The White Hart

by Nancy Springer

  HE HAS BROKEN ME, TRAMPLED ME DOWN.

  A healer, a chivalrous warrior, the most loyal of followers to my brother—I had been great, in my way. At the very least I had been good. And now all that was gone, it seemed. My heart was full of spleen.

  WHY HAS HE HURT US? WHY?

  What was I to do, how could I live—

  HUSH, the fern flower said. THE SWAN LORD HAS COME AT LAST. LOOK, HE WEEPS.

  BUT HOW CAN THAT BE?

  THE SWAN LORD, A DESTROYER? IT WAS SAID HE WOULD BE A HEALER—

  I TELL YOU, IT IS HE. The voice of the fern flower shivered through me, warm.

  BUT WHY HAS HE HURT US?

  PAIN IS IN THE PATTERN. Oh, the love, the gentle forgiveness in those words. My eyes were closed in agony, but I heard.

  HEALING IS FOR WHOLENESS. WAIT AND SEE.

  A rustling went through the forest like the stirring of leaves before dawn.

  THE SWAN LORD! one soft voice said.

  THE SWAN LORD HAS COME! breathed another.

  BUT IF IT IS HE—

  IT IS HE. That flameflower, that voice like a lover’s—

  THEN IT IS TRUE WHAT HAS BEEN SAID, THAT THE SEED WILL BE SPREAD.

  IT IS TRUE. Words vibrant with joy.

  THE MAIDEN GOES TO BRIDEBED!

  AT LAST WE WILL BE HEARD!

  There was more, a paean of rejoicing, but I remember it only confusedly. Something was happening. The fiery pain in my hand was easing, but that was the least of it. A sense of strong comfort was coming to me. The pattern—I was very tired, and I could not think of the things Maeve had told me. I could think only of a quiet lake, a fair black swan with a reflection of white. Healing is for wholeness.… A face floated into view.

  I opened my eyes. It was there before me, calm, almost smiling, the face on the surface of the dark. It was—was it really my own freckled visage? But it was beautiful, as beautiful as Dair’s! As I gasped it rippled and blurred, fading.

  “Wait!” I cried, I wanted to shout, though my voice came out a husky whisper. “Please—” It was awash as if in tears. “Please stay,” I begged. It was dark and lovely, and it was me, mine or part of me. In that moment I could not bear to lose it.

  I AM NOT GONE, it said gently. I AM IN YOU, FOR YOU HAVE ACCEPTED ME. REST NOW. SLEEP. And it swam away.

  Away or within—at once the words comforted me. I lay down on the ground, my face nestled to loamy earth, the fern flower held close to my side, and for a few hours I slept. I remember that sleep as deep and refreshing, and yet it was full of dreams. Voices chanted in my dreams.

  THE TURN OF THE TIDE

  THE MAIDEN GOES TO BRIDEBED

  THE TURN OF THE GREAT TIDE

  THE MAIDEN GIVES THE SEED

  THE TIME OF DEATHLESS PEACE

  THE WILLING SACRIFICE

  GIVING, LIVING

  THE MAIDEN TAKES THE SEED

  I dreamed that it was a woman who lay by my side, a woman fair as a flower, all clothed in petals of light. Petals caressed my face, her lips brushed my face, and they burned like fire. “The kiss of the goddess,” she said. “You will not always be a virgin, Frain.” My tears ran down and mingled with her fire, and the two together made a new and lovely thing. I dreamed again. I saw the midnight swan, the white swan and the golden swan, the sunswan in my dreams, and then I awoke, full of the feeling of blessing. It was just dawn.

  Dawn. It had been a rather short and crowded night. The sun comes up early on Midsummer’s Day. I got up, blinked in the dewy light and looked at what I held in my hand.

  A length of fern, the most delicate of ferns, and on the stem a single flower. I had never seen any flower like it, even amid all the wonders of the Source. It was all the colors of sunflame, crimson and cloud pink and ruddy gold, and it held its petals cupped like sacral hands. The calyx was of copper color, and just at the heart of the flower I saw a fine-veined stain of blood red, so red it looked as if it were moist—perhaps it was. I didn’t dare touch.

  THE DAYSPRING COMES, sang the wind.

  LIFT HIGH YOUR HEADS, flowers told each other. SPREAD YOUR PETALS WIDE.

  HEY HOOTOO HOOTOO GOOD DAY! shouted a pied bird.

  Sunlight touched the upper leaves of the trees.

  “Have I hurt you?” I whispered to the fern flower, speaking in a tongue that was not my own, a far more ancient tongue, the Old Language—it had come to me, and I had hardly noticed amid all the terrors and marvels of the night.

  EVERYONE HURTS SOMETHING SOMETIME.

