For the Refreshment of the Spirit: A Fairy Tale

Another short novel of mine posted to Substack for convenient listening. It’s available from Amazon and Barnes & Noble among other platforms.

Part I: Innocence

-- They will not hush, the leaves a-flutter round me, the beech leaves old. (William Butler Yeats)

Chapter 1. The Island

Once upon a time, a beautiful enchantress and her daughter, Melody, lived in a castle by the sea, in the company of the fairies, who loved the little girl, and knew how to delight her through all the shifting seasons. Spring there comes first by stealth, with crocuses peeping through the dead leaves, then turns all the forest white and pink as the trees put on a splendor of dancing blossoms and charm the air with fresh, wild, exciting smells. Then it subsides sweetly into the soft light green of small sticky leaves, and birds nesting and hatching their young. Slowly summer rolls in, warming the earth to its roots, and bringing all life to its fullness. Long and lush are the days then, and the nights throb with cricket music and glisten with fireflies, and it seems that it will last forever. (And then the fairies made their wildest dances, leaping and darting and weaving through the canopies, casting serene, shimmering fireworks from their wands, graceful as music, and their wings scattering the moonbeams into pale rainbows until the night air reeled drunkenly with their magical luminescence, as Melody watched them in dazzled joy.) But little by little, summer grows old, slow, and heavy, and just as you secretly begin to grow tired of it, you feel, like distant music, a chill in the air at night. Autumn is coming. Then the forest turns to fire, blazing in red and gold, and decks itself in fruits and berries. The cool evenings linger, and the falling leaves, though they are light enough to drift and dance on the still air, yet they bear a weight of memory, almost of grief. The wind will rustle them no more. And then the ground, long in shadow, turns bright with snow, as the forest sleeps, with only the old dark pines, stern and straight, standing guard. Delicately fall the fluffy flakes of snow, and sometimes-- strange miracle!-- the lakes grow hard, and you can walk upright where once you must have been swimming. And then the ground grows moist, and spring comes by stealth, with crocuses peeping through the dead leaves.

All the island-- for they all called that place “the island,” though it was not really an island but a peninsula, closed off from the mainland by a high stone wall which no one (almost) ever passed through-- belonged to Melody and her fairy companions, and she loved it. But as the years passed by, she began to grow sad, though she did not know she was sad. The fairies sensed it, but said nothing to her, and tried ever more to gladden her by the beauties of the seasons, and sometimes worried among themselves about what had cast a shade over their darling’s happiness. The enchantress, of course, knew the reason. Melody was becoming a young woman, and she needed to be introduced to young men. But that was a problem, both because the enchantress thought no young men worthy of her daughter, and because no young men would have dared to come to the castle. 

For the enchantress had rather a bad reputation. It was all very unjust. Of course, there had been, well, incidents. Like that drunken peasant she had turned into a mule. But really, he was so stubborn anyway that it made little difference. And then those peasants she had turned into pigs... but it was only fair that, after a lifetime of eating pork, a few of them should find the tables turned on them every now and then. Then there was that buzzing gossip of a housewife whom the enchantress had, for a joke, turned into a buzzing bee. She ought to have enjoyed the chance to fly and sip nectar, but no, she only buzzed loudly and flew into walls and windows in panic, so that after a day, when the spell broke, the silly woman was quite bruised. In short, the enchantress didn’t see eye to eye with the poor yeoman farmers who inhabited that province, and they called her a nasty word: “witch.” Would any of the friends I had in the court when I was young, she thought to herself, remember me now?  Would they be willing to help me introduce her to someone suitable? She was at her wit’s end.

But just then, one dark night-- what luck!-- a war-weary, wounded knight knocked at the castle door.

Grass had grown over the long-neglected road that led to that door. The door itself was rotting from disuse, and the knight, a haggard and hopeless figure whose face was like that of a dead man, knocked with little hope. He was surprised when it opened, and much more when it revealed a tall and slender beauty with long golden hair, in a dress whose color seemed now white, now the lightest sky-blue, in the strange light, whose face bore a lofty expression. 

“Madam,” said the knight, falling to one knee, and he could speak no more.

“Rise, good knight,” she said to him. “You are welcome here.”

“If that is so, madam... I have need of shelter, I...” But again his voice faltered.

“Follow me,” she said. 

As he followed her, he looked about him in wonder. He looked at the marble floors under his feet. He saw tapestries on the walls, in which the pictures seemed alive. He looked above him at a carved stone ceiling, finer than any human hand might carve it. And he noticed that as they walked, the candles along the walls lit themselves as the lady approached, and then dimmed and darkened after she passed. There could have been no greater contrast between the enchantress, with her serene beauty and swanlike grace, and the knight, whose face was an ashen color, and whose eyes looked like coals that had gone out. But a little light flickered in them when he saw the courtyard to which she led him. Though it was winter without, here in the bright moonlight he saw green vines that wove through the lattice overhead, felt warm air, and saw a fountain flowing. 

“Drink,” said the enchantress, “then sleep.” She pointed to a carved bench strewn with warm rushes. As the knight walked to the fountain, leaned and drank, all his movements seemed slow and painful. The bench did not look comfortable, yet when he lay upon it, sleep began to overpower him at once. Yet he rose again, and went back to the fountain. His hair was long and matted and filthy, like an animal’s nest. He buried his whole head in the waters of the fountain now, and after, when his hair hung dripping around his face, a little life seemed to have returned to him. 

“Thank you,” he said to the enchantress with a bow, and lay down, and fell asleep. I wish I could give you, reader, such sweet dreams as he dreamt that night.

Chapter 2. The Knight

When he awoke, in the bright sunlight of late morning, she was standing there, just as she had been the night before.

“Have you been watching me sleep?” he asked.

“No,” she said, “or only a little while. I left you to your dreams, and have just returned.”

“Who are you?” he asked.

“Some call me a witch, others, an enchantress,” she said.

“I should never call you a witch.”

“And who are you?” the enchantress asked, in her turn.

“A knight of the king’s court, whose name was once great, but is now despised and cursed. A man hated by Fortune, soon to die,” said the knight, and a bitterness returned to his countenance which was clearly habitual with him, and he was irritated at having forgotten it for a little while.

“How did your misfortune occur?” the enchantress asked.

“I was once a great favorite of the king’s,” he began, with heavy pathos and as if reluctantly, yet so quickly that he had clearly been waiting for this question. “Though I was the son of a minor and impoverished noble household, I won a name for myself through great deeds of valor, and through wise counsel. Our kingdom has been fighting a terrible war these many years. It has little touched this remote province, but the capital has been besieged twice, and castles stormed, and villages burned and razed to the ground by our enemies, and we have repaid them alike. There was much opportunity for glory and renown, but in spite of that, we have begun to grow weary of these wars. I was famous for my prowess with sword and lance, as a champion on the tournament field, and as a leader of men in battle. I was so well known that it was even given to me to wed the king’s youngest daughter. My rise was too swift and spectacular, and it inspired envy. A plot was formed against me. Even my best friend-- my best friend!-- joined in the accusations. I was condemned to exile, and my enemies sent assassins against me upon the road. I was ambushed, and compelled to fight for my life, and scarcely escaped with it. Some of the wounds have healed, but others fester and grow worse, and one I fear is mortal--”

And here, he lifted the corner of his shirt to show the enchantress his “mortal” wound, but to his surprise, he could not find it. Where the ugly, oozing gash had been, with a deathlike pallor spreading to the skin around it, there was only smooth, pale, soft skin, that rippled as his muscles moved beneath it.

“The fairies came and healed your wound while you slept,” explained the enchantress.  

Then the knight realized that he felt no pain, and that strength was returning to his body, and he felt two emotions.  The first was sweet relief, as the fear of death vanished like a bad dream.  But the second-- a trivial feeling, this, yet at the time it seemed almost as important as the first-- he felt a bit of resentment, at having been made a fool of in calling “mortal” a wound that had already healed.

“Fairies?” he asked.  “I’ve never seen a fairy.”

“Of course not,” said the enchantress.  “Men can’t see them.  Only young girls and enchantresses.”

On hearing this, for a few moments, the knight’s face became pensive as strange and charming thoughts filled him.  But then dark memories arose from the cellars of his mind, and blew away like dust the strange and charming thoughts, and he spoke in anger:

“Why did it have to be he who betrayed me? Yes, the capital is full of knaves. But we knew each other in the country, even as boys. We used to fish together, or chase each other through the cornfields, or lie on the grass, and look at the clouds, and dream of adventure. Yet he betrayed me. There is no one a man can trust. Everyone is a liar.”

The enchantress looked at him for a long time, then said, “It seems the fairies did not heal the real wound.” Her eyes seemed to sink into him and see his very heart. And he thought to himself, Not only is she beautiful, but wise as well.

But at that moment, Melody came through the door of the courtyard. On the first sight of her, he fell in love with her heart and soul, and he immediately forgot what he had been thinking about the enchantress.

Chapter 3. A Love Idyll

Happiness does not often come without a cloud.  Some pressure of business, some jealousy or suspicion, usually casts its shadow.  But the knight and Melody were free, and in love, and with a bliss that most of us never taste again after childhood is past.  From rosy dawn to cool twilight they raced and rambled about the island.  Her beauty sometimes thrilled, sometimes dazzled, sometimes soothed him.  It seemed to communicate itself into all her surroundings.  She sweetly satisfied a heart’s desire so deep that he would not have dared to look within himself to know that it was there.  And she loved him, for she knew no better, having never met another man, or known that she ought to have met one.  She loved everything, every bird and flower and star and wave upon the sea, but she loved him more deeply, as a flower drinks up many raindrops but has its roots in only one earth.  The thoughts of each were only for the other.

Soon spring’s splendor was upon them, and each new day brought fresh miracles of fragrance and color and life.  On warm days, they loved to stand under the tiny, delicate waterfalls on the southern cliffs.  When the hot days came, they loved to swim under the splashing, frothing waterfalls tucked away in the gullies of the north slope.  They loved the way that, after a rain, the puddles became a window into the heavens of an up-side-down world, so that one became a little dizzy looking down at rainbows and billowing cloud-castles far below. They loved to wander the footpaths of the forest, in the twilight of dawn or the slanting sunlight of late afternoon. They loved bright mornings, and languid evenings.  When each day was done, they loved ambling home beneath the star-strewn sky, to rest and dream.  They loved.

They loved to go out to the far end of the island, where a craggy cliff towers above the great expanse of the sea. Many gulls nest below, and the air is full of their cries.  From the crags, on rough days, one can look beyond the white gulls to the titanic foam caps that devour the rocks and smash against the cliffs of that shore. But the sea has many moods, many colors, borrowed from the sky and changed by its own shifting shapes. There were days when it was flat, with small waves that flashed in the nearer waters and shimmered in the far waters, so that the surface of the sea seemed to be made not of water, but of light. And on those days the eye could trace no horizon, and they loved to gaze out to where sea and sky met and mingled and melted together in the hazy distance.  

They were like that sky and that sea, she light and radiant, he full of strong, turbulent depths, now half-forgotten as he became the mirror of her beauty and her joy, yet mingling into one.  But sometimes she would look into those depths, asking questions about his past life.  And so he would tell her his tales of war and battle and statecraft and adventure, and she would listen. He told her of the winter battle at Ardormere, when the snow fell upon men’s hair and their breath frosted their beards so that young warriors look like old men, and old warriors, like ghosts.  He told of Leric Castle, where he had been the first up the siege ladder, and the desperate swordplay on the walls, and the whizz!-- whizz! of arrows on every side, and how he hurled two dead enemies over the wall to signal his men to follow him up, and soon they were pouring over the wall like a whirlwind behind him and carrying all before them. (Many chroniclers would have dearly loved to listen, and many histories now sitting on library shelves in half-forgotten languages would be more accurate, had they done so.) He told of the great tournaments, and the heralds, and the coats of arms, and the hooves pounding, and the lances piercing, and the crowds cheering, and the ladies whose colors the knights wore.  For a brief time, he passed through the doors of memory and imagination, and was back in that world of glory and danger, and she followed him.  But when the tale ended, they found themselves still lying on the soft grass, in the golden sun and the heat of a lazy afternoon, and life that knew nothing of these things throbbing and thriving all around them.  And he laughed with relief.

The fairies, who think all men are ugly and stupid, were jealous of their darling’s lover. (It had taken some persuasion on the enchantress’s part to get them to heal the knight’s wound.) They would constantly tease her about him.  

“There’s so much hair on him!  It’s simply crawling all over his chest and arms-- ugh!” remarked Crocus Petal, one of the fairies.

“Yes.  And that beard!” exclaimed another fairy, April Morning.  “No doubt his chin is hideous, so perhaps we should be glad it’s hidden?  But really, it can’t be worse than that beard!  Shall I tug it out for you?” she asked Melody.

“No!” gasped she, and the knight, who heard none of the fairies’ conversation, started with surprise, thinking she had spoken it to him.  And she knew not what to say, being ashamed to repeat the fairies’ words.  But while the fairies liked to cause these little misunderstandings, the lovers found it easy to laugh them away.

The fairies had other tricks, though usually harmless ones.  Once the lovers fell asleep in the grass, and the knight awoke to find himself covered thick from head to toe... with butterflies!  He scattered them when he rose, and was delighted when for a few moments the air was full of brilliantly colored flutterings.  The lovers laughed at this.  They laughed, too, when the knight found grass growing in his pockets.  But the knight felt a bit of alarm when, after resting for a little while against a tree, he found himself so overgrown with ivy that it was difficult to move.  When it rained, the fairies might slip and leap upon the leaves above the knight’s head, shaking them so that they released onto it all the droplets that had gathered on them, and the knight would get a good deal wetter than he ought.  What annoyed Melody most was when the fairies would ride dragonflies and make a sport of flying just past his ears so he heard the whir of their wings.  She was mortified by the fairies’ cheers of triumph as they dodged the poor knight’s swatting hands.  But their teasing only increased her tenderness.  (The curious knight, knowing by now that there were fairies about, sometimes fancied that a bright, flitting creature had darted past the corner of his eye, or that he saw a fern tremble beneath a fairy’s foot, but that was only his imagination.)

