride. No one should see her naked. Do not draw it except when you mean to kill or to sharpen and tend the blade.”

Gil held up the sword in its scabbard, scowling.

She said, “All lands have warriors, who fight for their princes, and many a noble and valiant man is found among them. Only in Christendom are orders of knighthood found, who fight for our heavenly prince, who commands you to protect the weak, the widow, the orphan, and the stranger. Knights are governed by a code of sacred honor which sets them apart from soldiers and warriors of other lands.”

“Samurai have honor.”

“A very delicate and fierce honor is it, indeed, but is it not sacred honor. No Christian knight commits suicide to assuage his shame. Now, look closely!”

She held her finger near the sheathed sword, pointing at the tips and edges, the hilt and pommel, and she spoke as follows:

“All things in this world have a heavenly meaning hidden from earthly eyes. The sword’s significance lies in the fact that it cuts two ways and may be used in three fashions. It slays and wounds with both edges and its point also stabs. The sword is the knight’s noblest weapon, and he too should serve in three ways. First, he should defend the Church, killing and wounding those who oppose her. Just as a sword pierces whatever it touches, likewise a knight should pierce all heretics, attacking them mercilessly wherever he may find them. Second, the sword belt means that, just as a knight wears his sword girded to his body, so he himself should be girded with chastity. Third, the pommel symbolizes the world, for a knight is obliged to defend his king. The crosspiece symbolizes the true cross, on which Our Redeemer died to preserve mankind, and every true knight should do likewise, braving death to preserve his brethren. Should he perish in the attempt, his soul will go to heaven.”

She paused to draw a breath and to dab at her eyes.

She continued, “A knight should harden his heart against those who are false and impious, but he should be gentle toward those who are peaceful and good.”

Gil stared at his mother in confusion and wonder. “Mom, do you need to lie down again?”

She blew her nose delicately in her handkerchief. “I had prayed that the day would not come when I was required to tell you these things. Do you understand the lesson of the sword and the charge I have laid on you?”

“Yes, mother. Kill heretics, don’t sleep around, obey the king. But… we don’t have kings in America, and I think being a heretic is protected by the First Amendment.”

She said, “Among men, you must respect the laws of men. But men are the thralls and serfs, the gladiators and poppets, the concubines and cattle, the pets and toys of powers they do not see, do not know, and do not recall upon waking. Those few who by mishap recall truly and do know how truly dark the night is, they are called mad and hauled away screaming. Even the warnings those few who cry out are soon forgotten, sponged away by elfish mist. The laws of men do not reach to the night world, but the lesson of the sword I have told you does: In the hidden world of twilight are enemies of the Church, and fair seductresses, and faithless traitors whom you must slay, or eschew, or renounce.” To Gil, the idea that all this was real, that all the mysteries of myth and lore might be out there somewhere, hidden to most but open for him to find, the wonders and the horrors both, was an idea that made him feel lightheaded and yet feel more hard and solid than he had ever felt before.

“Why not tell me before now?”

She said, “I kept you out of the twilight all these years for one sole purpose: the oaths of elfs are not like the oaths of men. They are not mere words but are woven with strong runes and cannot be broken.”

“What does that mean, mother?”

“The Twilight Folk are enthralled by unbreakable oaths to the Night Folk, who are bound in turn against their will to something darker than night, older than years. To have my child bound in service to darkness, I would lay down my life to prevent.”

6. Two Worlds

Gil pondered this for a few moments in silence. His mother closed her eyes. Perhaps she was praying, perhaps she was merely waiting patiently for his next question.

He wondered if she were praying for his safety. He had a disorienting moment, as if he were looking at himself from the outside, as if he were just a boy like any other, who could die young as some young men do, in war or in adventure, and leave a mother behind him, grieving.

“I saw a letter written in this sword blade,” he said, “What is it?”

“Dagaz, the rune of Day. The name of that blade is Dyrnwen, the fair white-hilted sword. It is one of the Thirteen Treasures of Lyonesse, taken out of the world of man by Merlin and haled to Avalon, kept in the Tower of Glass. It is a wonder and a mystery to see it in this hemisphere again.”

“Do all elfish swords burn with light?”

“No, only that one, and only in the right hands.”

Gil tapped the pommel of his sword. “You said the pommel represents the king I must serve. What king? I met Alberec last night.”

“Would you serve him, my son? Even unto death? A knight does not give half his heart to his liege, nor to his lady.”

Gil frowned. “I don’t know. He seemed courteous and fair-spoken, as a king should be, but he and Erlkoenig were fighting over which of two evils to impose on mankind, the pestilence of heat or the famine of cold. Do they control the weather?”

“When man rebels against heaven, nature rebels against man and serves other masters. Influence over nature their charms and songs and wicked sacrifices indeed have won for the elfin kindred, but no lawful authority.”

Gil said, “There must be some king nobler than those two, someone who is not an enemy of mankind!”

“All true kingship has passed away from the Earth. You will find no sovereign worthy of your service neither in the daylight, nor in the twilight, nor in the dark.”

He said, “Then I will look in more places than those. Speaking of which, where are they? The twilight lands and the night lands?”

She said, “The globe has more hemispheres than merely East or West, Oecumene or Antipodes, for there are more dimensions than the known three. There is a third hemisphere where Troynovant, the New Troy, rears her lofty towers and is the stronghold of the elfs and the other Night Folk.”

“Wait. What? That makes no sense, geometrically speaking. There can only be two halves of a sphere, by definition.”

“Elfish geometry is different. The mists blind the eyes of men, and they do not see how extensive their world truly is or how generous the creator who made it.”

“So is this third hemisphere always twilight? Or how does it work?”

“The twilight is not a place, but a condition, when one has stepped halfway into the mists. There is day and night, summer and winter, for elfs as for men. The twilight of which I speak is of the mind.”

“What does that mean?”

“Of the twilight are those folk and those places that the men can sometimes see or to which they sometimes might walk. You and I are of that order, as is your cousin Nerea. We are longer of lifespan than Man, but no less mortal than he.

“The Night Folk,” she continued, “are the elfsm and others on whom the passage of years lies with a light hand and the laws of nature do not fetter with chains of iron. They were born before Man, with fish and fowl, on the second-to-last day of Creation, and they shall descend into Hell on the first day of the second creation, when Heaven and Earth are remade. They do not age, and few indeed are the weapons that can slay them, but all will perish on the world’s last day and be eternally damned. There is no redemption for them. They have no souls that can be saved.”

“How many other intelligent races are there? I saw some people last night that looked like foxes or apes.”

“There is no agreement of count: elfs and efts, albs and owls, loathes and linderlings, nephilim and nightmare hags, efrits and evil phantoms, man-wolves and vampires, or other Children of Cain whom the waters of Noah’s flood did not destroy, mermaids and moorgoblins. Some are monstrous, but more dangerous are those that are fair to the eye.”

“Why do they hide from men?”

“I do not know. It was not always thus.”

“Why don’t you tell people?”

“Whom shall I tell whose minds the elfs will not erase as easily as a palimpsest is scraped free of words no longer pleasing to the scrivener?”

“Since I don’t know what those words mean, I can’t answer. If there are twelve to fourteen intelligent races on this world, why don’t they speak to us? Uh, to human men. Or open trade relations, send ambassadors to the UN, that sort of thing?”

“Those who speak on familiar terms with the dark world, or take gifts from it, are warlocks, and dire indeed is their fate if they repent not. And the elfs have no need to trade when they can steal.”

Gil pursed his lips. “I saw a knight slain last night.”

“Yes?”

“Was he like us, with some human blood in him? You said they could not be slain.”

“No, I only said it was not easy to slay them. They charm their lives. Bullets will not harm any of them whose mother or sister knows the art, nor will any weapon that does not have a shadow to cast into the dreamlands. He may have been a Twilight Man, however, whom you saw slain.”

“But Nerea said the elfs would not allow humans among them, except as servants. How could he be a knight?”

“She speaks truly, but at times an elf even of noble or royal blood takes a comely daughter of Eve to wife, and the elfs dare not despise the nobility and royalty of their blood, though it be tainted, and they hide their hatreds.”

“Was he a member of the Moth family?”

“Who?”

“The dead knight. He said his name was Callidore.”

“Describe his escutcheon.”

“It was a red rose with green leaves on a gold field.”

“That is the sign of the House of Coll of Tir-n’a-Nog. After Saint Patrick drove all the Nagas and Nagini out of Ireland, the Colls were bereft of all their menfolk, and so the three daughters of Coll, Maeve, Malen and Morgan, rather than see the extinction of their line, lured the heroes Oisen, Anchises, and Arthur to their bridal bowers. Their family is called Le Faye. They are famous for having bold sons well versed in swordplay and dark daughters well versed in sorcery and venom. I do not know if there are any intermarriages with the Moths. We are a very extensive family.”

“Where did we come from?”

