Beyond the Dreams We Know: A Collection Read online

  But she had left her old life behind, and now she was here, and she knew she would go on and not back.

  She was that kind of fool.

  Besides, though she did not wish to leave her home, even less could she endure to stay.

  This was the season of apple blossoms and buzzing bees, the season of gamboling lambs and kid goats and, on her brother’s farm, unsteady long-legged foals. They were fine foals this spring: one colt that was bay with two white feet and a filly that was chestnut with a star on her forehead and a second filly that had been born black but would probably turn gray. Eliet’s brother, Tomas, had been very pleased that two of the three were fillies, particularly the likely gray because her mother was the best of all his mares. The mare’s name was Fly By Night’s Mourning Dove, after her mother, Fly By Night, a long-legged black mare who could not be beaten over a half-mile at either the trot or the gallop. Dove was not the equal of her mother for racing, but she was a fine tall mare, the color of winter ice, with a pretty head and smooth gaits.

  Eliet’s mount was neither so pretty nor so smooth-gaited, though he was also a son of Fly By Night. From his warmblood sire, he had inherited heavy bone and powerful quarters, a thick neck and a plain head. But from that warmblood stallion he had also inherited a kind eye, good sense, and a steady disposition. Like Dove, he was gray, but he was darker: the pewter-gray coloring of a stormy sky, shading to black on his face and feet. His name was Fly By Night’s Ponderous Thunderhead, which was a mouthful and a half. Eliet called him Ponder, which suited him much better. He was a sensible beast, willing and good-natured, not likely to spook or shy at anything no matter how astonishing. That was why Eliet had chosen him from all the horses she might have taken, for all he was neither the handsomest nor the swiftest, and far from the youngest. She patted his neck now, while they both peered ahead past the edge of the forest and along the dim and misty road.

  Eliet patted the horse’s neck again and said aloud, “Good sense, Ponder. That’s what we need now.”

  The gelding stood foursquare with his ears pricked forward, interested and not in the least nervous. So how could Eliet be so poor-spirited as to turn back? When she spoke to him, he leaned gently against the bit and swiveled an ear back toward her, wondering why she hesitated.

  The nearest edge of the great forest always lay near the farm, or almost always. On this misty morning, she had not quite been certain she would find the forest at all. Almost she had thought she would quietly saddle Ponder and quietly lead him out through the yard and quietly mount and ride out the gate and to the track and then at last down the road to the east, and yet find nothing but pastures and ordinary woodlands and perhaps a neighbor’s farm, though ordinarily no other farms lay between theirs and the forest. It was a capricious forest, she knew. Everyone knew that.

  If she had been forced to turn back in defeat, her return to her brother’s farm could never have been so quiet. It she turned back now, having ridden straight up to the forest’s edge and then lost her nerve, it would be well into morning before she reached the stable yard. Everyone would be out about their early tasks. Everyone would see her come up the road. They would have missed her. Tomas, if no one else, would have realized she’d taken not only Ponder but also a loaf of bread and a small round of cheese and a bit of salt pork and a generous measure of grain. He might be able to tell she had taken a change of smallclothes and her second-best dress and the stub of a candle. He would know perfectly well what she had tried to do. The only thing he wouldn’t have guessed was why.

  He would ask her. He would assuredly ask her. She was no longer a shy young girl, but she flinched from imagining how that would go.

  That was the thought that at last made her lift the reins and click her tongue, signaling Ponder that yes, he might go forward into the mist beneath the great trees. He strode out with a will, finding nothing to fear in the green shade or the drifting mist. He was cheerful by nature, was Ponder: cheerful and willing, pleased enough to take an unfamiliar road. He was not afraid of what might lie ahead. The interested way he looked from side to side, fearless and alert, put heart into her.