Chapter 4. The Betrothal

As the longest days of summer rolled by, the knight began to reflect within himself that after all, this love idyll could not last forever, and he must do something about it.  But what?  And here is an irony about love.  For when a man is in love, it seems to him that there is something new in the world, that no one could have ever felt like this except him, now, towards her.  And yet to express it, he must borrow his language, reciting the old, time-worn phrases, echoing poems and plays and stories.  His heart is free, but his mind is a prisoner.  And so the knight’s reason kept telling him that the only thing to do in such a situation as this is to propose marriage, but that conclusion always seemed coldly irrelevant to this particular moment of beauty, or excitement, or contentment.  And so the knight began to reproach himself for his hesitation, for missing this chance, and that one.  And when at last, his will pushing its way past his feelings, he made himself kneel and recite the old words, he felt foolish, confused, and ashamed. Melody was bewildered.

“Why do we need this-- to get married?” she asked.

“Because then we’ll always be together,” said the knight ardently, though he felt foolish as he said it, for they were always together anyway.

But she took pity on him and acquiesced.

“What a disaster!” lamented Crocus Petal to her fairy comrades, who had just heard the news. They had seated themselves on the blossoms of some tall hollyhocks to chat. It was early morning.

“To think -- she’s to be his!” exclaimed April Morning, with disgust. “And just another dull wife. She’ll forget everything we taught her.”

“He looked so silly,” said Summer Breeze, who had witnessed the proposal the day before, hiding among the leaves. “Mumbling and awkward... you know, I thought she wouldn’t understand him and he would lose his nerve.”

“If only!” sighed Bright Primrose. “Is there anything we can do to stop it?”

And they dreamed up a few pranks they might use against the lovers, then forgot about the matter as the conversation shifted somehow to the baby birds that were so abundant at that time of year, and where the nests were, and with what treats they might spoil them while their mothers were away hunting caterpillars, and they had soon resumed their habitual gaiety. 

Chapter 5. Sparkling Dewdrop

Meanwhile, on the tip of a fern, overlooking the sea, but with the tallest trees of the forest at her back, stood another fairy, Sparkling Dewdrop. The magic pink of dawn seeped through the sky above her and painted the waves of the sea below her with its reflection. All around her, the birds greeted the day with sweet, jubilant melodies. But behind the chorus of birdsongs, soft and soothing, whispering and ebbing, she heard the leafy, rustling voice of the whole forest as it swayed in the gentle wind. She had been there a long time, in a kind of trance.

Another fairy, Evening Star, had crept up behind her, unobserved, and was watching her. At last she spoke.

“My dear, are you listening to the wind?” scolded Evening Star. “You know that that’s very dangerous.”

“I-- no, I’m not,” stammered Sparking Dewdrop, turning towards Evening Star startled and confused.  Evening Star was the wisest of the fairies, but Sparkling Dewdrop was the most beautiful, and the one who loved the enchantress’s daughter the most.

“You’ve been often alone lately,” said Evening Star.

“I know-- I’m sorry,” said Sparkling Dewdrop. “Somehow I don’t feel like company...” She fell silent, then turned to face her companion with a question. “Evening Star?” 

“Yes, my dear?” Evening Star answered, awaiting the question.

“Will she... forget us completely?” And her voice had a hint of sadness in it. “Will she be like grown-up women, who can’t see us?”

Evening Star looked at her with concern, then answered. “Well, you can never be sure. Even old women see a fairy sometimes. But once she is married, she will have more important things to think about than us, you know.”

“Oh, I can’t bear it!” exclaimed Sparkling Dewdrop.

With a stern look, Evening Star said, “My dear, we can’t have you idling away the day like this. An apple tree on the north slope didn’t bloom this year. Can you go find out what the trouble is?” She said this because she knew that work is the best cure for melancholy.

“All right,” said Sparkling Dewdrop, and Evening Star, satisfied, fluttered away. But Sparkling Dewdrop still stood on the tip of the fern, listening to the wind. She had come to prefer its sad, whispering music to the happy noise of birdsongs. It was more in tune with the mood of her heart.

Chapter 6. Friends Reconciled

Not long afterwards, another stranger knocked at the enchantress’s door.  This was only the third visitor to appear there in many years.  The knight had been the second, while the first was an underfed and stupid village boy who came with a crazy story about how he had fallen in love with a fairy.  The enchantress had turned his hair to grass for this impudence, and warned him never to come back.  Now came the third visitor, a gentleman well dressed in the fashion of the capital, fair-haired and handsome though not strongly built, who was on an errand from the king to seek out his friend Sir Maddalt, which was the knight’s name, and bring him the good news of his complete exoneration and restoration to the royal favor.  

And he was accompanied by the first, for the boy, who now had to wear a hat at all times to prevent passing horses from chomping his head, had volunteered to act as the stranger’s guide!  The enchantress warmly welcomed the stranger when she heard that he was a friend of Maddalt’s, but she was inclined to be harsh with the boy, who had been so bold as to return after being given such a tangible warning to stay away.  The boy said that since he had been driven out of the village after his previous ill luck, he had to earn his bread any way he could, and when the stranger offered to pay him as a guide, he could not refuse.  The enchantress was satisfied with this, and told him to depart quickly before she changed her mind and decided to punish him.  Strangely, the boy refused, fabricating that he had agreed to guide the stranger both to and from the castle, and having been paid in full, he could not go away when only half of his task was completed.  The stranger did not dare to contradict this lie.  And so, not wishing to offend the stranger, the enchantress, though irritated, agreed to let him sleep on the floor for a night.

“Philip!” cried Maddalt, upon seeing the stranger, his face glowing with glad recognition. For the stranger was that very boyhood friend whom, in his former life, he had trusted and loved more than anyone in the world. The friends ran together and embraced, their hearts warm with joy and love. Only as this embrace ended did Maddalt remember the betrayal, and the painful necessity of hearing his friend’s confession before he forgave him. There were a few moments of embarrassed silence.

“They tortured you, didn’t they?” said Maddalt.

“No,” said Philip, in pain. “It is worse than that. I really believed you were guilty.” 

Maddalt stared. But that did not make matters worse. It made his friend less to blame than he had thought.

“You had risen so far, so fast... I didn’t know what to make of it,” said Philip. “Forgive me, but you had grown... haughty.”

“Why-- so I had!” exclaimed Maddalt, thunderstruck. He found it easy, now, changed by love, to toss away all the old proud, injured virtue of the past.

“You had let drop a few phrases that... suggested more ambition than a knight ought to have... but forgive me, I was mad, I had fallen into the company of wicked friends”-- Philip’s words rushed like a torrent now, and his face was full of suffering-- “and they twisted my mind against you, they filled me with base suspicions. When you were gone, and I saw the glee with which they scrambled for your offices and honors, my eyes were opened, and I realized I had been a treacherous fool, but the king’s decision seemed irrevocable. My friend, I am so sorry! But those scoundrels have all been exposed now. They were involved in worse plots than were ever alleged against you, and real proof came to light this time. Now the king has understood who his true friends were! He wishes you to return, to restore you to all your honor and glory.”

To this Maddalt could not reply, for his soul was divided. The desire for honor and glory that had long slept in him was now reawakened, but why should he leave the bliss of the island? And there was his promise to Melody. Instead he asked, “And how goes the war?”

At this question, Philip’s penitent agony vanished. “Better news still!” said Philip. “The war is over. When we formed alliances with the kings of Lur and the Danelaw, the House of the Roses saw that victory was impossible. The king promised to be moderate in his punishment of their treason, and they laid down their arms. There is no longer a sword raised in anger anywhere within the boundaries of the kingdom.”

The knight trembled with amazed joy. “What a masterwork of diplomacy!” he exclaimed. “Who has brought this about?” 

Philip was a modest man, and it took some probing to make him answer this question, for the architect of the peace was none other than Philip himself. At last he changed the subject by speaking of Maddalt.

“You are thriving, my friend!” said Philip. “I never seen you so healthy and happy. You are blooming like a flower in springtime. Exile has been good to you, it seems.”

“Yes, my friend, it has indeed! I am in love!” declared Maddalt.

“You are.. in love?” asked Philip. “But... the king... now offers you again the hand of the princess.”

“Oh!... hmm,” said Maddalt, mildly troubled by this news. “Well, I cannot accept her. You see, I am betrothed. The king must understand. How was I to know that the betrothal should be renewed?”

“If... that is so... then I...” Philip stammered, then suddenly went pale, and fell on his face. “Forgive me!” he cried again.

“What is it?” asked Maddalt in alarm.

“My betrayal of you is worse than I said,” Philip confessed. “It was not only the influence of evil friends that turned me against you. I betrayed you for the sake of-- your betrothed. I loved her and she me. I only deceived myself in suspecting you, because I wanted you to be guilty, so that I might have her... Now I can never be forgiven...” and his voice broke with despair.

And it seemed for a moment to Maddalt, too, that his friend could never be forgiven, who had not only falsely convicted him of treason, but had sought to steal his bride. But then he realized the truth.

“And so... you came all this way to seek me... so that I might return, to marry the woman you loved?”

Philip did not rise, but he said, “Yes, I did. I had vowed to myself that I would never confess that to you, and I demanded of her the same vow, and that she learn to love you.” 

“My friend!” exclaimed Maddalt. “I, who am in love myself, can appreciate what agony that must have been. A man who has suffered that can be forgiven anything. You have proven your devotion far beyond what I could have desired. And indeed, it is good news to me that the princess will not be sorry that I love another.”

Philip now rose to his knees and dared to look into his friend’s face. “Then I have your blessing to marry her?” he asked.

“Yes, indeed, with all my heart!” exclaimed Maddalt.

“And will you come back to the capital with me to persuade the king to give me her hand?” asked Philip.

“Of course I will!”

Chapter 7. The Parting

And so Maddalt and Philip began to talk, first discussing the journey, then began to reminisce, and their conversation was as rambling and free and intimate as only the talk of the very closest friends can be (but there was a lot of high politics in it, that being the sphere to which both of them had by now grown accustomed) and time was forgotten, until at last Melody, who had stayed behind with the fairies gathering berries when the knight was summoned, appeared in the doorway. A light rain had begun, and her cheeks were flushed, and her nut-brown hair wind-swept and damp and scattered, and her eyes at once shining-- to see the knight-- and abashed-- to see the stranger.

Philip spoke to her in the florid language of an accomplished diplomat. “Well-- so this must be that famous lady who has been preferred to a king’s daughter!” He bowed low. “I have the honor to be the humble servant of your glorious fiance, Sir Maddalt, the praise of all the kingdom.” All this meant nothing to Melody, whose eyes gazed into Maddalt’s shyly and pleadingly.

“Your fiance is the most chivalrous and noble of men,” continued Philip. “He has just agreed...”

But at that moment, Maddalt realized with alarm what Philip was about to say, and knew that it had to be he, not Philip, who said it. However, he had no time to prepare his words, and he only broke in suddenly with, “We’re going away tomorrow, he and I.”

“Yes,” said Philip, taken aback by the interruption, and he began to explain their journey and its purpose. But from that moment on, and during all the grand banquet that followed, arranged by the enchantress in Philip’s honor, Maddalt participated little in the conversations led first by Philip and later joined by the enchantress, while a conversation of eyes went on between them, which could not be spoken in the presence of others.  Her eyes said, What does it mean?  And his eyes answered, I’m sorry.  Only the enchantress was able to enjoy properly Philip’s exceedingly witty and erudite discourse.  After the meal, Maddalt found himself unable to escape immediately, and spoke a little longer with Philip.  The half-wit boy, his hat on his grassy head, stole in after the enchantress departed and ate the leftovers of the banquet, with such haste that his cheeks bulged.  “Isn’t he just like a monkey?” remarked Philip, and the boy grinned.

Maddalt found Melody on the crag overlooking the sea.  The rainclouds had begun to break up, but one of them still hid the moon, which lit its edges with a silvery luster.  A poignant fragrance of rainswept forests filled the air.  Moonlight shimmered on the waves of the sea, but much of the land was still in shadow, and many of the stars, like the moon, were blotted out. The air was cold. The knight looked upon his beloved, and his heart was full of foreboding and trouble.

“You said that we would get married,” she said, “so that we could always be together. But now you’re leaving!” Her words might have hurt him less if there were more bitterness in her voice. Her innocence touched him to the heart and left him helpless.

“I’m sorry,” he said.  “You see, he is in love too. He needs my help. It will not be such an easy matter to persuade the king to agree to this betrothal. Don’t grieve, my love! I will return.”

And she took pity on him and acquiesced.

“He’s going away!” the fairies were soon saying to one another jubilantly. 

“Wonderful! We’ll have her all to ourselves again,” said April Morning.

“But only for a little while. He’ll come back,” Evening Star pointed out when she heard the news.

“Ah well, perhaps, perhaps,” said Crocus Petal, “but never mind that.”

“It’s no use,” said Bright Primrose. “She’ll only be pining away for him. I’ll bet you she’ll talk of nothing but him all the time he’s gone.”

“No!” protested April Morning indignantly.  “What a horrid thing to say!” 

“I’d almost rather he were staying here,” said Sparkling Dewdrop sadly. “At least then she’d be happy.”

Crocus Petal gave her an odd look. The others seem not to have heard this remark, for they were already beginning to celebrate, decorating the air with their swift, shimmering dances. But Sparking Dewdrop left them.

Chapter 8. The Poet

At last the castle was asleep, except the grass-haired boy, whose chance had finally come.  It was strange that he had no plan now, only a kind of faith that he would find her.  He did not know his way through the corridors of the enchanted castle, and he knew it was full of magic, but he was too brave now to fear anything.  Soon he passed through an arch into a moonlit courtyard (the clouds of the earlier evening were gone now) and found that it opened out into the forest.  As his feet raced along forest paths, his eyes scanned the dim landscape, for at every glance he knew excitedly that she might be there.

He was a grocer’s son, and had always been rather a useless dreamer.  His practical father had tried hard to make him a worker, but even endless beatings had done no good.  He would be stacking crates, or scrubbing a floor, and something he saw, or heard, or the mere rhythm and fancy of his own mind, would make him thoughtful, and the trance might last ten minutes or even half an hour, while he did nothing.  When he not only let the strawberries get stolen, but appeared with grass for hair and a wild tale about falling in love with a fairy, that was the last straw.  His father threw him out, and since then he had wandered from town to town, singing on street corners in hopes that passing strangers would toss him copper coins, and wearing a hat.  This beggar’s life had not made him a healthy, growing boy.  He was thin, pale, and small, and looked about thirteen, though he was at least sixteen.  

