across it. Sometimes, it is there to be traveled on. Most of the time, it is not.”
“At the last, I was wise, and blazed a trail to guide me back,” Ilbran said, only half understanding what she had been saying.
Malesa turned pale. “You fool! You utter fool! What you call wisdom is folly so great … so great … You did not only endanger yourself, but me and all travelers. The forest will be at war with all of us, and it had almost grown to be my friend. You would get your just reward if I gave you to them!”
Then she sighed, seeing his bewilderment, and sat down beside him, leaning close, speaking more gently. “The graywood trees are alive, but they are as indifferent to us as they are to the dark ones, as long as we step softly in their domain. But to cut a living tree is an act of war. They do not easily forgive.”
Ilbran shook his head. Outside, he could hear the baying of the hunters, but far away. They followed some other man’s trail tonight. He was too dazed with fatigue to think clearly. “I am sorry for the wrongs I have done you, but I have not lived here. I never learned your laws. I am very weary. May I claim guest-right for tonight before I leave you tomorrow?”
“It seems some laws are the same in your land and mine,” she said with a smile. She would have said more, but he was asleep even as she spoke, lying on the floor beside the hearth.
Late into the night, she sat watching him in the dimming light of the fire. At last, she laughed and said a few words to herself, so softly that he would not have understood, even if he had been awake.
She rose, went to her shelves, and lifted down a row of carved wooden jars from the highest shelf. She took out tiny sprigs of dried herbs, and other things that she had gotten, powdered them between her fingers, mixed them well, and tossed pinches of them into the fire.
Ilbran slept soundly. When the smoke flowed out into the room, he coughed in his sleep, but did not wake. She watched him till the fire died. Then she went to her own bed, to lie alone and listen to the howling of the forest.
Ilbran woke late the next morning and broke his fast on blaggorn cakes sweetened with honey. Malesa did not ask him to stay, but she spoke often of her loneliness. Before he left her, he cut his wrist and stained the threshold with his blood.
“Now you will have a safe place to return to, if the paths play tricks on you again,” she said. Then she laughed, and stood on tiptoe to kiss him on the lips.
For a moment, he wondered why he was leaving. Gentle and trusting, she had taken in a ragged stranger, had fed and sheltered him. Then Ilbran thought: My father was wise. He could not bear to live under the shadow of the trees, even in a place full of joy such as this could be.
But the paths of the forest had no end. Ilbran walked till noon, and an hour after noon, on the same path. No other joined it; no clearing or safehold lay in his way. He did not see any place where he had blazed the trees, though he had marked them every ten paces on the day before. When at last he looked up at the sun, through the graywood branches, and knew that he could safely go no further, it was with a kind of pleasure that he retraced his steps. The clearing, the white-trunked coil of golden trees, was a welcome sight.
Malesa ran to greet him and grasped his hands. The meal she had prepared was well enough for two. “It seems you expected me to return,” he said with a smile.
She glanced sideways at him out of her strange-set eyes. “The trees are angry at you for the outrage you did to them, and so they have shut off the path. Stay with me, and wait. In time they will forget.”
As she walked back and forth, preparing their meal, she brushed against him. Though the room was large, it seemed too small for the two of them.
“How old are you, Malesa?” he asked. Her name seemed to burn on his lips and tongue.
“Fifteen,” she said. “Seven winters and eight summers.”
“A year younger than