  Mist had drifted over all the pastures and the low-lying meadows alongside the road, and over the pond and the brook which fed it. But the mist that drifted between the ancient trees was heavier, colder, and more secretive. Eliet flinched from it as she might have flinched from cobwebs, wiping her hands across her face. The moisture clung. The very air was different; no breeze came here beneath the trees, and the air smelled damp and shadowy and green, as though even at noon sunlight might never make its way past the high crowns. She could see only a little distance before them, and when she turned uneasily to look behind, less far still. Yet the road ran smooth before them, and Ponder flicked his ears and strode along with his head high, eager to see where this new road might lead, not in the least worried. Slowly Eliet relaxed, comforted by his evident ease and by the failure of anything exciting to appear out of the mist.

  Ordinary woodlands stood everywhere, stands of timber along hillsides and across rocky slopes between one farm and the next, between one village and the next. Folk gathered dry wood and herbs in the woods, and berries in their season, and nuts in theirs, and set snares for unwary rabbits. Those woodlands were nothing like this. The great forest had depths no one had ever seen, mysteries no one had ever encountered. Every tale Eliet had ever heard came back to her, especially the frightening ones.

  To pass through the forest safely, a traveler must keep to the road. Eliet did not merely desire to pass through, but to gain her heart’s desire. But she did not know what that would require. She did not know whether she would have the courage to leave the road, whatever wonders she might glimpse past the boles of the trees.

  Wonders aplenty were said to be found in this forest: tall slender towers hiding treasures within, guarded by dragons coiled around their foundations; trees with hundreds of lit lanterns dangling from their branches instead of fruit; bottomless pools that reflected not only the sky or the overhanging trees but also the past and the future.

  Eliet had heard many tales. All of them came to mind now. She had heard that in the forest, a traveler might spy a small homey cottage where he might hope for succor. But instead of finding some kind goodwife or woodsman, he would find a family of bears or wolves living there, who would smile with sharp white teeth to see their supper walk up to their home.

  Or a traveler too wise to approach such a cottage might instead glimpse a pearl-colored stag with antlers of gold, that would sing in a beautiful voice and try to lure her into an endless pursuit. Or a boar that spoke in all the tongues of the world and would answer any riddle put to him, always honestly but never helpfully. Or a falcon with feathers of fire, so bright its endless burning could light any darkness.

  Eliet did not intend to approach any tower, dragon-guarded or not; nor be tempted by any cottage, however weary she might grow; nor carelessly intrude on any pool or glade or creature she might encounter. She was surely carrying enough trouble with her; enough and more than enough. She didn’t wish to offer any other a foothold in her life. Yet at the same time, she hoped she would have the wisdom to recognize what chance might offer, and the courage to pursue it, and then the strength to meet whatever challenge she encountered.

  She knew, or at least she had heard and she believed, that the journey along this road’s dim reaches might take days or weeks, sometimes even months, for that was part of the forest’s caprice. But she hoped that for her, with Ponder’s easy company and long stride, the journey would take only a day or two or three, or at least not much longer. It was hard to imagine Ponder stirring himself to pursue a stag of any color, no matter how beautifully it sang; and he would surely know better than to walk carelessly up to a cottage occupied by wolves or bears. For him, perhaps the road too would prove cooperative and easy. Then she might find what she sought and seize it and ride on, through the forest and out the other side, to the City at the heart of the Kingdom,
where she might build her new life out of whatever chance and wit and courage put into her way.

  But for a long time Eliet had no sense that they were making any progress at all. The great trees stood shadowy and secret to either side, veiled by the mist, unchanging whenever she looked about her. The road curved gently up low hills and down again, and sometimes it led her around a soft curve to the right hand or the left, but always the great trees seemed the same; and the light neither brightened nor changed, and she saw neither wonders nor anything to fear. Indeed, she began to be more bored than anxious, and watched Ponder’s gently nodding head and small alert ears rather than the forest which seemed always the same.