It had happened like this. One summer, a farmer had brought in the finest crop of strawberries the grocer had ever seen. They were red as rubies, and fragrant, and their taste was a marvel, as sweet as honey and as intoxicating as wine. The grocer thought he could sell them for triple price, and went all over the town telling the housewives about their exquisite sweetness, how they would win their husbands’ favor, and so on and so forth, and a brisk trade began. They were his chance to attract a higher class of clientele. But during the night, some were stolen! Admittedly, it was only a few, but the greedy grocer knew his wares well, and knew the theft had taken place. 

He was determined to find and punish the guilty party. It was indeed an odd case, for one would expect a thief to take all the strawberries, once he had somehow managed to break into the locked shed with only small, high windows. The grocer thought the thief must be trying to escape detection by taking so few at a time, and so would surely come back. So the next night, the grocer ordered his son, who though lazy was very honest, to sit in the shed and stay awake all night to see who the thief was. Of course, the boy quickly fell asleep, but he woke up just in time to see the last of the fairies-- for of course they were the culprits-- standing atop the mountain of ruby red treasure for a moment, before she picked up a berry and flew away through the window. It was Sparkling Dewdrop, slender as a moonbeam and full of grace. His heart danced with delight and wonder.

He sprang up and dashed out of the shed into the street. He saw the fairies, laden with sweet plunder, fluttered through the sleeping town, over houses, over trees. The moonlight scattered into rainbows upon their wings, and he heard their laughter like the tinkling of tiny bells. On and on he ran, following them, into the deep dark forest, and all the way to the walls of the witch’s castle, which they flew over and disappeared. There followed his unfortunate meeting with the witch, and his father’s anger, and then four years of wandering the roads, remembering, dreaming about her, making a thousand futile plans of how he might return, and then, unexpectedly, this opportunity. 

And now... there she was.  She was standing with perfect poise and grace on the tip of a fern that hung over a pool so still that the reflection of the moon barely shivered in the water.  The moonlight transfigured her translucent body.  Silently, he settled on his elbows behind her, and gazed at her.  A long time passed before she noticed him.

“A young man!” she gasped, in the tone of voice of a person surprised by a spider. 

She jumped up and fluttered for a moment, then alighted in the same place, eyeing him with suspicion.  Though he said nothing, but only continued gazing, she could tell by the fixity of his gaze that he was gazing at her.  

“Can you... see me?” she asked at last.

“Yes,” said the boy.

“But I thought that only young girls and enchantresses could see fairies,” said Sparkling Dewdrop.

“Only young girls, enchantresses, and poets,” said the boy.

“Are you a poet then?” she asked.

“Yes.”

“What are your poems about?”

“Many things. Some are about how high the stars are, or the flight of birds, or the toil of the ant. Some are about battlefields, the groaning of the poor, or a mother’s sorrow, or the hope for the new Jerusalem. Some are about things forgotten, some about things yet to come. But after another fashion, they are all about you, for you are the principle of beauty.”

She was taken aback. “You know me then?”

The boy said nothing, but kept gazing at her so intently that she blushed, and felt the need to inform him: “I can never love you.”

“Then I shall go mad, I suppose,” he said, but even now his voice kept its strange calm.

“No, don’t do that!” she said, with a thrill of tender alarm. Then, alarmed for herself by this impulse of tenderness, she began to fly away.

But a moment later she decided he was of no importance, and there was no need to fly away, she could simply ignore him. She alighted on another fern, and walked to its tip, which hung to water level, and drank from the moon’s reflection, so that her body pulsed with moonlight. Another fancy struck her, and she took hold of the edges of the moon's reflection and curled them up, thus fashioning a small boat of moonlight-on-water. (The moon made no protest at this theft of his work, but after a moment made a new reflection to replace the one Sparkling Dewdrop had stolen.) She used her wand as an oar, and rowed slowly over the water, then stepped ashore on a lily pad. The frogs, lurking in the muck, which had fallen silent in awe of her, now began to ribbit tentatively, as if asking permission. When she remembered them and nodded her approval, they burst into a cacophony of happy croaks and ribbits to praise her beauty. Yet she was troubled. She found that she could not forget the poet, and her play had lost the usual pleasure of simplicity. So she fluttered back to him, and stood just before his face. He was not wearing his hat now, and the leaves of grass that sprouted from his head shone in the moonlight.

“How strange you are,” she said.

Silence. 

“Listen to the wind,” said the poet.

And though the night had seemed still, she now began to hear a soft rustling and whispering from all the teeming leaves in the forest roundabout. Indeed, after a moment it seemed not so soft, it seemed to fill every nook of the night, an insistent murmuring and pattering, the only sound.

“Listen to the wind wail,” said the poet.

And as if in obedience to the poet’s command, it now seemed that the wind did wail, not merely whisper as it had done a moment before, and that if only she could understand that language, and she almost felt she could, it would tell of quiet sadness, like a wound as deep as the world, without end, and full of haunting beauty. She trembled with desire, and with fear.

“No, I will not listen to the wind,” said Sparkling Dewdrop suddenly, and she leaped up and flew away.

Part II: Envy

-- Make your choice, adventurous stranger

Strike the bell, and brave the danger

Or wonder, till it drives you mad

What would have happened if you had. (C.S. Lewis)

Chapter 9. Temptation

In the morning, the knight and Philip rode away for the capital. Melody kissed him goodbye and embraced him, then went up to the tallest tower so that she could see him riding amidst the nearby meadows, before the road tucked itself away in the deep trees. The knight took one last look back as well, but her face was hidden in shadow behind the dark window of the tower. Afterwards, the birds continued singing, but their happy music had lost some of its meaning.

As the days passed, the weather turned cold and wet, and the mood in the castle grew sad. The enchantress’s daughter was listless and dull, often drifting into a reverie of reminiscences, worrying, pining, sometimes weeping in the night. The fairies tried to please her, but the smiles they evoked were reluctant and did not dispel the sadness in her eyes. The fairies were sad, too, that the first days of fall, which should have been bright and golden, were spoiled by the unseasonable rain, and even a bit of early, fast melting snow. Only the enchantress remained cheerful. She was more master of her own moods than the others. She was not so dependent on the weather, and she could see beyond the knight’s temporary absence to the wedding that was to follow, for which she began to make preparations.

And yet all was not so well with her as it seemed. She felt a kind of dissatisfaction that she could not understand, tugging at her mind, disquieting and irking her. And it began to find its way into her dreams.

One night she dreamt that she and Melody were to have a drink of punch together on the balcony. She made a pitcher of punch from the raspberries of the forest, sweet and fresh, with a few other fruits, and with honey... in short, she knew that it would be delicious, especially since she was quite thirsty. She took the pitcher of punch, and two glasses, out to the balcony, where Melody waited, and poured one for each of them. Melody, without any word of thanks, took her glass immediately and began to drink it. The enchantress picked up her glass too, but just as she was about to put it to her lips, she saw that it was now empty. But she had just poured it! No matter: she would pour herself another glass. But when she took up the pitcher, she found that that was empty too. Frustrated, she looked across the table at her daughter. To her horror, Melody kept drinking and drinking, and no matter how much she drank, her enjoyment seemed to increase, and her glass remained full.

The enchantress awoke, and thought much about this dream, for every time she saw Melody, it seemed to her now, she bore more resemblance to that greedy girl in the dream. Her secret discontent increased.

Another night, the enchantress dreamt that she was in her youth again, amidst the splendor of the capital, and at a great ball. And what a beautiful dress she wore! It was white, and softly caressed her tall, slender figure, yet despite its simple and innocent grace tiny gemstones seemed to have been woven into it, so that it shimmered ever so slightly... what a lovely, what a charming effect! She saw that her beauty was not lost on the men at the ball, whose eyes kept turning to admire her, and seemed sometimes to evoke a little jealousy in the partners of those who were with a lady. 

Someone was coming towards her to ask her to dance-- Maddalt! He was as handsome as she had ever seen him, or any man, noble in bearing, glad of face, his stride almost a leap, so long and free was it, his long shirt, simple but well-pressed and fine, billowing above his belt, his boots clean and bright, every feature of him clean and strong and bold. His eyes looked into hers just as they had once looked for a moment at her when they had first met, and his hand reached out towards her, and she prepared to yield to him, to be swept away into the wheeling, graceful riot of the dance...

But no-- it was not her he was seeking. He went swiftly past her, without noticing her at all, to a woman just behind her, who turned out to be Melody. And as Maddalt and Melody mingled with the dancers, she noticed that Melody wore that same splendid white dress which she, the enchantress, had just been wearing a moment before. And she looked down at herself, and saw that she was dressed in black...

When she awoke from this dream, the enchantress was very angry. She had to do something to feel better. 

Now the enchantress had a magic mirror. The mirror had this property: that it could represent the person gazing into it with whatever attitude or trait it might be commanded. Thus, she might say “Make me wise,” and the mirror would show her face with the pensive placidity that comes from long experience and much reflection, and deep and penetrating eyes, so that any who beheld her might dare to ask her the most difficult questions. Or if she said “Make me merry,” festive lights of gold and soft colors would play upon her face, and a smile of mirth would light up her face and dance in her eyes until she could not but laugh with pleasure at the sight. But her favorite command was “Make me beautiful.” And at this command, the mirror often surprised her: she might be fresh and blooming, or fine and elegant, or alluring and voluptuous, but always, after some fashion or other, she looked lovely and desirable. And that satisfied her partly because she knew that the mirror could only draw upon what was really in the soul of the beholder.

And so she now told her mirror: “Make me beautiful.” And it did so. Only it made her beautiful in a high and haughty way, her features admirable but cold, like marble. It was a beauty that men might worship, but could never love.

“No!” she cried in fury. “Not like that! Make me beautiful... in a nice way.” 

And so the image began to change, but not as the witch desired.  For her face grew yet colder, not like marble but like ice now, while her green eyes began to burn with a cold fire, and her hair took on a strange new life of its own, changing from golden to green with slithering scales, like snakes. She was watching herself becoming a medusa. 

The enchantress screamed with fury, seized a bust from the mantelpiece, and hurled it at the mirror, which shattered into a thousand shards. And from the broken glass strewn upon the floor, the witch still heard the sound of hissing snakes.

Those who do magic are willful, and do not yield so easily as the rest of us must learn to do to the defeat of our desires and the thieving ways of time. And so the enchantress began to think strange, secret, savage thoughts. The unseasonable cold was growing worse. An October blizzard was gathering its strength in the northern horizon, amidst dark, swirling clouds. The air throbbed with the malevolent excitement of the coming storm. The enchantress... but perhaps it is better, after all, to follow the peasant custom and call her the witch... looked north into those churning clouds, and felt that the time had come for powerful magic. 

Let us thank God, reader, for our weakness, which has protected us from so much evil that we might have done, had we the power.

Chapter 10. The Lie

When Maddalt returned, the witch answered the door dressed in black, her eyes stained with tears.

“Madam,” he said with surprise. “I hope nothing is amiss. My errand was successful, and I have brought back gifts for you--” he gestured to his saddlebags-- “but I see your face is troubled.”

She turned away from him, as if involuntarily, and was racked with sobs.

“Madam,” cried Maddalt in alarm, rushing to her and holding her. “What news? What is wrong? Is my beloved well? Where is she? God grant that she not be the cause of your grief.”

After many more sobs into Maddalt’s breast, the witch at last collected herself and spoke.

“Alas, Maddalt, would that you had not come back,” said the witch. “But a week sooner and you might have saved her, but now... it is too late.” And she wept again.

“Then she is-- dead?”

“She was a fragile creature, much more so even than I guessed,” said the witch. “Her life been so sheltered, she had never been strengthened by any sorrow. Parting with you... (sob)... broke her heart, simply. None of my words were of any use. Though perhaps... had my own faith in your return been a little greater... oh, Maddalt, so often it happens that a man loves ardently, and yet should chance take his beloved from his eyes, scarcely a day goes by ere his heart is light again, and his old promises have lost their meaning! Possibly I doubted, possibly she sensed it... Forgive me! I was mistaken; you have returned! But too late, too late...” and again she collapsed in sobs, but now Maddalt was weeping too.

“I shall never recover from this grief,” murmured Maddalt in helpless perplexity, “and I am to blame for it, yet I was gone but five-and-twenty days. How am I to understand it?” Yet a part of his thoughts recalled, as a compensation for his grief, the great name to which he was now free to return... but he cursed this callousness and drove it from his heart.

At last he said, “May I see her grave?”

She looked at him with an expression of fear. “Maddalt-- no, not yet, it is too soon for that. You could not bear it. We who loved her must be strong, we are all that is left of her. It is evening, and you have had a long journey. You must rest. Leave that for the morning.”

And so he followed her, and as before, the magic candles flickered into life before the witch’s feet, and faded to black behind her. 

And she brought him to a room with a great four-poster bed with silken quilts and curtains, where the air was fragrant with perfume from many candles.  “Here rest,” she said, “and I will go to make some preparations for us.”

And she turned as if to go, but instead turned full round, and thereby cast a spell, so that her dress turned from mournful black to flaming red, and the false grief in her face had turned to desire. And she put her arms around the knight’s neck, and kissed him, and he fell into an enchanted sleep, for upon her lips was a love potion that needed time to do its work.

Chapter 11. The Abduction

The knight, in the twilight of dreamland, found all his memories confused. Again and again appeared the image of the witch’s face, passionate and eager as it had been just before she had kissed him, and her face as it had been in times before, too, but there was another face he sought and desired, only when he tried to recall it, the words “But she is dead” came into his mind, as if spoken from without, and he fell into confusion again. And the love potion sought out all his memories of love, the bright mornings and the languid evenings, the laughter and the tenderness, and put the enchantress in them in place of Melody, though it thereby made them seem false. But the knight felt within him deep sorrow and loss, and held that more precious than all the false happiness that was offered to him. In short, even in his weakness, he would not yield.

But then his dreams were interrupted by a vision. A great white storm was coming upon the castle, cold and fierce and wild. Great winds whipped the treetops and sometimes broke them, and upon the winds rode the first flakes of snow. And now, riding upon the winter wind, came a chariot of terrible beauty, made of ice so smooth and bright that it might have been diamond, and in it stood the witch, and great and terrible was her aspect in her wrath, and in her hand was a whip strong and strange and frostbound, which she brought down upon the backs of certain invisible horses, and the winds blew faster, and the snow swirled more fiercely.