“Moth was the highest noble in the train of Titania, her seneschal, along with Cobweb, Peaseblossom, and Mustardseed, her chancellor, champion, and chief minister. The fairest Oonagh was merely the first of Moth’s many mortal wives from which our family springs, bound to him in solemn rite and proper marriage mass. Some of our mixed blood have climbed by feats of arms or song into the higher ranks of the jealous elfs. Nerea should have said they try to keep us in the servile ranks, often with success.”

“So I could be a knight among them!”

She shook her head. “No. I forbid it. There is none to care for me in my old age but you. I have lost three sons into the service of the elfs. No more.”

“I have brothers?”

“Half brothers.”

“Who is my father?”

“I don’t know.”

7. Two Lords

“How is that possible?” demanded Gil in outrage. “How could you not know your own husband? My own father?”

“He was not my husband. You were not born lawfully.”

Gil was not sure what to say. Anger and curiosity and shame were like a nest of snakes in his chest, fighting and biting each other.

Eventually, she said, “This is the tale: I was once of a higher world than this and the daughter of the Grail King. I fled from the cloud-city of Sarras when Ysbadden the Giant slew the Grail Maiden, my sister, and stole the Grail. In swan form I flew to earth doffed my robe to bathe, and was caught unawares. A maiden in exile without friend or family, I was wedded against my will to Alain le Gros, a puissant elf-knight of the Hidden Lands. He was sterile, but the charm of the High elfs is that all their daughters are fertile. I bore him three stalwart sons.

“A day came when I went a-Maying and wandered in the greenwood with my ladies and knights. Out from the darkness of the trees came suddenly a Wild-Man-O’-Wood.”

“What is that?”

“He is covered from crown to heel with hair like a beast, but he has hands and feet like a man but a face like a jackanape. He is a woses; a wooly man; a yeti.”

“You mean Bigfoot.”

“I have not heard that name. With his club, his teeth, his great claws, he overthrew my knights, and seized me about the waist, and carried me off. A day and a night and a day he ran without once pausing for breath, and on his shoulders I was battered and shaken and half-dead from grief and thirst, soiled, fatigued, and bruised with great bruises, for he was not gentle as he ran.”

Her voice was cool and soft, betraying none of the horror her words conveyed to Gil.

“He brought me to a cave filled with skeletons which serves as his larder, carved by dripping water out of a rock on a small island in Goose Lake of California, east of the Modoc National Forest.

“For two years he kept me there, and I was shorn of my silver hair on the Eve of the Feast of Saint Walpurga. He told me his name, which was Guynglaff Cobweb, and he said he had slain Alain le Gros that same hour before he found me in the wood. Verily, he promised he would eat the flesh from my bones as soon as the cloak he meant to weave from my hair was complete, to cover his great carcass and render him immune to swords.

“Many a time I tried to build a raft or brave the waters to escape, but the trees and the waves were loyal to the Cobweb family, and betrayed me.

“On the Feast Day of Catherine of Sienna, whose hair like mine was shorn untimely, I wept and prayed by the shore, for I knew all but a small thatch of the hairy man’s robe was patched.

“Then, beyond hope, I saw the shape of a tall knight approaching the island on a boat pulled by swans. He promised to aid and save me if only I swore never to ask his name. He battled fiercely with Guynglaff, but the white-hilted sword could not cut the creature. The Swan Knight nonetheless prevailed, driving Guynglaff into his cave. The ghosts of the dead he had slain rose up, and the bones of the skeletons clutched and bound Guynglaff while the Swan Knight piled rocks before the cave mouth and sealed him within.

“Away the Swan Knight bore me to his manse, which had tall windows of green glass and a roof tiled in gold, and a tall tower for watching the stars. There I was tended by servants whom I never saw. Food and raiment were provided, but there was no seamstress, no cook. Love and gratitude overcame my prudence, and in the darkness of a windowless bedchamber, I yielded myself to him.

“One night I climbed the tower and saw a bearded star and other portents by which I knew I had been betrayed and had betrayed myself, for I was no widow. Guynglaff was false, and Alain le Gros was still alive.

“Without farewell, and taking nothing of his, I departed the castle of the Swan Knight. From a mile away, I looked back and saw the manse had caught fire, and soon after it collapsed, and by this I knew the heart of the house had been broken, and the hearthstone shattered, by my departing.

“Upon my return to the cold and cheerless castle of Alain le Gros, the whispers of scandal immediately came, and at your birth you were called the son of the Wooly Man. I was commanded to give up my child to the tithe; instead, I gave up my crown and my world, and I fled to the world of men.

“Once more I departed in secret and swiftly, but this time I did not depart alone, for you were with me, wrapped in the warm feathers of my celestial cloak. The cold stone stronghold of Alain did not break and burn when I departed, however.

“On that night, within earshot of the stars, I vowed upon the northern star who is constant and stirs not, that my son would never give his vow to the Prince of Shadows, who is the vassal of the Prince of Darkness.

“If you present yourself to Alberec Under the Mountain, you will be required to bow and swear, and when Hell takes its tithe of the Fair People, it is you who will be selected to go into the utmost darkness, whose fires consume but cast no light, where there come no word, no music, and no sound save for the pandemonium of wailing, woeful shrieks, and endless cries of pain.

“For this reason, you may not be a knight.”

Chapter Nine: Errantry

1. Never

Gil touched his hand to his chest and heard the hard jingle of mail. “This is my father’s armor, is it not? This is his sword. That is why you swooned at the sight.”

“It is.”

“Would you have had him not be a knight? Who then would have saved you? Am I not my father’s son? You cast me out without an hour’s warning to find honest work, and so I did, for you had faith in me that I could. Can you not have faith that I will find a lord to serve who will not serve the darkness nor offer me to this hideous tithe you fear? The Swan Knight was a knight, was he not?”

She stood, and, for once, her voice was trembling with emotion, and her normal serenity was gone. “We have discussed this matter enough! You will never persuade me to permit this! Never!”

2. A Short Never

As it happened, it took only four months of tireless pleading, promising, arguing, cajoling, wheedling, raging, sulking, storming, and begging for Ygraine to be worn down.

“One promise you must make me,” said she. “To reveal your name to no soul, living or dead.”

And so Gil promised.

It was an early morning in Advent, and the snow was on the ground, and a week remained before Christmas when Gilberec Moth, singing, and his dog, Ruff, barking, went out.

Gil’s heart was soaring like an eagle, for he was armed and armored with his father’s sword and habergeon, helm, and shield. The gray mantle his mother had given him was around his shoulders, blowing in the wind. Over one shoulder was his knapsack. Gil with the sun above him in the cloudless sky watched the shadow of himself passing along the contours of the snow, admiring the tall, sharp shadows of the swan wings projecting from his helm. Every now and again, Gil would hold up the shield in both hands, turning it so that he could study the handsome design of azure and silver and gold: a swan of white on a field of blue beneath a crown of gold.

They walked and gamboled through field and wood and back road to the main highway. The armor should have chafed and weighed him down, but in his light-hearted mood, he hardly noticed.

“Where are we going, Gil? Where?”

“Errantry!” shouted Gil. “We are knights errant!”

“Which means what?”

Gil looked up and down the highway. “I think it means we should head for Brown Mountain and look for the elfs. Do you think anyone would give a ride to a knight errant?”

Ruff’s ears drooped. “No one picks up a hitchhiker with a dog.”

3. A Long Hike

It was a little before noon, and the boy and his dog were trudging up the snowy slopes of Brown Mountain.

Hours passed as they searched. Ruff and Gil were seeking the door into the mountain from which the knightly elfs had come. Ruff cast about, sniffing and hunting, but said the door must not be in this part of the mountain.

Ruff said, “You know, you know, I am pretty sure elf doors move around. You cannot get in unless you know the right words. Besides, you were probably looking at a postern door, you know? The back door. I bet the big one is farther up.”

“No,” said Gil crossly, “I am sure the door was around here. That is the stream Nerea and I swum up. Or is it swimmed?”

Ruff said, “Mermaids can do both.”

“And there is a waterfall farther upstream I do not remember swimming up.”

“Mermaids can find strange shortcuts and go around things even when there is no way around. We are looking in the wrong spot.”

Gil looked at him suspiciously, “Are you afraid of meeting the elfs?”

Ruff said, “Do I look crazy? Of course I am. But I am not sure this is the spot to look… look! Look!”

“I heard you.”

“No, I mean look! Look over there.” And he pointed with his nose.

Gil said, “I don’t see anything.”

“Human eyesight! Who in the world put you in charge of the world? Let’s go!”

“Wait! What did you see?”

But Ruff was already running across the snow at a gallop, flinging snowflakes high and wild, barking.

Gil, his armor clanging and ringing at every jarring footfall, pounded after him.

