The Song of Andiene - By Elisa Blaisdell Page 0,62

it comes and when it goes. Ilbran lived joyfully, and scarcely noticed when the cold time came. Late that year, his child was born, a lusty strong girl, dark of hair and fair of skin like her mother.

Ilbran wiped her clean and dry, and swaddled her in soft cloths, and held her in his arms. “When it is time for her first naming, I will name her Kare,” he said, drunk with love and pride, forgetting that it is unwise to name children before their time, even in idle words.

His lady, Malesa, smiled and said no word. Her daughter had been born easily. Though he had trembled in dread, she had not been afraid. In that way, as in so many other ways, she was wise beyond her years.

When the spring of the year came, the land bloomed and fed them richly, blaggorn and thornfruit aplenty; then summer came. It was as cruel in the forest as in any other place, but the cellar that sheltered Malesa and Ilbran was dug deep into the cool earth. They lived, and their child too. And then Ilbran welcomed the healing rain of autumn and almost forgot the past in the joy of the present, as he saw his child take her first unsteady steps. So he watched the seasons come and the seasons go.

It was winter now, near to the time when he would name his daughter. Three summer-years and three winter-years had gone by.

Ilbran thought of the passing time as he gleaned the thornfruit blossoms, his hands guarded well by the heavy gloves that saved his flesh from the tearing thorns. Though it was tedious work, it gained a great luxury for them. King’s wives and children did not go clothed in thornfruit silk as his wife and daughter did.

Where there’s no water, we must drink wine. Lanara did not grow in the forest. He had found another way; he had tried and tested and learned how to do it. His hands had grown nimbler as the years went by, far from the sea and the heavy fish-filled nets.

The thornfruit flowers bloomed after every rain, from summer’s end to the middle of spring. There was one day, almost one hour alone, that the fragile petals could be gathered, after the fruit was set, before the petals shattered to the ground. Then, he crushed their edges together on the rocks; he washed the fabric in the stream and stretched it to dry sheer and strong, making garments finer than any festival robes that he had seen. The labor of it was a pleasure. Time must be spent at something, and time passed slowly under the shadow of the trees.

Ilbran shook his head in amazement. He had spent almost seven years in this narrow land. At first he had fretted and wished to leave. He would have taken Malesa with him to far lands, and seen the wonder in her dark eyes as she saw things she had known only from traveler’s tales, the wide blaggorn plains, the many colored cities, the endless sea.

When he talked of those things, she smiled and said nothing. And presently, she lay in his arms and there was no more talking.

And so six years and more had passed. Ilbran gathered their food. He made thornfruit silk. He watched as his wife crushed the thornfruit to make wine. He stole honey from the fierce black bees. When he walked the forest paths now, he went without fear, but with no false security either, knowing that to be without shelter at night meant cruel and certain death.

So, when he walked the winding ways, he followed them for half a day, then turned back to safety. He had never found the safehold, the way out of the forest. On this warm winter afternoon, he asked himself again what he would do if he found it.

He knew a part of the answer. He would mark its threshold with his blood, the ritual that he had learned, then return and try once more to persuade his lady, his wife, to leave.

It would not be easy. Her roots were set deeply into the land. But what would I do if she would not go? We have a child, and she cannot live her life seeing no one but her father and mother, live out her life under the shadow of the trees.

Suddenly, the sunny clearing did not seem a fair garden, but a dungeon. He did not see the flowers, the wide-petaled thornfruit