Still dreaming, Maddalt saw the witch’s chariot soar to the tallest tower of the castle. And there in the window, he saw the face that his heart had been seeking, but which magic had hidden from him: the beautiful face of Melody, fair and tender, but now broken by terror as the witch, at once familiar and alien, thundered towards her. The chariot turned and veered past the window of the tower, where with a single gesture the witch seized her daughter and flung her into the chariot next to her, and now the fierce cold wind froze Melody's face and whipped her hair behind her, and her eyes looked down in terror.  On they sped, the storm-swept chariot, and sometimes the ghostly figures of the horses, in a desperate gallop across the churning air, could be seen dimly for a moment as cold sparks flew from the magic whip. 

They past over trackless oceans, over snowbound mountain summits, through clouds and over and under them, on and on, until they came to a country of swirling mist and of great, deep forests, of which the high canopies could sometimes be seen, dimly, through the fog below. In the midst of that land rose a tower, well above the tops of the trees, and wrapped in thick ivy. They approached it as if they would collide with it, until suddenly, in a moment, the witch seized her daughter and pushed her through the window of the tower. Melody turned and watched in horror as the chariot veered and sped away. “Mother! Please, mother!” she screamed into the mist. She kept crying out, but the mist and the distance quickly muffled the sound, and only mist and silence remained.

Chapter 12. The Wedding

Meanwhile, the witch was preparing for the wedding. She had not had time to invite any real guests, of course. Probably no one would have come anyway, and real people could be… unpredictable. And so she had had to resort to a great deal of conjuring. It had exhausted her, and she was discontented with the results. The courtiers she had conjured had turned out to be even more dull and obsequious than the real ones in the court. The ladies were insipid, the footmen unkempt. She kept overhearing the same tedious conversations. The trouble was, of course, that their existence had to draw on her own mind, and it was a poor instrument with which to furnish a large and elegant company. One duke whom she had conjured turned out to be quite drunk. Another one did not have any backside at all! She was about to throw him out for coming so improperly attired, but then she decided to give him a seat at the back and told him sternly to remain there with his back (or lack thereof) to the wall, and not to turn around. She had conjured an organist, but he turned out to be quite out of tune, so she told him simply to sit in the pews, and conjured a harpist instead, and was still discontented. She had the greatest trouble with priests. The first was much too short, the second loved to laugh and quite lacked the necessary solemnity for his office, and she caught the third winking at the girls. At last she conjured a very dull one, and let the other three fill the pews, where they fell into a nonsensical theological debate. Finally there was an audience of respectable size, if smaller than she would have liked. Some were bored, some gossiping stupidly, and none of them, alas, appeared to be particularly happy or interested in the wedding, but most of them were fairly well dressed, and behaving well enough to be tolerable wedding guests. It would have to do. Candles were lit and the music began to play.

When Maddalt awoke, he was not himself. His memory was confused, his thoughts adrift. He was in a dark room, but bright light was shining under the door, and he heard the music of a harp. When he opened the door, he seemed to have stepped into a church. In the pews sat many people, who all smiled at his entrance and looked at him expectantly. He saw that he was dressed elegantly. The thought This is what I wanted—to get married penetrated the blank confusion of his thoughts, and he obeyed it, walking up to the front of the aisle where there was a priest. And then the harp played a new, more joyful melody, and a beautiful lady in white—My bride came a thought into his mind—appeared at the far end of the aisle, and an awed hush fell over the audience. And now the priest was speaking slow, solemn words, and they ended in a question, and it was his turn to speak. There was a long silence, and the guests began to whisper.

“No,” he said at last.

“What did you say?” asked the priest, without alarm, for Maddalt had spoken so softly that his voice could hardly be heard.

Maddalt waited a long time, and had to muster all his strength to speak, for a terrible weakness had come over him. “No,” he repeated. Again his voice was too soft and strange to be heard clearly, but the audience could tell something was amiss and began to murmur in dismay.

Maddalt turned to the witch, gaining strength now. “It was not you I wanted. You stole her! You imprisoned her in a tower!” he accused. “You betrayed her. You summoned a storm, you cast a spell on her. Now you’re trying to take her place!” As soon as he uttered these words, his mind faltered, and he fell into confusion, no longer knowing what he had said. The wedding guests began staring at the witch in perplexity and horror.

“How dare you!” shouted the witch at him in fury. “How could you know all that?!”

“She did it! She admitted it herself!” some of the wedding guests began to murmur to one another. “What a wicked witch she is…”

Her spell was unraveling, and the wedding guests began to change. The shortest of the footmen knelt down and turned into a dog, barking savagely. Others shed their wedding clothes. Knives appeared in the hands of some of the men. When the witch saw that a riot was beginning, she panicked, and seized a candlestand, as if to defend herself with it, but she charged at the guests with it instead—and broke the spell. 

Gone were the pews, gone the stained glass windows, gone the priest, gone the candlelight, gone her own beautiful white dress, and Maddalt, exhausted from his struggle against the love potion, lay unconscious on the stone floor of the castle corridor.  The witch wept in bitter disappointment for a time, helplessly sobbing to herself, again and again, “He will love me! He will love me!”

And so began many weeks in which the witch tried, by ever stronger spells, to break Maddalt’s will and entrap his heart.

Chapter 13. The Fairies

It is not the custom, or perhaps it is not the nature, of fairies, to meddle in the affairs of mortals when to do so becomes at all unpleasant. Fairies live for beauty, and sometimes the soul of a mortal is beautiful for a time, but beauty is found in many places, and when it departs from one place or face, one may always find it in another. And so, when envy had turned the witch to evil, and the foul smell of her magic cauldrons began to poison the air of the island, the fairies prepared to leave.

“Where are you going?” April Morning asked Crocus Petal. The two of them, with some companions, were fluttering zig-zag through the forest, casting little fairy-spells this way and that with their wands, to decorate the twigs one last time with delicate coats of shimmering frost. For it was now deep winter.

“Well, I haven’t decided yet... I’ve almost decided... I think I’ll go south. A bird once told me about a place where the palm trees are tall and the sun dances on the water, and the forested mountains behind are full, full of exotic, colorful birds. Would you like to come with me?”

“Oh, yes, yes, although... if one goes a little to the northeast from here, the country is gentle and temperate, and... there are such meadows there. And in springtime! Think of it! So many flowers... Like that old rhyme we used to chant:

“Thick around the peasants’ knees, 

Dancing in the merry breeze, 

Swaying from footfalls of the bees... 

“And you and I might follow the bees, and put the hives to sleep with a spell, and steal their honey...”

“Yes! And what tricks we could play on those dull, sullen peasants! That would be delightful!” exclaimed Crocus Petal. “I’ll go with you, and then you and I can go south together when we please. Will you, too, come with us, Evening Star?”

“Perhaps... or perhaps Bright Primrose wants to go with you,” she suggested.

“Oh, yes, yes, I do...” said Bright Primrose, “only... your speech filled my mind with something quite different than you intended, April Morning. For when you spoke of meadows, I thought of something that one of the snowflakes told me. For he had blown a long way while he was still in the clouds, and through him I saw a place of mountains where he might have made his home if a single gust of wind had blown differently, and lived forever there, for on those summits the snow never melts. But where the snow ends, in the brief summer, there are a different kind of meadows, low and wind-swept and cold, but such wildflowers grow there- oh, one cannot imagine such flowers, so delicate, so alive in that harsh but grand place... Evening Star?”

“Yes, my dear?”

“If I were to go there, to the mountains, and April Morning and Crocus Petal were to go to the meadows or to the southern sea, could I ever find them again?”

“A fairy may swiftly find anything that her heart desires, my dear,” said Evening Star sententiously. “In this case, you need only to climb up a ray of starlight, for the stars see all, and they can tell you where your friends are, send you down upon another ray of starlight to be with them. Only beware, for of those who go there, few come back. For from there, one may look down upon the whole earth, and so beautiful is that scene that it is hard to part with it, to return to the woodlands, and the meadows, and the lakes. You will probably stay and join them, and become a star yourself, taking your place in the Great Dance across the night.”

“And what then?” asked Bright Primrose.

“At last, when your heart is filled up with all pleasures, you shall go to sleep, and dream only the sweetest of dreams,” answered Evening Star. 

But though Bright Primrose had asked the question, she did not stay for the answer, for at that moment April Morning had noticed a first snowflake and cried out “Snow!” And all the fairies looked about them in delight as the dim air of a cloudy evening filled up with whirling white flakes. They began to catch them, for snowflakes do not melt or break in the dainty hands of fairies as they do in ours, and they love to study the designs of snowflakes, and praise the skill with which high wintry clouds weave air and ice into softness, grace, and light. “Look at this one!” they shouted to one another, and “This one is as big as my head!” And a fairy harpist took her tiny instrument and played a swift, tinkling melody to imitate the flakes, and another fairy harpist, on a more somber instrument, played sudden, sweeping chords to imitate gusts of wind, so that they formed a strange, coldly beautiful harmony. And April Morning and Crocus Petal, and especially Bright Primrose, who was a very graceful dancer, began to weave and leap and dart upon the air, and make whirlwinds with their wands to swirl the soft snow, but especially, on the theory that imitation is the highest form of praise, they would soar up high and then still their fluttering wings and fall in a drifting, lazy fashion, like the snowflakes themselves, who treat the law of gravity as more of a guideline or suggestion. And they hoped that Evening Star, who had journeyed in the far north and helped to make the great Northern Lights, would crown the dance with the mystic, majestic, haunting colors of the aurora borealis. Later, there might be a snowball fight.

Evening Star was not offended that Bright Primrose had ignored her, and she was about to join the dance. For it is not the custom, or perhaps it is not the nature, of fairies to think much of hard and high matters, or of deep and heavy ones. Their minds are like the bees amidst the flowers, light and easy, seeking sweetness, never staying long in any thought. But she saw that Sparkling Dewdrop was not in the mood for dancing, and stayed to keep her company.

“And where are you going, my dear?” she asked at last.

“I?” echoed Sparkling Dewdrop, and at that moment so great was her beauty, that Evening Star became dizzy and lost control of her wings, and fell, and caught herself mid-air, dazzled. “I shall go...” continued Sparkling Dewdrop, “slowly. Perhaps I’ll go into the forest, or... I think, perhaps, out over the water, when the waves are strong and dark, and when you fly above them, or among them, your senses are all topsy-turvy, for everything is in motion, and you do not know whether you are going up or down or staying in one place because the water gathers itself up into mountains and then is crushed down into foamy plains... Ah, how I adore such days, out on the sea! Don’t you?”

And Evening Star said, “Yes,” but she thought, But not, I think, as you are loving them now, my love-- that I should not dare to do.

“I want to go slowly, to drink each place in, to know it, almost to put down roots in it, as a tree does.”

Evening Star laughed. “You cannot do that, my dear. Fairies have roots only when they are still fairy-flowers, still asleep. But when the magic sleep is broken and we are born, then the petals become wings, and the roots, legs and feet, and the fairy-awakening begins, by which we bring all the world to life. You cannot go back, my dear, for with roots, you would be a mere fairy-flower, knowing nothing.”

“But you said that a fairy could have anything her heart desired,” said Sparkling Dewdrop.

And Evening Star herself became confused. “Well, yes, I suppose I did... only...” And she fell silent.

“No, you are right, I do not want that, I want to live,” she said, in order to comfort Evening Star. “Only a bit more slowly, that is all.” And Evening Star knew that she had a secret. She resolved to stay until Sparkling Dewdrop had departed safely from the island.

Chapter 14. Wind on the Ocean

So when a few days had passed, and the others were going away, Sparkling Dewdrop, so as not to be different from the others, flew out across the sea to the north. She did not stop to say farewell to any dear old places, because that it not the custom of fairies, or perhaps it is not their nature... but no, that was not the reason. She did not visit the old haunts because she feared she would lose her resolve to go. 

It was a wild stormy night upon the ocean, but with a full moon, so that when the waves curled over, they cast shadows on the water below so distinct that the eye could trace the edge of them, for an instant, before they crashed down. And Sparkling Dewdrop darted through the tunnels beneath the waves, exulting in the dance of the mighty waters, laughing at the shock of the cold, and sometimes she darted into and through them, and sometimes she ran across the tops of them, and sometimes she skimmed the debris after they had fallen, gathering armfuls of sea foam and tossing it into the air so that it rained down around her, and she was singing now in her frolic of forgetfulness. And Evening Star, following at a distance, was satisfied that Sparkling Dewdrop had recovered from her melancholy, and she went her own way.

But then the wind moaned softly over the water, and Sparkling Dewdrop’s mood changed. She looked back, and saw the snowy island in the distance, low on the horizon now, but the striking shape of its sea-cliffs still sent a shiver of terror and delight through her. And then she remembered the gulls’ nests, and the chicks in springtime looking up with their greedy beaks, and springtime reminded her of making wreaths of flowers, which they placed over the head of... the enchantress’s daughter, her own dear Melody: the light, glad riot of her laughter; the way the wind played in her hair; the way her eyes opened wide with wonder when she listened to Sparkling Dewdrop’s stories... Melody, learning new words, saying the odd things children say, grateful for each simple pleasure, then growing more beautiful still as the charm of simplicity had faded... and Sparkling Dewdrop was overwhelmed by the strangeness of time, by that intolerable paradox that what was, now is not... For now, that innocent, golden sweetness was imprisoned and abandoned in a faraway land of mist and mourning. And she, Sparkling Dewdrop, could not bring her back.

Yet she remembered the knight, whom Melody had loved. No, she would not leave him. She would do what little she could.

Sparkling Dewdrop turned, and flew back, somberly, towards the island.

Chapter 15. The Trap

No longer were the knight’s eyes bright and brave, nor his arms thick and manly, nor his bearing high and noble. He was a prisoner not only in the castle, but in spells that had penetrated deep into his mind and made him almost a madman. Yet somehow, he still resisted her. The witch, too, in her grim frustration and mad willfulness, was blind to the ruin that she was making of him, and how little it would be worth to win him now, like this. Yet she spent more time in her library now than at his side, scanning book after heavy, dusty book, seeking powerful and still more powerful spells to cast. 