The two went into a valley and then came up to a rise where a line of pine trees stood, their branches white. Ruff hunkered low to the ground and crept forward stealthily, his hindquarters quivering with excitement. Gil did not need to be told. He threw himself on his face and crawled forward on elbows and knees, trying not to groan under the weight of the forty pounds of metal he was carrying. He had to undo his chinstrap and wiggled the helm off his head because the neckpiece otherwise would have prevented him from craning his neck, and the eyeholes would have restricted his peripheral vision.

He looked.

The valley below them was half hidden by clouds of fog crawling like giant white snails through the scattered trees. Gil saw a set of tracks in the snow in the near distance, going down the slope away from him and disappearing into the fog. It was two or three parallel pairs of naked feet, accompanied by paw prints too large to be from any natural creature.

Gil starting crawling forward, trying to get a better look at the prints, but a low growl from Ruff warned him to freeze. Gil held still and squinted, peering.

On the far side of the little valley, emerging from the fog that filled the valley floor, now came furry figures. At first Gil thought it was a troop of apes and a very shaggy pony. He could not see clearly because of the intervening branches.

But then the trio reached the crest of the rise opposite Gil. There were no trees there, and Gil saw the distant figures clearly against the blue sky beyond.

They were covered in hair from head to foot and moved with a rolling gait with knuckles near the ground. The one in the lead was carrying a war axe. The one in the rear turned, and Gil saw a wild beard and blazing eyes. It had fangs like a baboon and nostrils like an ape.

“Bigfoot….” whispered Gil.

Ruff said, “Oh, no! Oh, no! Those are Woses. Their charm is in their fur. You cannot fight them.”

Gil recalled where he had heard the name of the creatures before. A tremor of hate shivered through his body.

“I can fight them. I will!”

“No one fights the Abominable Snowmen. And I also smell a wolf around here. A big wolf.”

“Ruff, I am going after those guys.”

“Okay! Okay! Just… Let’s be careful.”

4. Ford

It is possible that they were too careful because the afternoon went by, and the yeti eluded them. In one place, two hours later, the trail crossed a stream partly covered with ice, and in the muddy banks was a wolf print twice the size it should have been.

Ruff said, “Are you sure we want to be following these guys?”

Gil said, “I am supposed to be a knight. They do knightly things.”

“You don’t have a horse,” said Ruff. “Can you even be a knight without a horse?”

Gil said, “We already talked about this. I read every book in the library about knighthood, but just reading about fencing and jousting and practicing on my own after work is no good.”

Gil had been working as a groom at the local farm of a man named Hoosick. He had made several friends among the horses there but could not remember the names of the other farmhands. That job ended with the harvest a few weeks back and had given Gil more time to pester his Mom about being a knight.

“I need money to buy Mom something nice for Christmas. So I am seeking some traitor knight or robber baron to beat up. If I win, I get his arms and armor and his horse. It is called the victor’s right. I figure I can pawn the arms and armor at Mr. Yung’s pawn shop. Mr. Yung gave me a good price for Nerea’s golden hair pin.”

“Why not pawn that armor you got on?”

“A dog would not understand.”

“Well, I understand we got to go farther upstream to find a ford. These guys are pretty darned tall, and the water neck deep on them would be over your head.”

Gil said, “I bet they are heading for Blowing Rock, aren’t they? My hometown.”

5. Rest Stop

It was night. The two came out of the woods into an oversized parking lot. There were a weigh station, a diesel pump, and a cluster of diners and convenience stores gathered into a rough semicircle around the parking lot. Beyond that were trees with snow on their branches, and beyond them the square shadows of a long-abandoned railway station. Beyond the railway station Gil could see the town square of Blowing Rock. The shops and the courthouse had been decorated with giant snowflakes and neon candy canes. There was a giant pine tree in the square draped with colored lights, with an electric star on the highest bough. The star was taller than the tallest building there.

Gil said, “Seems really strange they would head into my hometown. Won’t someone see them?”

Ruff said, “They can hide themselves in a mist.”

“Can you find them?”

“Sure! Sure! Just watch me!”

Ruff went carefully around the parking lot once, twice, and then a third time.

He came slowly back, ears drooping and tail dragging. “Nothing. I lost him.” And Ruff hung his head.

Gil said, “I am not going home to my Mom and telling her my first day out as a knight errant was a bust! We got to think of something. Got to come up with an idea.”

Gil and Ruff stood in the snow among the parked trucks beneath a buzzing neon light. Gil said glumly, “I wish there was a squirrel or something I could ask which way they went. I don’t like the winter. All the birds stop talking. Animals hibernate. I am used to hearing voices.”

Ruff perked up, “Hey! Hey! I got an idea!”

“What?”

“You can talk! You! That way it won’t seem so quiet. Dogs like talking. Especially when you say good dog! Talking like that is best.”

“Great idea,” said Gil sarcastically.

Ruff’s ears drooped.

Gil sighed, seeing it was unfair to take out his bad mood on Ruff, so he scratched him behind the ears. “Good boy! Good dog!”

“See!” exclaimed Ruff, his tongue lolling. “That was fun!”

Gil found himself grinning. “I guess it is fun.” Gil looked thoughtful. “Come to think of it, speaking of, um, speaking, I think I should say something when I yell like Bruno taught me. Like words. A battle cry.”

“How about ‘Go Hornets!’—?”

“What’s that?”

“It’s the battle cry of your school you got kicked out of. You know, when you were expelled.”

“I don’t think I am legally allowed to use that any more.”

Ruff said, “How about ‘Merry Christmas!’—?”

“I am not sure if that counts as a battle cry.”

“It is something I hear a lot of humans say about this time of year. Whoops!”

“What is it? What is it, boy?”

Ruff suddenly barked and looked excited, “Oh, no! Oh, no! I smell something elfish.”

“It is them?”

“No, but it is something!”

“Lead the way!” Gil took up his shield and followed the scampering black-and-white dog across the parking lot, his mail jingling as he jogged.

Ruff sniffed at the glass door of a burger joint. The glass was fogged with condensation. Gil pushed open the door. It was warm inside, filled with the smell of fried meat. Here was a restaurant, but the back wall opened up into a corridor where there were other shops and stands, like a miniature mall. Gil stepped in, scowling at Ruff. “You and your junk food! Did you smell something elfish? Or just a filet-o’-fish?”

Ruff’s ears drooped. “The nose knows! How could you doubt me?” So Gil had to kneel and rub his belly by way of apology until he was in a good mood again.

A figure dressed in a Styrofoam outfit of a giant hamburger in a top hat loomed up behind them.

“Excuse me, son. No dogs allowed in here!” came a voice out of the hamburger.

Ruff said, “Oh! Tell him you are blind! Blind men’s dogs get to get in everywhere. People feel sorry for them because their humans are blind.”

Gil was staring at the hamburger-man in confusion. “Excuse me, sir. This might seem like an odd question, but– you are a human being wearing a costume, right?”

“Very funny. You are advertising for some sort of Dungeons & Dragons-themed place moving in, are you? Your outfit looks heavier than mine. Anyway, the manager won’t let anyone bring his dog in here.”

Just then, Ruff took off at high speed, yapping. The noise of his nails scrabbling on the tile floor was like hailstones. Ruff rushed out of the burger joint into the main section of the mall. He pelted around the corner and out of sight but not out of earshot.

“I’ll go get him!” said Gil over his shoulder as he ran after Ruff, his mail clattering and clanging and the hems of his great gray cloak whipping after him.

Ruff turned into a little side corridor past a water fountain. Here were signs for the men’s room, the ladies’ room, and a door labeled NO ADMITTANCE. Ruff pointed at the ladies’ room door with his nose, cocking his foreleg, and barked. “In here! In here!”

Gil skidded to a halt. “I cannot go in there!”

But then a horrifying, shrill scream rang out, and a loud sob of anguish that tore at the heart. Gil smashed the door aside with his shield and barreled into the room, one hand on his sword grip.

There were three woman in the bathroom, two of whom let out shrieks of surprise when Gil entered. The third woman was screaming for another reason. She was a heavyset woman with an overlarge purse filled with diapers and wipes. Next to her was an empty stroller. There was a fold-down changing table built into the wall of the bathroom. On it was a tiny figure wrapped in pink baby clothing, utterly motionless and silent like a dead thing.

Gil squinted, not sure what he was seeing. There was a bright light just above the changing table, and a shadow was cast on the smooth surface. The shadow did not match. The baby’s chubby little hands and feet did not cast hand-shaped or foot-shaped shadows. Instead, the silhouette was some sort of root, something like a turnip, but with stalks filling the armholes and foot-socks of the baby outfit. Gil raised his eyes to a motion he saw in the mirror and then looked at the bathroom window. It was a narrow slit, too narrow for a person to fit through, but it was swinging.

Ruff barked, “I see him! I see him! The real baby is over there! The redcap has got him!”

Gil said, “What? I didn’t see it–”

Ruff said, “Follow me!”