  Then at last, after a time that might have been hours or even days, without any particular sense of anything changing, she realized that the mist had after all lifted and cleared and that small dapples of sunlight now glimmered on the road and among the trees to either side of the road, and that the air had grown warm. She found could see much farther into the forest to the left hand and the right. Then of course she could hardly resist looking, first one way and then the other, searching for towers or white stags or any other wonders.

  She saw nothing but endless trees.

  The trees that pressed close to the road were so large that it would have taken half a dozen men to wrap their arms about their gnarled trunks. Each looked a thousand years old, and probably was. Many were so tall that often the first branches stretched out far above Eliet’s head, so she hoped she would have no reason to try to climb one. Even if she stood on Ponder’s back, she thought she would be unable to reach even the lowest of those branches. Far above, the mist still drifted here and there.

  The leaves in this season were new and soft, green above and silver underneath. In shape the leaves were much like those of oaks. But the leaves of these trees entirely lacked the reddish tint of new oak leaves. The light that filtered past and through them was a pure and delicate green. That light almost made Eliet think of what it might be like to ride beneath the waters of a lake, with silvery fishes overhead instead of birds. Though at first she saw no birds, even when she looked. But once she began to listen, she thought she heard one, not too far off, low to the ground. Its call was a little like that of a towhee, but with a deeper tone and a musical ripple of notes at the end. A little later, as she continued to look up and around, she saw a little bird, an ordinary nuthatch, making its way headfirst down the trunk of one of the great trees. The birds, visible and invisible, made her feel happier, like she rode through a real place and not a dream forest drenched in silence and peril.

  In the autumn, the leaves of these trees turned flame orange and gold and burning red, and even now glints of all those colors showed on the earth between the great knobby roots that thrust up. Spring flowers also spangled the forest floor: six-petaled opalescent white flowers smaller than Eliet’s thumbnail opened in little clusters above bluish palm-shaped foliage; here and there sky-blue flowers shaped like bells, streaked with pink inside their throats, quivered atop stalks as long as her hand. Colonies of mayapples, familiar and comforting, spread the wide jagged parasols of their leaves above their single white flowers. These too put heart into her. She would not have dared pick even a common mayapple, would not have dared leave the road to gather any flowers, no matter how unusual or lovely, but the flowers, like the birds, made the forest feel more welcoming.

  Ponder might have felt the same, or might have responded to Eliet’s gradual relaxation. Either way he shifted from his easy trot to a swinging walk, unhurried but more ground-covering than it seemed.

  Eliet saw neither bear nor wolf and no cottage where either might lair. She saw neither a white stag nor an ordinary hind, neither a rabbit nor a squirrel nor any common woodland creature. But at least there were the birds. An ordinary-seeming wren called from a twig overhead, and far above she heard the shrill cry of a hawk.

  Ponder strode along with a will, tireless on this wide and easy road. Up a long, low slope and down again; high-stepping over the occasional tumbling stream that crossed the road or even more occasional heavy roots that had thrust up across the traveler’s path. In an ordinary woodland, there would be fallen trees here and there, including some that had fallen across the road. In an ordinary woodland, travelers had to now and then make a new way around a fallen tree, or waggoneers had to get out axes to clear such obstacles out of the way. Eventually Eliet realized the oddity that here in this forest no trees appeared to have fallen at all, except long ago, for very occasionally she glimpsed a long low shape, moss-covered and gently moldering away. But these were never close to the road.

  “The road is meant for travelers, of course,” she murmured to herself, out loud. One of Ponder’s ears swiveled back toward her, in case she meant to say anything useful about apples or chunks of carrot or anything else of interest to a sensible horse.

  Then a voice said, near at hand and utterly unexpected, “Certainly many travelers find it more comfortable to think so.”