It was another day, the same as so many before, repeating itself until one lost count. The knight had been reduced, again, to magic sleep, to be tested in some dim, dreamland struggle. Yet though he was asleep, he was not relaxed, not at peace. He was tense, sometimes he trembled, he made quiet yet pained, inarticulate noises. A spell had been cast, and it was time for the witch to depart. The door shut. 

And at that sound, as so many times before, a slender, tiny figure, gently luminescent, stepped through the window, hopped onto the pillow, and walked up to the knight’s ear. Her hands pushed aside his overgrown, dirty hair. And she whispered to him, of things past, of things bright and warm and clean and free, of love, and she echoed things said long ago, tender words, and into his tormented mind, exiled from itself by evil magic, came the image of her face, the face of her who loved him and he her, the crown of all his happiness, and his body relaxed a little, and he trembled less.

But today, there was a trap. The witch had shut the door, but she had not departed. In the shadowy curtains by the window she waited. And now, in one swift motion of the hand, she caught Sparkling Dewdrop, and held her, helpless and struggling, in a savagely tight grip. With her other hand, she picked up a small cage of wire mesh which she had hidden, and she shoved Sparkling Dewdrop into it and closed the door.  Sparkling Dewdrop let out a faint cry of despair.

“You!” the witched hissed to Sparkling Dewdrop in triumphant hate. “It was you who were thwarting me. It must have been you who gave him knowledge of my daughter, and the storm, and the tower.” She looked at the fairy with the cold cruelty of a cat playing with a mouse. Sparkling Dewdrop was too terrified to answer.

“I guessed that it might be you I was fighting against,” whispered the witch. “Cruel wretch! I have the perfect punishment for your treachery. My greatest cauldron is almost ready. You are to be the final ingredient in the spell with which I will triumph at last.”

Through corridors they went, and down stairs, and Sparkling Dewdrop saw the places she knew made strange by the wire mesh of the cage. And then she saw places she did not know, deep places, the dungeons and catacombs beneath the castle, where fairies never went. She choked on the musty air, and the cage swung from side to side, so that she lost her balance, and knelt, and was sick. And now they were in the library, and on every side shelves full of magic books rose like mountains. There was no life in this place, only these musty, dark books, these remains of dead men. To a fairy, it was suffocating. The witch placed Sparkling Dewdrop’s cage on a wooden table, then went away, carrying her candle with her, so that pitch-black darkness fell in the tomblike library.

Chapter 16. In the Darkness

Sparkling Dewdrop was cold, now that she could not fly. She was frightened of the darkness. She felt very lonely. She wanted to be where life was, where trees grew and where the wind carried the fragrance of flowers or the odor of fallen leaves. And the words Never again pierced her heart; never again would she touch a pussywillow, or pet a robin’s head. 

But at least she could dispel the darkness a little. She could luminesce. And so her body began to shine by fairy magic, though faintly because the lifelessness of the place gave her little to draw upon. And she saw the table, and the high bookshelves, and nearby, a great black cauldron, and though the place was tomblike and joyless, yet her own light comforted her a little.

But then, out of the darkness, attracted by the light, came a horrible rush of beating wings, and she saw a great black shape descending upon the cage, and her light went out, and the cage tipped, and began to roll across the table. Then for a moment, it was falling, and it hit the floor with a crash and rolled again. As it rolled, Sparkling Dewdrop’s wings were caught in the wire mesh walls of the cage, and it spun her in the darkness, and she was full of pain. When at last it stopped rolling, she could not move. 

It must have been a moth, she thought. 

She struggled to get her wings free. And then there was a ripping and tearing sound. What happened? she thought in terror. She luminesced again-- and saw that her beautiful wings had been all torn to shreds.

Sparkling Dewdrop fell to her knees on the wire mesh wall of the cage then, and wept, and wept, and wept.

But in the midst of her weeping, Sparkling Dewdrop remembered what Evening Star had said long ago. “A fairy cannot die,” she had said. “It is a fairy’s nature to gain everything her heart desires. And the more her pleasure increases, the higher she flies, until she becomes caught up amidst the stars, and dances with them until she has had her fill of all the beauties of the world, and then she falls forever into a delicious sleep.” Yes, thought Sparkling Dewdrop now. The witch cannot kill me. She will only send me up there, to dance among the stars. There is no need there for these legs and wings, there is only light. And with that, the darkness seemed to diminish around her, and she no longer feared the cauldron and the magic books and the moths.

Soon the witch returned.

“So you tried to escape, did you?” cackled the witch, mocking Sparkling Dewdrop’s ruined wings. “And you used to be so beautiful. Look what you’ve come to now.”

“It does not matter,” said Sparkling Dewdrop, calm now. “A fairy can have anything her heart desires. A fairy cannot die. I am not afraid of you. I shall soon dance among the stars.”

And for a moment, the witch was surprised by this. Then she burst into cruel laughter. “That is what you think? That is what you think? No, no, no, my dear, that will not be your fate!”

Though bitter and raging, she paused to collect her thoughts. Then she told her a strange story, a cruel smile playing on her lips.

Chapter 17. About Mortals

“Long ago,” said the witch, “the King of Glory was sleeping on the abyss, and dreaming. And all around him, the spirits of the wind played and danced, and at last they woke him. And he looked about him and saw that there was nothing. And he thought that it would be better if there were many things, things such as he had dreamt of. And so he made light and darkness, and separated the day from the night, and separated the waters of the sea and sky, and wove the clouds and scattered the rain, and he hoisted dry land out of the deep, and filled the air with birds and the sea with fish and covered the land with grass and trees and flowers and beasts, and the world flourished with life. And in the midst of all this he made a man and a woman, and set them amidst a garden where they could dwell, surrounded by a hedge, and in the midst of it he planted the greatest of the trees, called the Tree of Poetry and the Love of Beauty. And he planned to teach them much there, in the shade of its spreading branches. 

“But while he was resting from his labor, the spirits of the wind stole into the garden, and they rustled the leaves of the Tree of Poetry and the Love of Beauty. The woman was by, and that strange music stirred her heart to madness. And she climbed into the highest branches, and from there she saw over the hedge, out onto the wild steppes and the distant blue mountains and the stormy seas, and all at once she became weary of peace and light, and longed to wander and to chase after far-off places. And she went to the man, and when he saw her, her beauty had grown so great and strange that he said he would go with her anywhere. 

“Now when the King of Glory returned, he saw that their hearts had been stolen away by the spirits of the wind, and he grew angry and cursed them, as thwarted lovers often do, and he destroyed by lightning and fire the garden he had made for them, and drove them out into the wild waste. And he told them that what they had preferred to him, they should have in abundance; that they should be tormented by the love of beauty, and never contented; that they should wander the earth in search of it, and then they should die, and become spirits of the wind, doomed to wander forever over the earth, whispering and moaning and seeking and never being satisfied. And he departed, and left them to their fate.

“And you, my dear, you have cast your lot with them, with mortals. You have listened to the wind. You have loved mortals. You have loved like a mortal, deeply, inconsolably. You will never dance among the stars now, you fool. You too will become a spirit of the wind, wandering the earth, never contented. That is what awaits you.”

And because in the witch’s lies were mingled much truth, and because the witch believed her own words-- for in the minds of the wicked, as in a broken mirror, truths are distorted into strange shapes-- Sparkling Dewdrop accepted all this and believed it. 

Yet the witch did not see in her face the horror and despair she had hoped for. For at this moment, in her darkest hour, Sparkling Dewdrop remembered the calm of the strange poet in his tormented love, and now that calm became hers. And she remembered Melody, and thought to herself, Then she and I will be together again, after all, as spirits of the wind. And she said, sadly but with resignation, softly as if only to herself, “So it must be.”

And thus she spoiled the witch’s revenge.

With a silent scream of anger, the witch opened the cage door, seized Sparkling Dewdrop, and hurled her into the cauldron. 

Chapter 18. The Lost Soul

The water trembled as the fairy dissolved into luminous water-smoke. Steam began to rise from the water, and it began to stir, to spin, to swirl. It became a whirlpool, and as it spun faster, it rose against the sides of the cauldron, but the center of the whirlpool sunk lower and lower, to the bottom of the cauldron, and through it, until it opened out at the bottom. A gap had been opened in the floor of the world, and a sinister red light shone up from below, its fiery reflections flashing on the walls of the whirlpool, as the sun, towards evening, flashes upon the ripples of a lake. The witch stepped up onto the side of the cauldron just as it was about to be submerged by the rising whirlpool. Now the library had dissolved in the steam and the darkness behind her, and there were only the swirling waters, and the witch standing upon air, suspended above the smoldering abyss below. And then smoke began to rise from that underworld, but it did not disperse into the air as smoke usually does. It collected itself into a shape. Two sparks floated up, and settled themselves in the smoky form, and became eyes. 

“I have summoned you,” said the witch, seeming frightened, but retaining her self-command.

“You have summoned me.” The voice, which seemed to come from nowhere, was like the purring of an earthquake. “What do you want, Laurielac?” (That was the enchantress’s name.)

She answered reluctantly, as if the confession came from too deep to be brought out easily. “I want what they had. I watched them,” she explained, “and it seemed that I had missed something. I saw her innocence. How her eyes shone when she saw him. How all the gladness of her heart flowed out of her, and was given to him, yet she was never emptied of it. How had life passed me by and I had missed that? It was more than I could bear. I’ve done everything I could and nothing works. Give me what she had. If I could have it for a month, even for a week-- I will pay any price. Can you give me that? Will you help?” 

“You have summoned me,” said the demon, and bowed, as if in obedience. 

But the witch suddenly felt that this answer had no meaning, and the demon was deliberately leaving her question unanswered to mock her. “Yes, but will you help?” And she added in a deliberately provoking tone, “Have you that power?”

“I can turn all things to my own purposes,” answered the demon. “It is agreed.”

At this, the witch seemed reassured, and she put her hand into the whirlpool to stop it, and to step out, and through the seam in the whirlpool the light of Maddalt’s room could be seen. But the whirlpool did not stop, and after a moment, she had to withdraw her hand because of the scalding heat of the water, and the glimpse of Maddalt’s room behind gave way to blackness again. And suddenly the witch knew that the demon was cheating her, and had turned her own spell against her.

“You know, we are not always so scrupulous in keeping agreements,” the demon muttered. “Sorry about that... We sometimes, er, modify the terms... In this case, you’ll need to wrestle with me first.”

The witch stared in horror. “No-- it’s not fair!”

“Oh, don’t worry, I won’t use even one-tenth of my strength,” said the demon with mocking reassurance. “It will be easy...” 

And with that, long arms extended from the smoky figure and sought to seize the witch, and she held them back with all her might, and the two figures swayed above the fiery abyss, and in that strange light their movements seemed like those of lovers in a dance. Then the witch, with the last of her strength, cast a powerful spell, and called down a bolt of lightning, which seared through the demon’s body and scattered it like smoke. But the reprieve did not last long.

The smoke began to collect itself, and the demon coalesced, now far larger than before, and grinning hungrily. A huge black hand reached out and seized the witch’s waist. And the witch grew pale with fear, and not only her face, for her skin and hair and clothes all turned pale and ghostly. She tried to scream, “Have mercy!” but so faded was she that her voice was only a whimper. And in her face, though she was already little more than a wraith, were written such fear and sorrow that if you had seen it, reader, though you may be, for all I know, the unkindest and most cowardly person living, yet you would have been moved with pity, and would have risked wolves and fire and spears to come to help her, if only you could. But there was no one to look upon her and pity her.

They began to sink into the fiery depths below, the demon and the witch. The whirlpool narrowed, and closed, and settled back into the cauldron. All was dark and silent in the tomblike library.

Part III: Experience

I cannot rest from travel... always roaming with a hungry heart...

This grey spirit yearning in desire

To follow knowledge like a sinking star

Beyond the utmost bounds of human thought. (Alfred Tennyson)

Chapter 19. The Stranger

Some years later, in the plaza next to a church on a cliff overlooking the sea, an old bard was telling tales of the brave deeds of the famous Sir Maddalt, when he saw in the crowd a face which he recognized. Amazed, he stopped his tale, and approached a middle-aged stranger, quite ragged yet girt with a sword, and tall and rather muscular. The stranger’s face was a riddle, with something ancient in it, and something childlike, too. 

“You... are you not Sir Maddalt, sir? Sir Maddalt himself?” 

The crowd murmured in wonder. The stranger stared, seeming not to understand.

“I saw you several times, in tournaments and in triumphal parades. I recognize your face.” For this bard had lived in the capital during the war. Throwing caution to the winds, he insisted: “It is no mere likeness. It is the same face.” Now the crowd became anxious. 

The stranger lowered his face pensively, searching his mind, and at last murmured slowly, “Yes... that was it, that was my name. I know the name. Maddalt... They used to call me by that name.” Perhaps because the revelation had made him shy, though really he seemed to take little notice of the crowd, the stranger turned away and began to meander slowly down a narrow lane that ran through fields of cows into the countryside. It was a fair day in midsummer and red and blue flowers were splashed here and there amidst the tall green grass. 

The stunned crowd mutely watched the stranger go, grateful to have stood in the presence of the legendary knight. But afterwards, their wonder subsided into angry skepticism, and the bard, who had been known to play the rogue on many occasions, became unpopular in that town. Everyone thought he had been pretending for some reason, perhaps simply to make a better story. 

But a lad who was there had the skill of drawing, and he sketched the face of the supposed “Sir Maddalt,” thinking he would take it to the capital and have it identified by someone who knew the man, and thus vindicate the old bard, whom he loved. He had wanted to go to the capital anyway, when he grew up, and try making his living by his drawings. He thought he would draw portraits and sell them on the bridge, or perhaps learn to be a painter or sculptor. But money was tight, and later he married a girl, and seed-time came, and harvest came, and seed-time came, and harvest came, and sons and daughters were born to him and grew up, and his plan to see the capital was gradually forgotten. But then a war came, and his son joined a troop of soldiers, and was to march to the capital, where the king was mustering all the armies of the realm. So the farmer with the knack for drawing brought out his little portrait, and asked his son to find someone who had known Sir Maddalt, and see whether the portrait were indeed a faithful likeness of his face, and whether, after all, the late bard had been telling the truth.