The heavyset woman was bent over the motionless baby who cast the shadow of a plump plant growth. She looked up, her face wet with tears, and screamed, “Get a doctor! Lubomira! My baby is not breathing! She is not breathing! Little Loobie!” Her wild eyes fell on Gil. She blurted out: “You have to save her!”

Ruff, barking like a string a firecrackers, leaped across the bathroom, up to the sink and then up to the sill. A twist of his body and he was out the narrow window and down.

Gil felt a jolt run through his frame when the woman begged him for help, as if his muscles were on fire. He spoke, “I will save the baby, so help me God! Wait here!”

Gil pelted out the door. In the small corridor outside were several men, attracted by the screaming, looking frightened and uncertain.

When Gil in his winged helm and shield and cloak came out of the ladies’ room, one of them said, “Hey!” and another, “Stop him!” but Gil slung his shield before him and knocked aside the two men who stood in his way.

He ran out the door marked NO ADMITTANCE. Inside was a back room. Here were shelves, boxes, a sink, and another door leading to a loading dock. He leaped off the dock onto the wet pavement, heard his dog barking, and ran that way, his armor ringing like music.

6. Redcap

There was a narrow alleyway between the backside of the mini-mall and the neighboring building. “Here! Here!” barked Ruff. “I see the baby!”

The helm limited Gil’s view. He yanked it off, tucked it under his right arm like a football, and pounded down the alley, kicking up snow and melted water with every step.

A sudden turn to the left and he saw Ruff in the distance, on the other side of a small brook, flitting through the trees. Ruff was barking at what looked like a dust-devil or eddy of wind passing along the snow. Gil leaped up a berm of gravel, over some rusted railroad tracks, down the gravel slope on the far side. Then, he sprinted through the trees.

The unseen swirl of wind passed through a thicket of tangled branches, and Ruff was thwarted, held up by the many twigs and jags, barking at whatever invisible thing was skipping away beyond. Gil ran up, smashing through the thicket with his shield and trampling it with his boots. He gritted his teeth and put every ounce of strength into running.

They were now on the common green. No one was around. The lawn of the Blowing Rock town square was empty except for scattered patches of snow and the giant pine tree covered with electric lights in the near distance. Ruff barked, “You go left! I’ll go right! Drive him toward me!”

“But I can’t see anyone!”

“He don’t know that! Lesson One! Awe and terrify!”

Ruff ran to one side, teeth bared, barking madly. Gil ran across the little common green of the town square to the right, waving the helm he carried in his hand over head, showing his teeth, and bellowing ferociously.

Ruff barked madly and lunged. Suddenly, Ruff had in his teeth a doll-sized cap of bright red set with an owl feather.

A little blurry swirl of wind suddenly became clear and easy to see. Here was a miniature man, no more than twelve inches tall, dressed in a green doublet and hose, his head bare, with a face as hideous as a vulture’s face, eyes bright with glee and malice. The little man was scampering toward the giant pine tree covered with colored lights in the middle of the common green, laughing gaily. His tiny arms, no bigger than soda straws, were able to carry the body of a baby four times his size over his head. It was like seeing a normal-sized man carry a baby elephant. It was the real Loobie, still alive and breathing, and sleeping peacefully despite the jolts and ruckus.

And the little man was leaping a fathom with every stride, his little legs flung out before and behind in a comical fashion, and he bounced like a track and field star on a track made of trampolines. Little sparks and blinks of light came from his feet and calves.

He was able to twist his head around in a half-circle like an owl, and so, without slowing, the redcap stared at his pursuit as he ran. “Slow-foot and slower-foot! Trip on a root!”

“That does not even rhyme!” growled Ruff through clenched teeth, angrily.

“Watch me flee! Just watch me! No mortal hand can catch me!”

“That doesn’t rhyme either!” Ruff growled again, even more angrily. “You stink!”

But a swirl of little lights and sparks like fireflies gathered around the legs of the little man. “Rush and hush, the baby sleeps! The boldest redcap whirls and leaps!”

And in a wash of twinkling lights, the redcap left the ground and flew up in a long parabolic arc to a point halfway up the pine tree, far out of reach, and the baby with him.

Gil from below looked up in shock and frustration, seeing the creepy little man so easily escape him. But then he noticed a low-hanging branch with a red-nosed reindeer ornament hanging from it, which would allow him to reach the next branch. His eye marked the path of quickest ascent.

But before he could take a step closer to the tree, Gil heard Ruff bark. “Wow! Wow!” Gil’s gaze leaped up.

The little man was about to land on the tree, but before his green slipper could touch the evergreen branch, the branch swayed in the breeze, and an ornament shaped like a singing angel, hanging by the thread attached to its halo, turned toward the little man. It arms were flung out in a T, and its little mouth was open in an O. The white angel had a red cross on its surcoat.

The little man twisted in midair, shrieking in panic, and the sparks carried him backward and away from the tree. He fell headfirst, but landed lightly as a thistledown on the grass. The baby fell as well, but the end of the lowest tree branch caught the baby right where the knot of the big pink handkerchief into which she was tied was placed, so the bundle merely swayed on the end of the branch, rocking the baby.

The redcap yelled, “I thought this was a Kwanzaa tree! I thought it was safe! Wherever elfs and imps have sway, holy trees are outlawed out and done away!”

Gil jumped headlong, dropping his helm, and tackled the little man. The little man was slippery and quick, but not quicker than a fish. Gil caught him in both hands, lifting him to his mouth to grip him with his teeth.

The redcap yowled in woe and horror.

7. Capture

“I yield! I surrender! I give! Eat me not! Spare me, and I will grant a boon of equal worth as I prize my very life!” shouted the redcap in his tiny, high voice. Then he muttered, “Er, live.”

Ruff said, “Oh! Oh! I know this one! I know how this works. Make him swear by his name! His name!”

The little man wailed all the more loudly, mournfully, and terribly. “Thornstab! Thornstab of Lichlamp son of Zahack the Necromant! By my very name I vow the boon you ask to grant! Cruel am I but don’t want to die!”

Ruff said, “You can let him down. If he breaks his oath, he loses his name.”

Gil, kneeling, spat the little man out onto the grass. Ruff put his nose into Gil’s hand and gave him the miniature cap with its feather. “Hold on to that! Give it back when he gives you the boon.”

Gil had no pockets in his armor, but his war belt had a pouch of tooled leather adorned with swans, where he kept his whetstone and pliers and tin of polish, and here the tiny thumb-sized hat went.

The little man, Thornstab, was picking himself up, brushing off his green doublet, his ghastly vulture-face screwed up in a scowl. “No Son of Adam erenow has ever bit on me! I have man-spit on me! I will get man-germs! Verily!”

Ruff said sharply, “That is a myth! Human slobber is good for you!”

Gil stood, picked up the baby from where she hung, dangling, from the pine tree branch. He doffed his cloaked and wrapped it around her. “First things first. Not as part of whatever boon you owe me, but simply as common decency, you must remove whatever enchanted sleep you put on this child, and the illusion you put on the root you put in her place.”

Thornstab said, “If, of whatever boon, it is not part, why should I? Why undo my art?”

Gil said, “Why should I not throw you into this Christmas tree? The boon was only for not biting you in half like a raw fish.”

“You eat raw fish? Ugh and yuck. A ghastly dish.”

Gil knelt and placed the baby carefully upon the brown grass of winter. Then, he snatched up the little man with a lightning-swift motion of his hand. “Look! There is a nativity scene! Maybe if I put you into the crib next to baby Jesus….”

“No! Not the child! That will burn and scald!”

Ruff said, “Worst rhyme ever.”

Thornstab said, “I will be defiled!”

“Much better,” Ruff nodded. Then, to Gil he said, “Bite his head off.”

“I agreed not to hurt him.”

Ruff said, “I didn’t. Let’s play fetch. Throw him!”

“Harm me no harm! Look! I do undo the charm! The babe will wake without fail, without a wail, when she is once more in her mother’s arm.” Thornstab rubbed both hands together, producing a palm full of sparks, which he blew with the breath from his mouth to where the baby was wrapped in Gil’s cloak.

Gil knelt and put the little man back on the ground, “Thank you.”

Thornstab grinned a wicked grin and plucked a blade of grass. “Here is your welcome!” He put the blade of grass to his lips and blew a high, shrill whistle.

Ruff said, “That is not good.” And his ears drooped.

Gil buckled the chin strap of his helm.

Chapter Ten: Abominable Snowmen

1. Battlecry

The doors of the courthouse swung open. Two furry shapes taller than a man and wider than an ape came lumbering with lurching, sideways steps down the stairs, flourishing great truncheons.

Seen up close, they were horrifying. The hair of their neck and shoulders was thick and dark like a mane, and their skulls were slanted, with receding brows and jutting great jowls.

Behind came a giant white wolf. The red-eyed pale-furred wolf padded down the stairs, claws clicking on the stones, growling and tossing his hairy head. Gil saw the monster’s snout was muzzled, and great teeth were biting at the bit.