  Eliet nearly fell off Ponder’s back, which would have been deeply embarrassing as well as awkward and possibly bruising. She grabbed his black mane to steady herself, looking wildly around to find the speaker. Images of boars who spoke in riddles and golden-antlered stags tumbled through her mind, but at first she saw no one, not even an enchanted boar or stag. Ponder had halted when she scrambled for balance, waiting for Eliet to figure out whether she was frightened, or should be. His ears were hard forward with interest, and though he blew lightly through flared nostrils, he seemed more curious than alarmed. He lifted one of his front feet an inch or so and then the other, setting each hoof in turn down exactly in the same place from which he had lifted it, as though he were considering whether he should take alarm and bolt, but thought, on the whole, that there was no need.

  Following the direction of her horse’s attention, Eliet at last found the one who had so startled her.

  It was a large serpent, larger than any rat snake or corn snake she had ever glimpsed in the barns and stables. If it had uncoiled itself, she guessed it would be longer than she was tall—possibly much longer. Its head, broader than her hand, did not have the blocky triangular shape of a viper. It was jet black, with an intricate lacey pattern of gold decorating the scales of its throat and belly. Its eyes were a rich, molten gold, like the light of the sun caught in an autumn leaf, with narrow pupils like slits into night. The serpent was coiled about the branch of a tree beside the road, an unusually low branch but not too near. It was a little above the level of Ponder’s head, nearly at eye level for Eliet, but far enough away that it could not possibly strike either of them.

  Now that she saw it, she couldn’t understand how she hadn’t realized it was there long before, for the serpent was by no means camouflaged against the gray bark. She knew of no serpent of such coloring among the common snakes of woodland and field and stable, but then she already knew this serpent was none of the common sorts. Besides, though Ponder would trample a snake if he could, he did not seem alarmed by this one.

  She knew at once that it was the serpent that had spoken to her, even though she had never heard any tale of serpents that spoke in human language. She wasn’t certain whether she should answer, or whether it might be more prudent to lower her head, fix her gaze on the road, and ride on by as though she had never heard a thing.

  Except no tale she could remember, of any of the wonders or terrors of this forest, suggested that it would be better to pretend the wonders and terrors were not there. And so far, at least, the serpent did not seem precisely unfriendly. Though there had been nothing friendly or reassuring about what it had said, either.

  She managed at last, in a voice only a little too quick and high in pitch, “Is the road then not meant for travelers?”

  The serpent tilted its broad, flat head, regarding her from unreadable golden eyes. “Is the earth meant to yield a harvest of wheat? Are the summer rains meant to succor the thirsty? Does the sun rise so that those who need
light may see?”

  Eliet blinked. She thought all those things were true, except that she thought she heard mockery in the serpent’s tone, if not malice. This made her wonder. Its voice was sweet and husky, not as she would have imagined the voice of a serpent. Its flickering tongue was long and black, and its delicate fangs, visible as it spoke, as long as a woman’s thumb. She said stubbornly, “No one makes the earth or the rain or the sun, but a road is a made thing. It is meant for the use of travelers, or there is no reason for it to be made at all.”

  The serpent asked her, “Is a child born to be a consolation to its mother?”

  Eliet stared at it. Ponder dipped his head, mouthing the bit uncomfortably, and she realized she had tightened her grip on the reins. She eased her hold and tried to answer sensibly, and with reasonable courtesy considering to whom she spoke, “A child may be a consolation, but that is not why it is born.”

  “Just so,” said the serpent in its sweet voice. “Yet a child is both a burden and a consolation. A grief and a misery; a comfort and a delight. Or so it may be. Even now you carry within you a child aborning, and is this not a burden and a terror and a solace and a plea? I will give you advice if you wish it.”

  If she had been on her own, on foot, Eliet might have been too afraid to listen. But every word the serpent spoke was true—and she had come into the forest to find her heart’s desire. When she had eased her hold on the reins, Ponder had lifted his nose toward the serpent, his attitude all of curiosity and friendly interest. Eliet took courage from that. She set one hand flat on his neck, drawing comfort from his warm strength. She said firmly, “I would be glad to hear your advice, if the price you ask for it is not too dear.”