Upon his arrival in the capital, the young man made inquiries and was sent to one Sir Philip, who had known Sir Maddalt well in youth. The court regarded him as a humdrum, polite old man who made humdrum, polite old speeches. He had a certain eminence because he was a brother-in-law of the king, and also because of certain distinguished services to the realm long ago, the nature of which no one now remembered. He was allowed to attend certain great councils, where important decisions were officially taken after they had actually been decided behind closed doors by people who really mattered. He had the tact to understand that no one wanted to listen to him, and obliged them by never saying anything that needed to be listened to. 

Sir Philip lived on a large estate, with elegant ivy and decorative gothic windows. A multitude of servants trimmed the hedges and the lawns, dusted the musical instruments and the shelves of the library, groomed the horses and cleaned the carriages, and restocked the pantries and wine-cellars. They lit the fire at six o’clock before Sir Philip’s rising, and prepared breakfast for exactly seven o’clock and lunch for exactly noon and dinner for exactly five o’clock, not from any particular love of order, routine, and punctuality, but simply because there was no reason to vary the schedule. To this estate, where the delicious smells of a pig roasting on a spit filled the air, the young man went, and knocked on the door. A footman asked him his business, brought the message to Sir Philip, returned, and bade the young man come in and sit down. Sir Philip appeared a few minutes later, and after some words of introduction on both sides, looked at the picture.

“Yes, that’s him,” said Sir Philip a bit somberly and wistfully. “When was this drawn?” The young man explained, and Sir Philip noticed that it was drawn after Maddalt had been last seen by anyone in the capital. “Are you sure?” The young man said his father was reliable. He was invited to stay for dinner, and ate the best meal he had ever tasted, in honor of Sir Maddalt.

And so this strange rumor came to Sir Philip’s ears, when it was too late, that long after Maddalt had departed the capital, he had been alive and abroad in the world, traveling, it seemed, incognito. When he had not heard again from his friend, he had concluded sadly that their reconciliation had not been as complete as it had seemed. This news was some comfort to him, if only because it replaced a sorrow with a riddle, and gave back to life a charming strangeness which it had lost for him some years before. There were, he was reminded, things in the world he did not understand. He wondered what adventures Maddalt had had. He wished he could have shared them.

Chapter 20. Are You a Knight?

Maddalt had awoken from the evil enchantments in such confusion that his mind was little better than a child’s, yet he had retained enough of the habits of knighthood to arm himself and take a horse before he set forth. He strayed through the woodlands for a time, until he came upon a great road, where he met four knights riding in full battle array. 

“Sir knight,” said one of the company. “Whither are you riding?”

“I know not,” said Maddalt. 

“If you are doing nothing, perhaps you will join our quest,” suggested the knight. “My name is Sir Lester, and my friends and I are riding to rescue a maiden who is besieged by a very strong but villainous knight, along with his wicked companions. He would marry her by force, but she of her own will would marry me.”

But one of the other knights spoke to Sir Lester, saying, “Brother, this man is not fit to join our quest, or for any high purpose. Can you not see that his body has been weakened by illness and hunger, while his face is idle and dreamy? He is only the wayward son of some gentleman, and probably has made himself ill with too much drink. Not every man who carries a sword is a knight.”

“No, Clayton, I think he is a knight. He may have met misfortune, that is why he is pale and sickly, but his bearing is noble, and if he has the face of an idle dreamer, that is probably because he is in love, for men in love will spend hours and hours in contemplation. The nobler a man is, the more he excels in contemplation, as well as in action. Am I mistaken? Are you a knight, sir?”

“I must be,” said Maddalt. “Else whence have I this skill of riding, this comfort in wearing armor, and these callouses on my hands, that are the marks of one who has wielded a sword?” He looked at his own hands as he said this, and showed them to Sir Lester.

“Very good, sir, though I would have believed your bare word, without these proofs. And will you join our quest?” asked Sir Lester.

“I will,” said Maddalt. 

“And what is your name?”

This question confounded Maddalt, who was silent a long time, and finally found only two syllables to tell who he was. “Love... lost...” he said.

“Sir Lovelost?” echoed Sir Lester, with a roar of laughter. “You were truly born in a day of sorrow if your mother named you that! Or if that is not your real name, but you have named yourself after your own sorrows, then perhaps ere long you shall call yourself Sir Love-gained! For the sister of my betrothed, the Lady Meredith, has neither husband nor lover, and she is very beautiful.”

Chapter 21. The Challenge

And they rode on, and asked him a few more questions, but found his answers unsatisfactory, and soon left him alone, considering him perhaps a bit of a fool. At evening, they arrived at the castle where Sir Lester’s lady, the Lady Beatrice, was besieged. 

As they came under the walls, Sir Lester and his company saw five strong knights around a campfire, of whom the leader was that villainous knight of whom Sir Lester had spoken, and his name was Sir Bernard.

“Sir Bernard,” shouted Sir Lester. “We have come to wage war on you, for you are a false and villainous knight, and a reproach to the name of knighthood. For these two reasons do we wage war on you: first, that you seek to force a noble lady to wed you who is unwilling, and second, that among the companions whom you ride with is one Bruno the Pitiless, who has violated the honor of at least three maidens and committed many murders and robberies. And several great knights have pursued him and sought to slay him, but they cannot bring him to battle because he has the fastest horse in the kingdom, and he is a coward who will fight none except those weaker than himself.”

Sir Bernard, who was great in stature and much older, sneered at this challenge, saying, “As for Sir Bruno, his sins are his affair, and I will keep what company I choose. And this lady belongs to me by her father’s consent, when he was yet living. But I am glad you have come to wage war upon me, for I shall easily defeat you, and then perhaps she shall come to her senses and desire the better man. How shall we fight?”

“There are five of us and five of you,” said Sir Lester. “We shall joust, one by one, and those who die shall die, and those who remain shall joust again, until either all of you, or all of us, are defeated.”

“I like your plan well,” said Sir Bernard, “except that there is no need to fight to the death. Let a man who is thrown from his horse, or seriously wounded, be called beaten, and then we shall decide this quarrel with less loss of life.”

“To this I agree,” said Sir Lester, “on this condition: that if you and your company are beaten, you will go to the king and submit to his justice, and never again seek the hand of the Lady Beatrice. And Sir Bruno we will hang on the spot.”

“I have little to lose by granting the terms, since I have little fear of losing the contest,” said Sir Bernard. “So be it.”

So Sir Lester began to prepare his lance to joust. But Sir Bernard stopped him, saying:

“It is already evening, and in ten minutes it will be too dark for us to see. We will joust tomorrow. Now that I have accepted your challenge, for the sake of my old friendship with your father, consider my honor acquitted, and do not disdain my company. Come, accept my hospitality, warm yourself by our fire, and share our meat and ale. Sir Bruno will not stay, he has an errand in the town.” And so Sir Bruno departed, and the other nine knights talked together for a while around the fire, but Maddalt remained silent.

Chapter 22. Jousting

Dawn came in pink splendor across the sky, then settled into bright morning, and the great green lawns before the Castle of Aquamains, where the ladies Beatrice and Meredith lived, seemed to smile. Scattered in the green grass were yellow dandelions, gazing gladly at the sun. The grass was lush, but short enough for a man or a horse to run in without difficulty, yet long enough to cushion a fall somewhat. The canopies of the surrounding forest rang with cheerful birdsongs. In the clear blue sky wafted billowy clouds, air and water mingling together in silent music. High overhead, a hawk circled, while sparrows darted in and out of nests built in the eaves of the Castle. The sun shone bright on the castle’s jutting stones and cast distinct shadows. Even the wind in the forest seemed to have forgotten its restless melancholy, and rejoiced to make the leaves sway and flutter and flash in the sun. Everything was alive, awake, bright, glad, and free. It was a fine, golden, perfect day, a day when spring and summer kiss each other, and human hearts rejoice and yearn, and children must frolic and play, and maidens want to dance and gather flowers, and men like to ride and fight and joust.

The knights armed themselves, and Lady Beatrice and Lady Meredith and other ladies watched in terror and delight from atop the castle walls. 

The first to joust were Sir Bernard and Sir Lester, and Sir Lester was thrown from his horse and lightly wounded. The Lady Beatrice wept in fear for him, but Maddalt called up to reassure her that he would certainly live. 

The second in Sir Bernard’s company was a knight of still greater strength than Sir Bernard himself, and Sir Lester’s three companions all feared to joust with him, but Maddalt was willing. Maddalt’s lance was painted red and white in alternation, so that as his horse reached full gallop, the colors blurred into a single shade of pink, so fast did he ride. His lance was perfectly aimed, and it crashed like thunder into the armor of his foe, and hurled him to the ground. Maddalt was untouched. And when Bruno the Pitiless saw Maddalt’s speed and poise and aim and strength, immediately he turned his horse and galloped away.

Sir Clayton threw his opponent, but Sir Lester’s other two companions were beaten, so that only Clayton and Maddalt remained of his company. Then Sir Clayton jousted with Sir Bernard, who threw him from his horse easily. But Maddalt defeated the other knight, so that only he and Sir Bernard were left. Then Maddalt and Bernard came together like thunder, and both broke their lances, but there was no victor. Bernard praised Maddalt, saying that he had never jousted with a better knight. A second time they came together, and this time Sir Bernard was thrown from his horse and slightly wounded. The contest was at an end, and Maddalt congratulated Sir Lester on his victory, and took leave of the company. But Sir Clayton followed him on the road.

Chapter 23. The Quest

“The Lady Meredith was watching you, Sir Lovelost...” Sir Clayton began. But as Maddalt did not seem to hear these words, Sir Clayton rode behind for a little while in silence, then spoke again.

“Glad I am, that my brother did not heed my advice not to bring you!” he exclaimed. “Had he listened to me, we would have been beaten. You defeated three of them, and it was for fear of you only that Sir Bruno rode away. I didn’t want you to join us at first, because I thought there should be less opportunity to win honor for myself in the contest. But you are the best knight I have ever seen. It is no shame to be outshone by you.”

“Your brother is happy in his love,” said Maddalt.

“Yes, they will be married in a fortnight. You should come with us to the king’s great tournament!” said Sir Clayton. “You would win honor and glory there, and we should be proud to be your friends.”

“Glory is chaff,” said Maddalt.

“If you care not for fame and glory, what do you seek?” asked Sir Clayton.

“One maiden of surpassing beauty, with a gentle, pure, and ardently loving heart. She was stolen away, and I shall wander the earth until I find her, though it be a hundred years.”

“How noble! Then I will help you,” said Sir Clayton, “if you allow it. I helped my brother... a little... to gain his maiden. It is an honor to ride in your company. And I agree with you,” he added ardently, “that it is more glorious to have adventures than to win tournaments. But you do not know where she is now?”

“She is imprisoned in a tower,” said Maddalt.

“Good!” said Sir Clayton, reassured. “Then we will free her, no matter what dangers we must brave, no matter who we must fight. What a quest! But where is this tower?”

“I saw it in a vision... I don’t know...” said Maddalt.

Sir Clayton found this answer strange. Groping for some other clue, he asked: “How did you meet your maiden?”

At this question, Maddalt became pensive, and thought so long that Sir Clayton began to fear he would never speak again. The road meandered past hills and vales, and brown ploughed fields, and meadows where horses grazed, and barns and cottages, and they forded a burbling brook and passed into the shadow of a pine wood. Finally Maddalt said, “You know, I’ve been under an enchantment... Sometimes all that time, that time of peace, of flowers and sunrises and songs of birds, of big blue skies and days that lasted forever... it was a time when all the guilt and sorrow of the world seemed, for a little while, to vanish like a bad dream... sometimes that time seems long, long ago, like an ancient legend... Yet sometimes it seems as if it all happened only yesterday, nay, not yesterday but a single moment ago, as if I could turn my head and see it just behind me. I can’t recall the details, you know... or... or rather, it’s precisely the details that I can recall, sometimes, that forever haunt me, dart in and out of my mind, whispering to me as I sleep. It’s the big, basic facts, the where and when and why, that elude me...” But Maddalt felt he was not explaining it well, and fell back into thought.

“And where are we going now?” asked Sir Clayton.

“To the seaport. I hope to hear word there of that tower in the mist.”

Chapter 24. The Crusader

So they arrived in the seaport, but Sir Clayton became bored as Maddalt spent hours in the low, drunken places where sailors gathered to tell their yarns, hoping to hear the faintest rumor of a forest of mist and a lonely tower. The sailors trusted him, for Maddalt’s face had taken on a seaman’s expression that seemed always to be gazing into the distance, and they told him of many faraway countries.

After a few days, the sound of a great fanfare was heard, and the rumor spread like fire from mouth to mouth through the city, “The count of Toulouse!” -- “The count of Toulouse!” -- “Count Raymond of Toulouse is coming, bound for the east!” -- “Count Raymond is embarking for the East!” -- “The great count, the prince of chivalry, is setting off on a crusade!” And then a splendid company of knights appeared, all decorated with the crusader’s cross, while Venetian ships gathered in the harbor to carry them. And at this news, Sir Clayton became excited, and went to Maddalt to remonstrate with him.

“Sir Lovelost,” he said, “let us join this noble count in his adventures! I know that you care not for fame and glory, such as others seek in fighting for the Holy Land. But if you wish to hear rumors of your tower in the mist, how better to do that, than to join the crusade? For you shall travel far, and perhaps your tower is in one of the countries through which we shall pass on the way. Moreover, the most brave and enterprising knights from all of Europe shall ride together, and you may hear many tales of all their adventures and the places they have seen or heard about in their travels. And when we arrive in Jerusalem, well, there not only Europe but the whole world comes as pilgrims, and you may question them, and surely some report of your tower in the mist will reach your ears. Besides which, these bars and taverns where you abide stink with whiskey and vomit and sailors’ sweat, and are full of oaths and cursing and gambling and every vice. They are not fitting places for a knight to be.”

But though Maddalt recognized the strength of Sir Clayton’s arguments, his heart warned him not to go that way. So he answered and said, “But I have learned, my friend, that fanfare and trumpets deafen the ears to sweeter music. For my part, I have had done with seeking war. Can the path to love lead through fields of battle, drenched with blood? Perhaps it has sometimes done so, but this time, at least, I feel it will not. And at any rate, I am not willing to turn aside from my quest even for a little while for other adventures. And Our Lord dwelt with tax collectors and sinners.”