In a saddle on his back was a hunched and hairy shape greater than the other two, but he was armed with a great double-headed ax, and a cap of bronze metal was on his head.

Gil felt his skin crawling as all his nape hairs stood. A shivering sensation of loathing and hate passed through his body upon seeing the three shaggy ape-faced semi-humans.

“Bigfoots!” he snarled. And, raising his shield, he drew the sword of his father and flourished the blade on high.

“MERRY CHRISTMAS!” he shouted at the top of his lungs.

2. Heretic

Seeing Gil, the mounted woses grinned, showing great yellow teeth. His right fang was broken off short.

“Surprised?” the rider threw back his head to laugh without mirth. Then, tilting his head forward, he intoned in a voice rich with menace, “My brothers and I are in the service of the Winterking, Sir Knight. In his name we gather from the human herd. Beware of us, and stand away!”

The one to the left said, “None stands between the Yeti and their prey.”

And the third said, “You are an enemy who greets us so! That word you must not say!”

Gil started toward the huge apelike things and the even more huge wolf, his armor ringing with each step. He met them in the road separating the courthouse from the common green where the Christmas tree was.

Anger crackled in his voice. He pointed the naked sword first at the one, then the next. “I don’t care in whose name you do this evil! If you are behind the theft of this child, and her mother’s tears, you die! And what’s wrong with Merry Christmas?”

It was not one of the three apelike woses who answered him, but the great wolf. The monster snarled and spoke through clenched teeth. “God does not rut! He is neither begotten nor begets! There is no Christmas because there was no Christ!”

Gil was so amazed that he stopped and stared at the wolf. “No Christ? How did we get on this topic? Leave the baby alone!”

The wolf said, “The false prophet died in Palestine, two ages ago, forsaken, as he himself confessed in tears, by his heartless God, and never rose again! We wolves know! Our fathers, the wolves of that day, pulled the corpse from the cave of Joseph of Arimethea and gobbled down the rotted meat and cracked the marrow bones! The Roman soldiers stood aside, friends of wolves, for were not Romulus and Remus suckled by a she-wolf?”

Gil felt a moment of sickness and horror overcome him. “You lie!”

The rider said in a slow voice, puzzled, “Are you– are you talking to my wolf?”

The wolf clenched its jaws so that the bit groaned in his teeth, and the eyes of the giant beast were like fire. “No one has ever drunk the blood nor taken the flesh of Jesus, save wolf and wolf alone!”

Without a word, in reckless rage, Gil rushed in straight toward the wolf and struck. The monster reared, his fore-claws tearing at the white swan of the tall shield. Gil stabbed up from beneath the shield, passing the blade neatly between the ribs and into the heart.

Immediately, the blade ignited with a white flame, bright as a lightning-flash. The wolf’s blood caught fire; fire roared in the chest-wound; fire billowed from the maw. The wolf screamed a horrid scream, threw his rider, and rolled, trying to smother the terrible burning.

The woses to the left cowered back, squinting and dazzled, his elbow before his eyes. “It is Dyrnwen! The true white blade! It is the lost blade come again!”

The one on the right fell to his face, groveling and crying. “Elfinking! Erlkoenig! Lord of Unseelie! Come to save your loyal slave, for greatly has he need of thee!”

Gil smote the wolf through the neck, and the fiery head rolled free. The burning jaws snapped open and shut with the creature’s dying spasms.

The rider with the ax scrambled and clawed himself free from the wreckage of his saddle, bruised and burned where the great monster had rolled atop him in its dying madness. The rider came to his feet and stared in anger at the broken axhandle in his hand, which he cast to the asphalt of the road with a clatter. He roared at Gil, “Why did you kill my wolf?”

“I had to!”

“That was Bolmagnir son of Svartmagnir!”

“Well, his name is Baked Meat now! My Mom told me to kill heretics!” Gil laughed, delighted at the strange bright flames leaping and dancing along the blade thrumming in his hand. The letters of strange writing were clear to see, painfully bright. Never before had Gil had permission to answer a liar as he secretly had always wished.

The wide-eyed woses stared at the laughing boy, whose mirth was ringing and echoing eerily from his helm. The hairy man shouted at Gil, “Are you mad?”

“Fighting mad!” Gil shouted back.

3. Skirmish

With these words, Gil drove in at the tall, one-fanged woses in the iron cap, lunging point-first from beyond the creature’s reach. But the point of the blade skittered off the creature’s fur, as if it had struck a steel plate.

Suddenly, the other two came at him from behind to his left and right and swung their truncheons. One he parried with the sword, and the other he deflected with the shield, but the shock of the blows left both arms tingling and half-numb. He ran, trying to get out of the middle of the triangle of enemies, but the woses on their crooked legs were more lithe and limber than a boy in armor, and he could not break free of the circle.

No matter which way he turned, there was one behind him. One struck him on the shoulder; another on the helm; the third clawed him on the legs so that he bled freely. He cut the thick wand of wood in half with a great stroke of his fiery sword. But the woses to whom he had turned his back, the one in the iron cap, now grabbed him from behind, twisting one arm in a wrestler’s hold, and the white-hilted sword went spinning from his hand. The blade dropped to the road, and its light went out.

Just then Ruff landed on the back of the woses grappling Gil, barking, jaws slashing. Gil felt the grip weaken, and he twisted free, grabbed the creature by the hair of his calf, and pulled his leg overhead, sending him toppling. Ruff grabbed the sword by the hilts in his jaws and ran. Gil pelted after him, armor ringing. But the woses were swifter than he and leaped after, trying to circle him again.

The three woses halted suddenly, noses twitching. Gil ran back on to the common green. A glance showed him the baby was still safe, still asleep. He ran toward her.

At that moment, a great wind came from behind the courthouse, and two wings of white mist poured across the road into the town square, thick and opaque as a stage curtain. Through this curtain a thick and huge shape moved, coming closer. Gil felt the ground tremble at its footfalls, and he heard the sounding of trumpets.

4. The Lord of Winter

The mist parted. An albino woolly mammoth walked through the clinging swirls of mist, and the trumpet calls were coming from its trunk. On the neck of the white mammoth road a slight and slender girl in a black jerkin, skirt and red-peaked cap. She had a narrow face and a wicked smile, wings like an immense dragonfly. Two feathery antennae a yard long issued from her pretty head. In her hand was a goad to drive the mammoth.

Behind and above her, on a tower on the back of the beast was a throne of pallid crystal, and here was a kingly figure wrapped from chin to ankle in a black cloak. A rack of antlers reached from his brow, wider than his shoulders, and little lights danced in them. His hair was a hood as black as night. It reached past his shoulders and, as the night, had small, cold sparks in it. In his hand was a back scepter. The only paleness of him was his face-mask.

“Who calls me? Who calls the King of Winter Darkness, the High King and Caesar over all the Nocturnal World? Who calls Erlkoenig son of Oberon, the King of Elf and Shadows, Lord of Air and Darkness?”

Only one of the three woses still had a club in his hand. It was he that saluted the figure on the mammoth, and crouched, and said, “Sire, this man-at-arms hinders our wooing and slew the wolf, whom you raised from a whelp, to whom you fed unclean meats from your own imperial hand, and over whom you chanted many strange runes and wove them fast! He slew Bolmagnir, the Great Wolf, whom you gave to my brother Guynglaff!”

Gil was now near the Christmas tree, but he stopped, hearing that name. Now he understood the red rage that was thrumming through his body and pouring into his muscles like fire.

Guynglaff was the name of the woses that had kidnapped and terrified his mother before he was ever born. And now Gil stood before him, dressed in the same armor, bearing the same shield, and armed with the same sword as the Swan Knight who had defeated him.

Gil drew a shaking breath. The task of defeating the monster now was Gil’s, whether he was ready to meet it or not, strong enough or not.

At his gesture, Ruff passed the white sword to him. Gil petted the dog, straightened, stepped forward boldly, saluted with his sword, and called out, “Your Imperial Highness! I have a quarrel with that creature, who says he is doing your work. These three sent their agent Thornstab to steal and kidnap that child there and replace her with a root. I had not heard erenow that the Emperor of All the Elfin Kind makes war on helpless babies!”

“Thornstab, attend me! Come forth!” called Erlkoenig. But there was no answer. The king kicked the slender driver with his foot. “Glisterwing! Let it be noted that Thornstab is tardy and absent without leave. Send the Winged Nightmare to retrieve his soul in the dream realm, and let the venoms of torment be prepared. Let them be of the ordinary strength; my displeasure is but small as yet.”

“Yes, my lord,” said the elfin girl, pouting and rubbing the spot where her wing met her shoulder.

Seen this close, Gil could now see the figure did not wear a white mask, or, at least, it was not a mask. It was a slab of ice growing out of his flesh. There was a mouth slit, and a second slit above where the ice was just transparent enough to allow the distant and cruel glitter of the inhuman eyes to gleam through.

“What would you have of me?” asked the figure in the pallid mask and dark cloak, peering down from his white crystal throne.

Gil pointed his sword at Guynglaff. “That one, sire! I seek to meet him in honorable combat to slay him so that he dies the death.”

“That one is hard to kill. His name is Guynglaff Cobweb. Here are his two brothers Gulaga and Doolaga, also of the Cobweb clan. What business do you have with Guynglaff? Who are you?”

“Sire, I mean no discourtesy, but I cannot say my name.”

The mammoth now stepped with a remarkably delicate motion closer to Gil and lifted its great trunk. The nostrils snuffled and sniffed at Gil, and Gil smelled a warm scent of hay from the breath of the giant creature. With a stab of pity, Gil saw that the mammoth’s eyes were coated with a filmy growth. The mammoth was blind.

Erlkoenig said, “Are you human or elfin?”

“Sire, I cannot say.”

The ice-covered face of Erlkoenig turned toward the woses. “Guynglaff! Attend me! Is this the same Swan Knight? Or be he another?”

The hairy man louted low. “Sire, I cannot tell.”

“Not by voice nor stance?”

Guynglaff said, “He is near enough that it does not matter. We will tear him limb from limb with glee.”

Erlkoenig said, “What say you, Gulaga, brother to Guynglaff?”

The one who still held an unbroken club said, “We need the Daughters of Eve as drudges and slatterns, slaves and concubines, for no woman or our kind will wed us, seeing us as hideous, or bear our monstrous get in their wombs. Our race will dwindle and die if we have no mortal women to impregnate! This knight meddles with our very survival! All creatures are allowed to slay others to preserve themselves. And since he must die in any case, it will not matter if the death is merciless, slow, and lingering.”

“What say you, Doolaga?”

The second one had a high-pitched voice, wheezing, “Thornstab left a mandrake root in the place of the changeling babe, which is a fair and even trade. We cannot be accused of theft! The mother’s eyes were held, so that the root looked like a babe in all ways; unreasonable if she is not satisfied!”

Then, Gulaga spoke again, rearing up and whirling the club in the air. “Once we have him out of his armor, we will gnaw his flesh raw!”

Doolaga said, “Let him die a messy, screaming death with much blood! Too much blood! It will entertain the Winterking!” He also began hooting, and jumping up and down, and pounding himself in the chest.

Gil said, “Sir! I ask for single combat, one on one!”

Erlkoenig said, “The honors given to the nobly born cannot be granted to the base born, for then no reward would be worth risking life and limb to obtain. Knights do not fight for gold nor gain but for such things as have no price and cannot be bought. Can you buy a father for gold? I would sell you mine if I could.”

Gil said, “No, sire. But three against one is unfair, and they are invulnerable.”

Erlkoenig said, “Unfair? It is unfair to deny you your due, but are you due the treatment owed those born to high estate? Who is your father? If you cannot say your name, then who can say your lineage?”

And, when Gil had no answer, Erlkoenig said, “Guynglaff, Gulaga, and Doolaga, you are dismissed. Be about your business.”

The three woses came loping forward.

Gil knew his sword could not cut their furry hides. They were taller and stronger than he was and more agile. Without hope, yet without fear, he raised his sword and readied his shield to receive their charge.

5. Bloodshed

Gil heard a shrill noise above him. “Climb! Climb, you fool!”

In his helm and neckpiece, he could not turn his head without turning his back, and to do that meant to commit himself to running. He had either to trust or not to trust the voice based on the voice alone.

“Take the child and climb to my nest!”

Gil did not hesitate. He had already picked out the path from tree limb to tree limb. He turned and flung away the shield, which he could not hold while climbing. Ruff saw, and barked, and picked up the shield in his mouth by the straps, and ran toward the wood separating the common green from the rest stop, the shield clattering and banging behind him. Not looking back at the monsters rushing so swiftly upon him, with cool deliberation, Gil sheathed the sword, stooped, and picked up the baby. He folded his surcoat in two to make a pocket and used his warbelt and baldric strap to pin the folded fabric against his chestplate, so there was no way for the child to slip out.

Up he went, branch to branch, only banging his helm every now and again. The little lights on their green electric cords flashed cheerfully.

Then, he saw the bird. For a moment, he thought it was a Santa Claus ornament, so bright and red was he. “A cardinal!” said Gil. “You do not migrate, do you?”

“What? Depart the Carolinas? A spot more fair the Creator created not on Earth! My work is here. Now climb! Climb for your life! Do not slack nor stop until I say!”

Gil could hear the breathing and rustling below him and felt the whole tree shake. The woses laughed. One wheezed in a shrill voice, “Who leaps from branch to branch with more ease than a Wild-Man-o’-Wood? He cannot outclimb us!”

“Perhaps he seeks to dangle from a slim branch, thinking we cannot follow?” said the second, Gulaga. “The weight of his armor dooms him!”

“Not so fast, my brothers! Toy with him! Let him despair!” Gil recognized the voice of Guynglaff, which was deeper than the other two. “Let him leap to his death, that he slay himself, and be damned to the dark realm!”

Gil leaped from branch to branch as quickly as the heavy armor allowed, painstakingly careful not to let anything touch the warm burden cuddled against his chest. The pine branches shook beneath his gauntlets and boots as the monsters closed on him. It was maddening that the helm so limited his vision, and he could not turn his head enough to look behind. From the grunts and hisses of the woses brothers, he could tell they were near.

Suddenly, the tree began swaying widely, wildly, dangerously. He was nearing the top, and the branches were getting smaller, less able to bear his weight.

“It is too far!” said Gil. He could not see where the cardinal was.

“Climb! Do not slow!”

Gil could hear the woses behind him. Up he went. The tree swayed alarmingly. Gil saw the star at the crown of the tree waving back and forth dizzily.

“Here!” called the cardinal, flapping before his eyes and landing. “This branch! Here! Out on the branch!”

It looked far too narrow to hold his weight. He decided to trust the cardinal. This branch was near the top, with few other branches within reach. Gil crept on hand and foot along the narrow length. Then, he clung with both hands, for the branch was shaking in his grip. He turned. A woses was coming swiftly and surefootedly along the branch, his prehensile toes gripping the tiny circumference of the branch like fingers, his arms out to either side to help him balance. He had neither club nor iron cap, so this was Doolaga.

The cardinal landed on the next branch up. “Stand up!” The little voice said. The warm little babe was still snugly held against his chest by his baldric and warbelt in an enchanted sleep.

Gil rose up unsteadily, reached overhead, did a pull-up. He kicked his legs away from the tree and threw his leg over the upper branch on the side father from the bole. His weight caused the narrow branch to bend so severely that he sank down below the first branch.

The surprised apelike face of Doolaga slid past his vision, rising, as the thin branch to which Gil clung fell down.

Then, he was below the creature. He saw that the sole of its foot was naked of any fur, bare like the sole of a man.

Clinging to the bending branch with one arm and both legs, Gil drew the sword, and stuck. Both branches were waving, so his aim was thrown off. His blade skittered off the furry calf of Doolaga without cutting. Doolaga, agile as a monkey, leaped neatly down the branch, away from the sword but also away from the bole of the tree so that he was bobbing up and down as Gil was. Gil half-lunged and half-fell, with his left hand grabbing the branch on which Doolaga the woses precariously stood. The motions of both branches, rocking and pitching like a ship at sea made Doolaga collapse to all fours and grab the branch with both hands and both feet.

Gil looked down. The big one, Guynglaff, was yards away, but he was directly below Doolaga, his brother. Gulaga, meanwhile, was at the same height as Gil, having climbed the far side of the tree, and now he was circling, coming toward Gil, leaping swiftly from branch to branch with only three limbs (for he clutched his club in one foot).

Gil let go his legs. The branch, released of his weight, snapped upward and to the left. Gulaga ducked as a lone and thin pine branch of shepherds, kings, and blinking lights whipped passed his head.

Gil, meanwhile, flung by the same force in the opposite direction, did a neat spin around the branch in his hands and landed on the top. It was better than anything he had ever done in gymnastics on the uneven bars, and he could not restrain a laugh of victory. He lifted himself precariously to his feet. “Ta DAH!” he shouted.

Doolaga was before him, and reared up on his hand-like hind paws. “Do not be of good cheer, weak Son of Adam!” he wheezed in an odd, shrill voice. “Your weapon cannot cut the fur of woses!”

Gil said, “It cuts wood!” And he took the sword in both hands and chopped at the branch just before his toes. A large chip of pine flew into the air.

Doolaga, seeing what was happening and feeling the thin branch on which they were both balanced shaking, now dropped to all fours, clutching the wood with hands and feet and ran forward as fast as he could, charging Gil.