“Well, then...” Sir Clayton stammered, for he felt it was an unknightly thing, such as he had never done, to forsake a quest he had undertaken, “here we must part, for I ride with the count of Toulouse.”

“Godspeed to you,” said Maddalt, offering his hand.

“But I am sorry,” said Sir Clayton with emotion, “for I had hoped we would be lifelong companions and ride to the ends of the earth together.” And he wept.

Yet within a week he had forgotten these tender words to his comrade. For youth can speak grandly, but it is callow, and has not the strength and singleness of purpose that is forged through disappointment and many breakings of the heart.

Chapter 25. The Wanderer of the World

From that day, Maddalt forsook the pride of knighthood, and worked willingly with his hands among the humble. Often he was a sailor, and he grew accustomed to the queasy tilting of ships and the smell of the salt sea, and its many moods and colors. He saw many ports, and everywhere he was to sailors’ yarns as a bee to flowers, seeking them out and drinking them in. And though he rarely spoke himself, preferring to listen, yet on the occasions when his companions compelled him to speak by their insistent questions, he made such an impression that his tower in the mist became one of the romantic legends that circulated in many ports. That ought to have been to his advantage, for as soon as he mentioned it people would answer with recognition: “So you are the one who is seeking the tower in the mist.” Yet no one, it seemed, knew where it was. 

He sailed further, north into icy seas where the sun in summer never sets, east beyond Arabia to the kingdom of Prester John, as chance and adventure took him. Often his life was imperiled by great storms, and the rain came in gusts, and the waves rose like mountains, and the decks of the ship became vertical, and men clung to ropes or were thrown overboard into the raging sea. Once he was shipwrecked, but strangers helped him until another vessel arrived. He was carried into nameless and kingless countries. In one of them, he wandered long in green valleys between blue mountains blanketed in mist, wondering if this was the place in his vision, yet in the end he knew it was not. 

Sometimes he was not a sailor. Though he no longer called himself knight, and in spite of what he had said to Sir Clayton, a traveller in remote places must needs carry a sword, and he was sometimes pressed into service by a desperate village or a harried king, and made to fight. He was present in the last stand of the Kingdom of Jerusalem, and at the Siege of Malta, and in many skirmishes with pirates and brigands, and with raiders among outlying villages. Once he turned the battle against a Barbary corsair and freed five hundred Christian galley slaves. But his heart had become gentle, and he took no joy in the fight as he had formerly done, but felt every wound his blade made as if it had been done to himself, and he amazed his fallen enemies by his mercy. Once or twice, after caring for a mortally wounded foe, he brought the tidings himself to those whom it had been his unhappy lot to bereave. 

At other times, he labored as a huntsman or a shepherd, or as a day laborer in the fields during harvest. Sometimes he was beaten in the streets and spat upon as a vagrant, but at other times he was asked to deliver letters or expensive gifts, for he was a seasoned traveler and people usually trusted his face. Once, he was even asked to be an ambassador, and made peace between two warring kings. And when he heard of gypsy fortune-tellers or any who were reputed to be wise, he sought them out, and asked them about his tower in the mist. And so at last he found one who knew.

Chapter 26. The Crystal Ball

She lived in a cottage at the edge of a field and a forest, an hour’s walk from a village, and only her reputation as a witch kept her safe from the outlaws in the woods and the unruly boys of the town, who sometimes threw stones, but dared to do no more. She seemed as old as the hills. Her face was withered and she spoke in a rasping whisper. When Maddalt reached the place, the grain was tall and ready for harvest, and in the forest, the leaves were beginning to turn, and the air smelled of autumn. 

She greeted him as he dismounted, and offered her humble wares: a few healing potions, a few spells, or if he liked, he might see the future in her crystal ball. He asked for the last, and paid her a few copper coins. He had to stoop low to fit through the tiny door. Inside, the cottage was quite dim, but he could see herbs and amulets and other magical bilktwaddle hung on the walls. The crystal ball stood on a table, and when Maddalt began to tell his story, about the storm chariot and the invisible horses and the mist-cloaked forest and the lonely tower, suddenly he saw it in the crystal ball, just as he had in his dream long ago: first the swirling mist, then the tops of dark pine trees rising up from the mist below, then the tower, rising straight up and perfectly round with finely-fitted white-grey stones, ivy climbing and clinging to its sides, and at the top, the single window...

“That’s it!” shouted Maddalt in amazement, leaping up and banging his head on the low ceiling of the cottage so that he cried out in pain. Then more quietly but still excitedly, pointing at the crystal ball: “That’s it! That’s the place I was telling you about. I recognize it, exactly. Where is it? Where is it?”

“It is the Forest of Forgetfulness,” rasped the old woman. “I recognized it when I saw it. This ball is junk most of the time, to be honest, but sometimes it speaks the truth. It is speaking the truth now. It knew the tower you spoke of. I did not even know there was a tower there. But now I know. You may be sure that that is the place you seek.”

“And where is the Forest of Forgetfulness? I have heard only rumors of that place,” said Maddalt.

“Strange,” she said, “that you have heard even rumors. The Forest of Forgetfulness is itself almost forgotten.” She paused, her face became sad, and she said, more to herself than to Maddalt, “So much is being forgotten now. When I go, much knowledge will go with me.”

“How can I get there?” asked Maddalt.

The old woman looked at him skeptically. “Perhaps you had better not. It is dangerous.” But when she saw that Maddalt was impatient with this warning, she said instead: “Go to the seacoast, then two hundred miles north.”

“Can I ride there?” asked Maddalt.

“No. It cannot be approached by land. It is flanked by mountains, not so very high, but quite impassable. You must approach by sea. There is no harbor, but the landing, though dangerous, is not impossible. The sea is shallow there, with jutting rocks, seaweed and moss, always cloaked in thick mist. For large ships, it is impossible to get through, but small boats can, if they are lucky.”

“Is that the danger you spoke of?”

“No,” answered the old woman. “On the shore grow the tallest trees in all the world, great stout trunks and thousands of branches, rising up into the mist, so that you cannot see the tops of them. They go on and on. It is easy to get lost in them.”

“Easy to get lost in them,” echoed Maddalt, laughing. “And is that the danger you spoke of?”

“Do not mock, traveller, it will not make you wise,” she reproved him. “It is a serious matter. They say that once you are beyond the sound of the waves, there is no indication of which direction you are going in. In that mist, which under the blanket of that forest never dissipates, you see only pine needles and moss, here and there rocks or ferns perhaps, but nothing to indicate whether you are going north, south, east, or west. 

“Imagine you are cast into the sea in pitch darkness. Even if the shore is near, you will likely never reach it. So it is in the Forest of Forgetfulness. But worse than that, they say there is about that mist a kind of subtle enchantment, so that he who falls asleep in it never awakens.”

Maddalt thought about this, and then asked, “How can they know that someone who falls asleep in it never awakens? If someone fell asleep in the Forest and never awoke, he could not come back to tell what had befallen him.”

The old woman looked penetratingly at Maddalt. 

“I see” she said after a long silence, “that you are an adventurer, not easily frightened. That is good. I, too, have sometimes doubted the old lore, for just that reason. However... how do I explain this?... as one delves into magic, and sees the deep nature of things, one begins to sense certain probabilities. Anyway, there is evidence. There were cases, long ago. Fishermen ventured into those waters, and their boats were ruined. Later, their friends sought them there, and found them fast asleep on the shore, and it was very hard to awaken them.”

“But then,” objected Maddalt, “they did awaken them, after all, did they not? Doesn’t that disprove the legend?”

“But they had not gone into the deep Forest,” explained the old woman, “and they did not wake on their own, but had to be awakened by another. In the deep Forest, the sleep may be deeper, and there will be no one to awaken you.”

“Might not a beast come across you and awaken you?” asked Maddalt.

“There are no beasts there, nor any birds, except for the owls. The owls will wake no one. They are as silent as ghosts.”

Maddalt felt a little fear at the old woman’s words, and he hesitated. But then, to restore his courage, he asked, “And if I should go into the Forest of Forgetfulness, do you know how I should find this tower?”

“No, that I know not,” she rasped. 

“I will go there,” said Maddalt.

“I felt that you would. I only spoke to warn you. If you do go into the deep Forest, and return, come back and tell me, if I am still living. I am weary of life, and daily hope for death, but I still like to gain knowledge, if only to pass the time.”

Chapter 27. The Forest of Forgetfulness

And so Maddalt rode north, traded his horse for a fishing vessel, and sailed towards the misty coast of the Forest of Forgetfulness. As he approached it, the rowing became treacherous, as sea-worn rocks kept appearing out of the mist, and currents and cross-currents threatened to dash his boat against them. Long he weaved and paddled in that world of grey water and white foam gushing and splashing among the rough, barnacle-clad rocks. The waves crashed, and the gulls cried. He knew not whether he was moving forward or turning in circles. And he grew afraid of the coming dark, for he thought he should be lost if night should find him in these seas. But at last he found the shore, and dragged his boat onto a rocky beach.

He gathered wood, and lit a campfire there on the shore, then sat in a position as uncomfortable as he could manage. Though he had provisions, he did nothing to sate his hunger, and though he had a cloak, he did not wear it. He sat near the fire instead. In this way, he hoped to cheat the enchanted sleep of that place. When the fire went out, cold, hungry, and aching, he thought he must awaken.

He awoke in the dark of night, between the forest and the ebbing sea. So the old woman was wrong... or was she? It crossed his mind that maybe he had slept more than a night, and also, that maybe he was still dreaming. He waited a long time before the blackness began to change to a dim blue-grey, the only dawn there was in that place.

Even as he slept, the rich pine fragrance of the forest had haunted his dreams, and as soon as it was light he walked into it, among the great trees. The old woman had been right about them. They were giants, some of them twenty paces around, and overhead, their branches marched up the trunk like soldiers, vanishing into the shrouded distance. They seemed timeless, more ancient than all the ages of men. In places, the forest floor was buried deep in their fallen needles. Elsewhere, moss grew.

As he walked, at first he could hear the crash of waves and the cry of gulls. But they grew more distant, and soon he could not hear them at all. There was only the forest in all directions, and a deep, unearthly stillness. The trees marched past him, the nearer ones moving faster, so that those further away seemed to walk with him, disappearing behind nearby trunks and then reappearing on the other side of them. The effect was hypnotic. When he was thirsty, he drank from the streams. When he was hungry, he caught fish in the streams or gathered berries or mushrooms. A poor diet, but it seemed to be enough for him. He never spoke, and sometimes almost forgot whether he was man or beast.

When he grew weary, he slept, but always in deliberately uncomfortable positions, for he still half-believed in the old woman’s warning, that “he who falls asleep there, never awakens.” And sometimes he thought he had slept longer than he meant to, perhaps days or weeks longer. Once it seemed to him that his beard had grown too much for one night. Another time, he found himself covered in half-dried pine needles. Even when he was awake, a kind of pleasant drowsiness hung about him, encouraged by the dreamlike silence of the forest. Everything that had happened before he had entered the forest now seemed long ago, quaint, improbable. Images from the old times wafted into his mind on the breezes of memory, but the bright colors in which they were painted seemed too bright and garish now, compared to the serene dimness of the forest. They irritated his mind. 

The old woman had been right about the owls. Maddalt often saw them gliding overhead on soft feathery wings, or sitting in the branches, their wise calm eyes gazing placidly. They were the spirits of that forest, emanating its mood and magic. For some reason, Maddalt found himself thinking for hours about the owls, forgetting all else, being drawn into their mystic calmness. If he did not quite succumb to the enchanted forgetfulness of the forest, it was because his quest for the tower was never long out of his mind. The enchantress’s daughter-- her name, he had long since forgotten-- he remembered but as the echo of an echo, yet there remained in him a deep ache of longing, and a conviction, abstract yet certain, that only to look upon her could heal it.

At intervals, he made crosses on the trees with a knife. A long time passed before he found one of his marks again. It was already obscured by the growth of moss, and he looked around and could not recognize the place. Had someone else made it? Had someone else chosen the same mark as he did? Had he forgotten what mark he had been making? Maddalt had long since lost count of the days he had been in the wood. Sometimes he became discouraged, but then he would see a cross carved in a tree, and the sight of something concrete and familiar surprised him, and revived his hope.

The forest had no seasons. Neither summer heat nor winter cold seemed to touch the forest floor, which was covered like a blanket by the deep canopy of the great trees, and seemed to be warmed from below, while northern cold descended from above. Sometimes he tried to climb the great trees, hoping to see the tower, but not only did he never reach the treetops, he never even came in sight of them. Always the great trunks ascended like highways into the clouds, with branches marching motionlessly up them, like a frozen army. But he did come to places where the branches were covered with snow. When, having climbed far, he looked down, the ground, too, was invisible in the mist.

One day, he came upon rising ground. He began to ascend the gentle slopes of what seemed to be a great hill. After some time, the ground leveled off. When he finally saw two vertical lines articulate themselves from out of the mist-- the outlines of a tower-- he was already quite near it.

Chapter 28. The Forest of Blood

The tower rose up into the mist and vanished. Though the mist seemed thinner here, and the air was brighter, could not see the top of the tower. It was wrapped in thick ivy, under which it consisted of fair white stones. It was perfectly round, very broad at the base, but narrowing as it rose. 

Yet though the tower was now little more than a stone’s throw distant, between it and Maddalt was a barrier. It was a wood that for some reason made him shudder with such fear as he had never before known in all his life, so that he nearly gave up his quest and turned back. The ground fell steeply before him and rose again on the other side, so that he could look over the forest as a man looks over a field. These trees bore no resemblance to the rest of the forest. Their broad leaves were a dark shade of olive green, and the lower layers seemed stained unnaturally by the shadows of those above. They were planted in rows, like sentries, but close enough together that their foliage mingled into a thick canopy and cast a shade as black as night beneath them. Several paths led down into them. Maddalt would have to take one of these.

Through the night beneath the trees, the lighted ground beyond the wood on the other side shone like an oasis. But Maddalt could walk only slowly, for the ground was soft and sticky under his boots. The lower branches of the trees, leafless and seemingly dead, that snagged him and cracked as he passed, were wet. He realized after some moments, with a shock, that they were not wet with water. They were oozing blood. An unnatural wind blew, and the branches rattled around him. But not as if the wind was stirring them. Rather as if they were waking up.