Then, he reared up, looming over the boy, tall, broad, and immense in the glittering colored lights. Gil put the point of his blade in the middle of that broad chest and pushed with all his force, shouting, “Merry Christmas!”

The tip of the blade could not penetrate his fur, but the force of the thrust could push on his chest. Doolaga fell in a half-circle and now was hanging upside down by his feet, still directly above Guynglaff, who looked up, shock in his eyes and fear for his brother. Guynglaff began taking prodigious leaps upward and did not see the danger to himself.

Gil carefully put the tip of his sword against the naked sole of Doolaga’s foot, where there was no fur, and shoved the blade into the flesh. Doolaga screamed, his foot bloody, his blood catching fire, and he fell.

Doolaga struck Guynglaff, who was in mid-leap, and they were both flung out of the tree by the impact and plunged downward. The sword burst into brilliant white flame, intolerably bright.

Gil turned. Gulaga with his club was now picking his way quickly from branch to branch, once more approaching Gil from the left. Gil retreated closer to the bole of the swaying tree, reached up, grabbed the electrical wires leading to the huge white star at the very top, and yanked. The huge and heavy ornament came free. He swung it by the wires in a huge circle over his head, yodeled, and threw it at the woses. It shattered into a spray of glass. Gulaga staggered, screaming in fear, but caught a branch with a hand and a foot, and saved himself from falling.

Gil now saw a lower, wider branch and jumped down to it with a loud clang and clatter.

Gulaga made an acrobatic flip and landed on the branch just above Gil. The monster smote down with his club with all the power of his thickly muscled leg. Gil’s helmet saved his life: it rang like a bell, and he knew a huge bruise would spread across his face, and it felt like his nose was broken, but at least his skull was not shattered.

Gil struck with the sword, but Gulaga parried it with the club, fell prone, and reached down, striking unexpectedly with the claws of his hands. Gil was afraid for the baby and curled his arms before his chest. The claws did not hit the child but tore through Gil’s shoulder-armor, mail, and flesh. Blood flowed freely.

Gulaga said, “Even that sword cannot pierce us!”

Gil jumped down another branch, wincing at his wound.

The cardinal was on the branch with him. “Here is my nest. Light it afire.”

It was a dry circle of twigs with no eggs in it. Gil wondered why any bird built a nest in winter. He did not see the point of lighting it afire, but he did not question. Gil held his white flaming sword beneath, and the nest ignited merrily. Black smoke poured up. He now saw this one branch was dry and brown, long dead but held in place by its neighbors.

The cardinal said, “The tree will burn.”

“This tree is too green to burn,” Gil said.

The cardinal said, “The tree says he will help. Do not demean his act of sacrifice. Christmas trees are not like common trees.” And the red bird flew away.

Gulaga was baffled by the growing fire and had to climb sideways to go around the burning branch. But he was still coming swiftly after Gil.

Gil descended another branch or two, and he saw that any needles he brushed with his sword, even though they were green and should not have burned, ignited suddenly, as if they had been coated in oil and were blazing like candles.

Gil swung the sword left and right, igniting all he touched. Branches flared into red fire and poured up black smoke. He chopped one thick green cable in half in a spray of sparks and then another. He noticed the blade flared up brightly when it touched a live wire. Perhaps electricity acted like blood? Gil looked up. The fire was spreading far more rapidly than it should; Gulaga was lost in the cloud of smoke. The cheerful lights looked eerie in the smoke, like little bright stars throwing out wavering beams.

He felt sorry for the tree and wondered in awe why it had volunteered to help him and at such a price.

Gil stepped away from the bole to where the branch was narrow and unsteady. He drove the point of the flaming sword through a thick cable and into the branch beneath and left it there. The flame flickered but did not go out, and sparks danced around the tip where it pierced the live wire.

Then, Gil stepped back toward the bole in a spot where the tree lights had gone dark. He waited. Gulaga, coughing against the smoke, dropped down lithely to the branch and saw the light of the sword. This time the club was in both hands, and he was whirling it menacingly.

Gulaga raced quickly toward the brightly burning blade, club held high, as the narrow branch dipped and sagged alarmingly. Gil took a step, put his hands up, grabbed the club, and yanked. Gulaga did not let go of the club, but staggered backward and began to fall. His feet flew from the branch. He let go of the club and grabbed for the branch with arms and legs, twisting in midair.

Gil, finding the club free in his hand, now thrust the wooden length into Gulaga’s grasp. The monster’s fingers closed about it instinctively. For a frozen second in midfall, Gulaga stared in dumb surprise at the club in his hands, which Gil thrust away from himself with a hearty shove, crying, “Heave HO!”

Down plunged the woses, falling across a line of lights and dragging them with him, bouncing from branch to branch. A shower of glass balls, cows, donkeys, shepherds, angels, and drummer boys fell after him.

Gil crept out to the end of the unsteady branch and recovered his sword, which he sheathed. He inched back to safety, shaking and sweating. He doffed his gauntlet, reached into the fold of his surcoat, and felt the baby. She was still warm and breathing, and her heart was beating. He donned the gauntlet and began climbing down quickly, trying to keep the weight off his hurt shoulder.

6. Noble Blood

Soon he was on the ground. After the glare and fury of the sword, it was dark here, and Gil could only see Gulaga, who had fallen practically at the roots of the tree, with a line of Christmas lights still twined around him, winking and blinking. Instead of the shattered skull and fractured limbs he was expecting, the woses was intact. Gil drew his sword and ran up to Gulaga, who seemed only stunned. Gulaga opened his eyes as Gil stepped over him, and Gil saw the fire of the treetop reflected in the black pupils. He drove the sword point into the eye socket and killed him instantly.

In the light from the sword, he now saw the other two. Both were lying motionless, but they did not seem dead. Guynglaff, the taller one, had fallen farthest from the tree. His bronze cap was lost. Gil saw the light glinting on his bald spot. The bronze cap covered a spot on his head where he had no hair.

The other woses had a bloody foot and a burned calf. The fire had gone out, and there was a splatter of blood on the grass around his ankle. This was Doolaga, and he was stirring feebly.

Doolaga woke as Gil was running up, and he opened his huge ape-muzzle in a yowl, baring his yellow teeth. Gil drove the point of the flaming sword into the mouth and out the back of his neck. The blood in the monster’s body ignited and began to burn.

Gil spun toward Guynglaff, but now a tall dark figure in a pallid mask stood in the way. Erlkoenig had dismounted from his mammoth. He raised a pale and slender hand. In his other arm, cradled against his elbow, was Sally, the baby.

Gil reached into the fold he had made with his surcoat. His fingers met a bulbous root bigger than a turnip.

Erlkoenig said, “Gentle right, Sir Knight! In the name of your noble blood, I ask for your courtesy. Allow Guynglaff to ransom his life!”

Gil was panting. “Sir! My grievance against Guynglaff is very great!”

“And you have slain his brothers. Is this not enough? I am Imperator, Caesar, and King of all the Elfin races of the Night World, and many in the Twilight also bow to me. Name what ransom you demand. this is the noble custom.”

“Imperial Majesty! How am I so nobly born, now, all of a sudden? Before this, I was chopped liver.”

“You fight like one born to kings and champions, and that sword burns brightly indeed in your hands. I will tell my heralds to enroll your escutcheon into the rolls, and all my court will recognize your birth as worthy even if your lineage is unknown. Ask me what I shall give you to ransom the life of Guynglaff.”

Gil looked at the baby in Erlkoenig’s arms. Had he climbed and fought so fearfully, carrying his precious burden, and it was a root all that time? Or was this the illusion now?

Gil said, “A life for a life. Give me the child, and cast no more illusions, charms, chants, or spells neither on her nor any of her family, sisters or brothers, parents or grandparents, cousins, and, if she weds, on her husband, on her children or grandchildren to four generations. I want Loobie and her family to be immune and sacrosanct to all elfin meddling, tricks, and sleights of hand.”

“Granted!” intoned the elfin king. Unseen hands now wafted the baby gently across the air to Gil, who sheathed his sword to take the child. The firelight vanished. The child was in his arms. When he looked up again, blinking, a thick mist was blowing along the ground, and Erlkoenig, Guynglaff, and the bodies of Doolaga and Gulaga were gone.

The cardinal landed on the grass to one side. “Here! Quickly! Daub your eyes and ears and tongue in the blood of the first enchanted monster you have slain. Haste! This time comes but once!”

Gil saw a splatter of blood on the grass, and some burn-marks where Doolaga had been smoldering a moment before. He knelt, put the baby down, put down the root (he put it down gently, just in case it was still Loobie in disguise), and undid his helmet and gauntlets. He plucked the grassblade where a drop of blood had gathered. “Why, exactly, am I doing this, again?”

The cardinal said, “Taste the blood, that all who hear will hear the truth in your voice.”

Gil did not hesitate. He always told the truth, and no one believed him. If this charm would make the truth be heard, it was a gift beyond price. He put the grassblade, blood and all, into his mouth, and chewed and swallowed. It tasted terrible.

Gil looked, but the blood was evaporating. On his hands and knees, wishing for brighter light, he saw one grassblade bent double with a red drop dangling from its tip. He wiped it onto his finger and then into his left eye. It stung.

Gil ground the heel of his palm against his eye, yowling in pain. “What does this do again?”

“By its virtue, your eye will pierce deceptions, and elfin glamours fail. Now, find that wolf you slew, for there is virtue in the first battle you fight, and this was all one. Go! You have yet to anoint your ears!”

Gil stood, walked across the common green to the street, and crossed the empty street. The corpse of the vast beast was missing. Kneeling down, Gil could find only a small puddle, which had spread and seeped into the macadam. There was only the tiniest amount of blood left. He touched it to his finger and put one drop in one ear, then in the other. It stung and caused a humming noise for a moment. Then, he heard, or thought he heard, a strange, beautiful noise in the distance like crystal chimes ringing and receding.

“This won’t damage my hearing, will it?” he asked the bird in annoyance, wincing at the hot, stinging sensation in his ear and wondering if that noise he heard were real.

The cardinal said, “The songs of elfs and sirens have lost their power over you. You now will speak the truth, see the truth, and hear the truth.”

“And what is that ringing noise? No, it is gone now.”

“Was it pleasant or unpleasant?”

“Very pleasant.”

“That was the armor and harness of your guardian angel, who protected you during this battle, carrying your prayers to a high and hidden tabernacle in the stars, where there is an altar stone.”

“I didn’t say any prayers.”

“None?” said the cardinal in surprise. “The knights of Constantine prayed ere the Battle of the Milvian Bridge, as did those of John of Austria ere the Battle of Lepanto. Do you suppose knights of yore defeated the powers of the Night World without aid? When next you encounter battle, first be shriven, lest you die.”

And with a flap of his bright red wings, the little bird flew off.

The Christmas tree was burning rather brightly now, and Gil thought it was time to take his leave. He whistled for Ruff, who came trotting up, still lugging the shield behind him. “We won! We won! I helped! I helped! I ran off with the shield just like you wanted! Did you see me bite him? I bit him good!”

Gil petted him fondly, shaking with fatigue, and hot with sweat. “Good boy!”

“And I guarded the shield! Did you see that?”

Gil said, “Is the mom still at the rest stop? I told her to wait, but she does not even know the baby was kidnapped.”

Ruff said, “I think she knows now. Look!” For there were red and blue lights flashing and waving through the trees. Gil could see a police cruiser and a paramedic vehicle had pulled up to the rest stop.

Gil grinned. “Let’s go give the mom her baby back!”

And despite all his wounds and weariness, his step was light as he marched through the woods, baby in his arms, shield over his shoulder, and helm hanging from one side of his belt, sword from the other, and a white swan blazing on his chest.

Chapter Eleven: Truth and Consequences

As they walked, Ruff said, “Good job killing those Wild-Men-o’-Wood. But boy, are the Cobwebs going to have it out for you! Wow. You’re a dead man. I think you made a better bear than a knight. Whoa! What is that?”

There was a crowd of curious onlookers gathered around the loading dock of the mini-mall. To one side were police officers. Gil heard the voice of the mother, shouting and screaming in agony and confusion.

Gil stepped closer. The mother and a medic in white were bent over what looked to Gil like a giant turnip root lying on a pad on the open tailgate of the white vehicle. The medic was trying to give mouth-to-mouth resuscitation to the inert root, but was only blowing raspberries against the upper knob of its gray and wrinkled skin.

Closer, Gil heard her words. “That is not my baby! That is a vegetable!” Gil nodded, realizing that the price asked of Erlkoenig must have been granted. The baby’s family was immune to elfish illusions. That included the mother. “That is a vegetable! Where is my baby?”

It was with immense satisfaction that Gil stepped forward from the trees and said in a loud, clear voice. “Here, ma’am. The baby is here. The baby is safe. I have her!”

There was a shout from the onlookers, but it was not a shout of triumph, but of horror. Gil stepped forward to hand the baby to the mother. She rushed to him and snatched the baby fearfully out of his hands, giving him an odd look.

As promised, the baby came awake in the mother’s arms and began keening and wailing.

Gil then saw himself in the reflection caught in the window of the police cruiser. He had blood wiped all over his face, in his hair, and all over his hands. More blood, his own, was leaking down his shoulder and arm where his armor was rent. Pine needles were clinging to every part of him. His gear was sticky with sap, sweat, soot, and blood.

And the light from the burning Christmas tree in the town square was visible through the woods behind him.

The police officer said, “Son, can you tell me your name and explain why you took this baby?”

Gil sighed and said in a sad voice, “No, officer, I cannot tell you my name. My mother told me not to. An elf stole the baby, not I. You must believe me!”

The officer said soothingly, “I do. I am sure the judge will believe you, too. Now, I’d like you to come down to the station and make a statement. But first, would you please undo that sword, drop it to the ground, and kick it over to me?”

“I cannot do that either; it would forswear me. Listen, sir: You should hear the truth in my voice from the blood of the woses in my mouth!”

The officer stared at him. “Sorry? What was that about blood?”

Gil explained, “I was fighting a monster. His is the blood in my mouth. The tree I burned too, but all is well. A little bird assured me that noble pine volunteered himself for the flames.”

Later, alone in a jail cell in the North Carolina State Bureau of Investigation facility in Asheville, devoid of both sword and shoelaces, Gil wondered if perhaps he should have answered the policeman differently.

***

Here ends SWAN KNIGHT’S SON

Book One of The Green Knight’s Squire.

A Tale of Moth & Cobweb

continues in

Book Two of The Green Knight’s Squire,

FEAST OF THE ELFS

Fiction

Brings the Lightning by Peter Grant

The Missionaries by Owen Stanley

Loki's Child by Fenris Wulf

Fantasy

One Bright Star to Guide Them by John C. Wright

The Book of Feasts & Seasons by John C. Wright

Iron Chamber of Memory by John C. Wright

Moth & Cobweb 1: Swan Knight's Son by John C. Wright

Moth & Cobweb 2: Feast of the Elfs by John C. Wright

Moth & Cobweb 3: Swan Knight's Sword by John C. Wright

A Magic Broken by Vox Day

A Throne of Bones by Vox Day

The Wardog's Coin by Vox Day

The Last Witchking by Vox Day

Summa Elvetica: A Casuistry of the Elvish Controversy by Vox Day

The Altar of Hate by Vox Day

The War in Heaven by Theodore Beale

The World in Shadow by Theodore Beale

The Wrath of Angels by Theodore Beale

Science Fiction

Awake in the Night by John C. Wright

Awake in the Night Land by John C. Wright

City Beyond Time: Tales of the Fall of Metachronopolis by John C. Wright

Somewhither by John C. Wright

Back From the Dead by Rolf Nelson

Big Boys Don't Cry by Tom Kratman

Hyperspace Demons by Jonathan Moeller

Mutiny in Space by Rod Walker

Alien Game by Rod Walker

QUANTUM MORTIS A Man Disrupted by Steve Rzasa and Vox Day

QUANTUM MORTIS Gravity Kills by Steve Rzasa and Vox Day

QUANTUM MORTIS A Mind Programmed by Jeff Sutton, Jean Sutton, and Vox Day

Victoria: A Novel of Fourth Generation War by Thomas Hobbes

Military Science Fiction

There Will Be War Vol. I ed. Jerry Pournelle

There Will Be War Vol. II ed. Jerry Pournelle

There Will Be War Vol. III ed. Jerry Pournelle

There Will Be War Vol. IV ed. Jerry Pournelle

There Will Be War Vol. V ed. Jerry Pournelle

There Will Be War Vol. IX ed. Jerry Pournelle

There Will Be War Vol. X ed. Jerry Pournelle

Riding the Red Horse Vol. 1 ed. Tom Kratman and Vox Day

Non-Fiction

4th Generation Warfare Handbook by William S. Lind and LtCol Gregory A. Thiele, USMC

A History of Strategy: From Sun Tzu to William S. Lind by Martin van Creveld

Equality: The Impossible Quest by Martin van Creveld

Four Generations of Modern War by William S. Lind

On War: The Collected Columns of William S. Lind 2003-2009 by William S. Lind

Transhuman and Subhuman: Essays on Science Fiction and Awful Truth by John C. Wright

Astronomy and Astrophysics by Dr. Sarah Salviander

Compost Everything: The Good Guide to Extreme Composting by David the Good

Grow or Die: The Good Guide to Survival Gardening by David the Good

SJWs Always Lie: Taking Down the Thought Police by Vox Day

Cuckservative: How “Conservatives” Betrayed America by John Red Eagle and Vox Day

On the Existence of Gods by Dominic Saltarelli and Vox Day

On the Question of Free Trade by James D. Miller and Vox Day