Suddenly a branch cracked overhead, but instead of falling to the ground, it fell upon Maddalt’s sword-hilt, and its twigs wrapped around the hilt and drew. It swung the sword towards Maddalt’s head, but Maddalt ducked, then seized the branch, wrenched the sword from its grasp, and was immediately fighting for his life. A tornado wind suddenly began to howl through the forest, lifting swarms of leaves from the ground. Many of the trees’ branches, with motions that resembled the natural motions of branches but were not, whipped and beat at him from every side. Some wielded clumsy swords. Blood-soaked leaves were whipped into his face and clawed at him. In that nightmare, things and categories were dissolving. Then, a few feet away from him, a patch of ground disappeared. Where there had been mud and blood, it seemed there was a mere black nothingness, and he thought then that in that evil place, the bloody leaves strewn, as he supposed, on the ground, were in fact the only ground there was, and but for them he should fall into the nothingness. 

But he said a prayer, and at that moment, his sword-arm gained a terrible swiftness. He felled the angry branches as a thresher mows down grain. 

He saw before him a straight path towards the oasis of light beyond the wood, and raced over it, and felt a wild ecstasy of relief at the wholesome feeling of merely standing on firm ground in natural light. This relief never left him thereafter, and his heart prayed continually in gratitude for these simple things. 

Chapter 29. The Tower in the Mist

He was at the base of the tower, and he soon found the door, mysteriously free of ivy and made of fresh wood. He expected, after so many obstacles, to find it locked, but it was not. It was very heavy, and it took most of his strength to open it. When he had done so, his soul exulted that he was so close to his goal after such long journeyings, and he began to run swiftly, up and up a great spiral staircases. But then he grew tired, and slowed to a walk, and at last he rested. 

And as he did, he looked at the walls, and noticed that they seemed to be painted with rough symbolic sketches. Or were they? Were they mere random etchings and patterns of color in the natural stone? He could not be sure, yet as he continued up the tower, he recognized some old stories: Pyramus and Thisbe, Alexander the Great, some adventures of Lancelot and other knights, even a few of his own ancestors. 

Then, stranger still, he thought he saw his own story represented on the walls. He dismissed this as fanciful, but soon began to notice it again. For a long time, he was of two minds, discerning episodes of his own story, then sensibly doubting them. Finally, he gave up doubting, and saw his story repeated over again, each time with a different selection of episodes, sometimes out of order, sometimes trailing off into repetitions or confusion. That was Sir Clayton, and that the old woman, and that the rocks before the shore of the Forest of Forgetfulness, and that... but no, he was not sure, unless... And all these repetitions of his life began to remind him of how obscure his purposes had been, and how few his pleasures, and he was sad.

But sometimes, in his long ascent, he would recall his mind to his goal. There were windows in the tower walls, and he could lean out of them and look up. And after a while he saw, in the distant mist, what seemed to be the top of the tower, a place where it broadened and was buttressed with beams of wood. A while later he looked again, but it seemed no nearer, and so again, and a fourth time, and a fifth time, until he lost count. And he thought, then forgot, then thought again, that the tower must be enchanted, so that one could climb those stairs forever and never reach the top. But since he did not know what he could do about this, he continued walking anyway.

Then he thought of a desperate method, and because his heart was ardent to see the enchantress’s daughter, he tried it at once. That strong ivy which grew from the base reached here too, and he saw that it reached all the way to the top of the tower. Some of its branches were as stout as a man’s wrist. He climbed out of the window and began to ascend the outside of the tower by clutching the ivy and looking for rare handholds and footholds in the stone. He kept the tower in his sight so that it could not go away. The endless mist fell away below him. His hands grew numb upon the cold stones of the tower, and began to bleed from grasping the rough and gnarled trunks of the ivy. He was almost afraid, only her nearness made him brave, and he was not afraid. At last, his hand grasped the window sill, and he pulled himself over the ledge into the room at the top of the tower.

Chapter 30. Sleeping Beauty

He pushed past silken curtains as he entered, and found himself in a room that, though destitute of color, was elegantly decorated, so that he felt ashamed of his ragged, rustic cloak and trousers and boots. White were the curtains at the windows, white and silver the furnishings, white and grey the marble floor, stone-grey the ceiling, white the candles in the silver candlestands along the wall. 

At the far side of the room stood a great four-poster bed. Around it hung curtains of fine, gauzy silk. He could see through them just enough to recognize the figure of a woman in the bed. Her face was scarcely visible, yet as Maddalt knew it must be her, his heart began to race.

There were neither lilacs nor roses in the room, yet to Maddalt, their fragrance was so strong that it made him dizzy. There were no violins playing, but they played lush and passionately in Maddalt’s ears, a slow, swelling music that mingled with sweet choral harmonies and nightingale melodies. An awe had fallen over him, and for a long time he was unable to move. Then his steps were so strange and dreamlike that each one seemed to scale a mountain. His heart, grown used to the quiet agony of missing her, kept disbelieving his senses, but they insisted. 

At last, the bed-curtain was in his reach, and in fear and trembling, he raised his hand to push it aside...

And the beauty of her face was like an ocean into which all the world’s beauties flow like rivers. It was as if in the bitterest cold of a winter night, all of a sudden, the summer sun appeared and the snow melted and flowers bloomed and birds burst into song.

It had not been worth it, the journey tens of thousands of miles through mountains and stormy seas and frozen by northern snows and scorched by desert suns and hungry and friendless. No, it had been worth a hundred, a thousand such journeys, just to look at her like this, sleeping yet strangely alert, her nut-brown hair falling across the pillow. Crowns and crowds cheering and purses and chests of gold were as worthless as dust compared to the mere sight of her face. He had been rewarded, more than rewarded, and he blessed the enchantress in his heart, for these spells of hers had proven benign, preserving her daughter in the pristine flower of her young beauty. She must have loved her a little, after all, thought Maddalt.

He made no move to wake her. The mere features were enough for him, nay, too much for him. He wondered at the cheeks, the lips, the brows, the closed eyes, studying each with admiration, then being amazed afresh by the harmony of the whole. He thought he could see her dreaming. How long did he stand watching like that? It seemed an age, but probably it was only a few days or weeks, that he stood there in a trance. And her beauty poured into him, and brought peace to all the nooks and hidden places in his soul, and consoled all his secret sorrows. 

He felt even that he could enter her dreams, and strangely, he felt less shy of doing that than of meeting her awake. Perhaps he really did enter her dreams, for though his motions to her bedside seemed not to have disturbed her at all, now her expressions changed a little. 

At last her eyes opened, and she looked at him a long time, a little surprised, but without fear. And she spoke.

Chapter 31. Everything is Grey

“Maddalt?” she said.

And the knight’s name, which he had forgotten amidst the poisoned dreams of dark magic long ago, and then half-remembered in a city by the sea when the bard recognized him, now regained for him its full meaning. And with it, it brought back to him other memories. But he was not sure she had recognized him, or if she had, she doubted herself, or forgot. She seemed more asleep than awake.

“Yes,” he said, but she showed no sign of having heard him.

“I watched him from the tower, watched him depart, until he disappeared in the shade of the forest.” Him, she had said, Maddalt noticed-- him, not you. “Then I stayed and wept, and watched for him... and then... then...” Her voice seemed on the point of breaking into a sob, but it did not.

Maddalt found it difficult to speak. “I have sought you a long time,” he said.

“I have sought...” she echoed, then grew confused. Dreamily, she stood up, and she was dressed in a gown so white that it seemed to shine. She walked to the window and looked out.

“Everything is grey,” she said, not in complaint, but in grief. 

And Maddalt’s heart overflowed with pity, and he longed to bring her back again to a world of colors and of gladness. “We will go away from here, you and I,” he promised ardently. “We will go to where the sun shines and flowers bloom and birds sing. We will run through the meadows, chasing the butterflies into the air. We’ll swim in the sea, and the sun will flash over the water, and the haze over the ocean will be radiant in the sunlight, so that the whole world seems like light. We’ll hide from the heat of noon in the shade of the forest, and see the hummingbirds sipping from the flowers of the trees. It will be like the old days. I’ll take you home!”

“Home,” she echoed. Her face had lit up for a moment as his words had filled her mind (and his) with all these delicious images, yet the word home, though it expressed them all, all the inmost yearnings of the heart, all the comforts and delights, yet it also reminded them of the vast distance between where they were and where their hearts yearned to be. It reminded them that words, at least those of mortals, are not as real things are, but are more like shadows. 

For as we mortals are but the shadows of God, the highest things we can make, words, are but the shadows of reality. They have their own ghostly immortality, they do not die, but they do not quite live, either. From generation to generation, we echo one another, and our words charm and suggest, but remain hollow and insubstantial. Yet we expend much labor on them, for what else can we do, we who can as yet make nothing else that lasts? We are as children playing at being kings with our words, and a for a moment the shadows seem real. But soon they fade, and leave us alone, in the silence and the mist. 

But she added, “All right, I will follow you.”

Chapter 32. The Old Man

“I came through the window,” he began, and he told her how he come there and how he planned for them to get away, and a little of his journeyings and adventures, but then fell silent, not sure how much she heard or understood, and desiring more to read her face than to speak. He sometimes thought he was dreaming.

A door opened from that room into the spiral staircase, and they began to descend. On the walls Maddalt saw none of the pictures that had teased his mind before, but only smooth white stones. The stairs were long, but after some time they came to the bottom, where the door was still open, as Maddalt had left it. They stopped onto the grassy mound where the tower was built.

What Maddalt had feared most was the Forest of Blood which encircled the base of the tower. How would they go through that? How he desired not to expose her to such danger! But now he looked on it, and saw a long straight gap in the trees, where grass had taken root upon the nothingness, and made a bridge. Was it his own sword which, in battle-frenzy, had felled those trees and opened a path through the shadows of death? He did not know. It seemed to him the work of another, someone greater than he, and yet that he had had a part in it in some fashion. In any case, not without fear, he led her over that grassy way, and she looked to left and right uneasily, but took his hand, and trusted him. And then they entered the endless forest.

Maddalt was still unsure whether the enchantress’s daughter had recognized him. He saw, too, that the magic of the Forest of Forgetfulness, against which his own lovesick questing had protected him, affected her strongly. She listened politely, but with effort, to his talk. She showed a mild, intermittent interest but seemed to struggle to keep her eyes open. When they stopped to rest for a moment, she would fall asleep. He shook her a long time before he managed to awaken her again. 

Maddalt gathered berries and mushrooms along the way and gave them to her, but they were insubstantial food. So when he saw a large deep pool, in which he might catch a fish or two, he bade her sit down and take another rest, while he tried fishing. A long, low, flat rock jutted out into the middle of the pool; a good fishing spot. Maddalt crawled out on his stomach and looked down at the water. And there, in the smooth still water, for the first time in a long while, he saw his own reflection, and his heart broke.

For he had become an old man. His hair and beard were as white as snow.

Chapter 33. The Lovers Lie Together

As the dawn pierces the night sky and floods it with new colors, so his own white hair flooded Maddalt’s mind with thoughts. He knew now why Melody had not recognized him, and that though she was here with him, she could never again be his. He saw now the whole story of his life, completed, shining and bittersweet. 

Once upon a time, infinite happiness had found him, as sudden and strange as rain from a cloudless sky. But he had looked back over his shoulder for a moment, and Envy and The World had risen up, and cut him off from it, irrevocably, as he had taken a long time to discover. Caravans of memories sported in his mind, vivid and noisy and colorful, spring mornings in their freshness and fragrance, languid summer evenings, nights of caressing breezes and shimmering with fireflies, and sea foam and sweet berries and songs and laughter. At first, one scene followed another like cards laid down on a table, but later, his mind seemed to grow roomier, so that all the glad scenes danced together in it. He lost himself in memories for a long time, forgetting the Forest, forgetting even the maiden who lay on the bank nearby, forgetting everything except the white-haired old man looking up at him from the pool, who, though he had cast him out from the garden of all real joys, seemed now to bless him with permission to indulge forever in the poignant pleasure-pain of remembering. And as he sunk deeper into the pool of memory, the olden days did not fade, but rather seemed to grow brighter and purer. And his eyes began to open, until, in memory, he was seeing what he had then been blind to. He saw them, lithe and luminescent and singing in voices that are to human voices as water is to mud, merry and hilarious and glad, blessing all. He saw the fairies, the delight of Melody’s eyes, whose beauty he had seen reflected in her face. Now, too late, he was ready, if the gift of joy could ever have been offered to him again, to take it...

Slowly, one tear formed in Maddalt’s eye, and trickled down his nose, and fell into the pool. The reflection was disturbed, and Maddalt awoke from his reverie, and looked about him. He saw that Melody was sleeping. The trees marched into the mist in all directions. 

Whether what he did next was right or wrong, he knew not. He had reached the end of his strength. He saw an owl drift through the wood, and his long resistance to the magic forgetfulness of the forest faltered at last. He walked to his beloved, and knelt, and lay down, with his head on her chest, and closed his eyes. Deep sleep took him. It quieted his old longings. It soothed his pain in forgetfulness. 

And there they lie still, the beautiful maiden and the old man, on the grassy bank of a clear pool of water, surrounded by the ancient trees and wrapped in eternal mist, knowing, feeling nothing, emptied of pride and glory and passion, handling neither gold nor silver, shedding neither tears nor blood, neither laboring nor laughing, cast adrift in dreamland, their love unfulfilled, but also uncorrupted. Will you or I fare as well, reader?

But the day will come when the trumpets will sound for the King of Glory, and the silvery-white mists of forgetfulness will be spun into the gold of judgment, and the white hair of that old man, too, will be spun into gold. And then they will rise to enjoy all things. Where only the silent owls dwell now, there will be fairies singing, stirring all to life and gaiety. And Maddalt's and Melody's voices will rise in song and join the trumpets and the fairies in glad songs of praise forever and ever. So it must be, for it is written: “Blessed are they that mourn, for they shall be comforted” (Matthew 5:4) and “You will be sorrowful, but your sorrow will turn to joy” (John 16:20), and “Thy youth shall be renewed as the eagle’s” (Psalm 103:5) and “The sufferings of the present time are not worthy to be compared with the glory which shall be revealed in us” (Romans 8:18) and “Blessed are the pure in heart, for they shall see God” (Matthew 5:8). What do the prophecies mean, reader, if not this?