  “I am very sorry,” I faltered.

  BUT WHY? I AM MEANT TO BE YOURS.

  Not mine—Maeve’s! With a start I plunged off to find her. I had strayed a long way from the Tree. I found a stream and drank from it, then followed it back to the Very Source. It took at least an hour at the best speed I could muster. When I got there at last, Maeve was still sitting where I had left her, leaning against the Tree with Dair’s head in her lap. I hurried up and knelt before her.

  “Your flower,” I said. “Maeve, here is your flower. Look.”

  She only gazed back at me with a small, glad smile. She didn’t move.

  “Take it,” I urged. “It will let you talk again. Alys said so. Here.”

  THERE IS NO NEED, she said. She spoke to me as the flower had—her voice sounded right inside my head. That was the way the dragons had talked to Tirell.… I stared at her openmouthed.

  HELP DAIR, she said.

  Dair! He had to be dead. After all the killing I had done, could he still be alive? But he was, his breathing shallow and shaky, his face toadbelly gray.

  I thrust the fern flower at Maeve. “Hold that for me,” I muttered. I gathered Dair up into my one-armed embrace and pressed us both hard against the mighty metal Tree. Then I waited, feeling as empty as a dry shell on the seashore. My night of rage and anguish had left me purged, but what was to fill me again? Love was not enough.

  “Alys,” I whispered. “Aftalun.”

  Dair could not wait long.

  “Moon and Sun—”

  Wolf and dog, she had said. Night and day. Wholeness.… All the Source seemed hushed, breath-holding, even the laughing bird.

  “Almighty One!”

  The tide rolled in.

  The power rushed and surged in me or through me, from far beyond or deep within, from the World Tree, the world, the sky, the flood beneath, drumming, beating, unbearable, my eyes saw only white fire—it was fire, fire and the flood; I can describe it no other way. It was a torment and an ecstasy, as always, as I remembered it from years before, but never so strong before, and so long, never! I thought I would die, and I knew Dair would live, and I forced myself to hold him to the Tree, not to tear away; I was crying like a virgin on her wedding night with pain and joy. Healing, healing power—then it was gone, leaving me drained and weak, as always—though never so weak before—and Dair was sitting up against the Tree, tanned and healthy, looking back at me in bewilderment.

  “Dair!” I hugged him with all the feeble strength that was left in me. I never wanted to let go of him. “Dair, you’re alive! I thought you were dead—Dair!” I remembered further cause for joy. “Dair, talk to me, say something! I can understand you now, truly I can! We can really talk together after all this time—” I drew back a little to look at him. His mouth was moving soundlessly. He seemed stunned. I glimpsed Maeve off to one side, smiling as broadly as I had ever seen her. I ignored her.

  “Dair, would you say something?” I pleaded. “Cat got your tongue?”

  Frain, you idiot, haven’t you noticed—you’re mauling me with both arms!

  The twist was gone out of my left shoulder. My left hand rose to greet me. I stared at it, unbelieving, reached over with the other one and touched it, felt firm muscles and flesh. There was a ragged scar on the left wrist, white and healed. There was a white weal across the palm of the right hand where I had held the fern flower, and they told me later there was a small white crescent mark on my face. Nothing bled, not
hing hurt. Dair touched my raised left hand with his own.

  “You’ve healed yourself as well,” Maeve said gently, coming to my side. She could talk after all, it seemed. It was all a bit too much for me. White fire flashed before my eyes again, and I fainted.

  Chapter Six

  The fern flower did not wilt. It continued to bloom where it lay on the grass; if anything, it grew larger and more lovely. I know, for I sat and watched it for days, lazing about and picking up twigs and things with my left hand for the sheer joy of it, stretching the arm and flexing the fingers. Hand and arm were as able as they had ever been. And Dair was as strong and well as he had ever been. I was very weak, but that was to be expected and it would pass. Dair and Maeve fussed over me enormously. I liked that, but best of all I liked it when they sat with me and talked. We talked for hours every day. None of us could get enough of it.

  I was halfway to somewhere else, Dair said. It was as if I were flying overhead, circling the World Tree and looking down on my body lying beneath it. You picked me up, and I could not feel the embrace, but I saw the—tears on your face.…

  That reminded me of Tirell so strongly that I almost wept again. All my anger against him was gone. I felt that I understood him now. Truth is a fearsome thing, and he had faced it in the end, as I had.

  Then the sun scorched me suddenly and drove me back, Dair said.

  I looked at him curiously. “Was it hard to fly?”

  No! It is lovely. Well, you know I have done it before. He laughed, a blithe, barking sound. Odd—I had so much trouble standing on my own two human feet, but none at all taking wing. I think the seasickness cured me of all such ailments at once.

  I looked up at the World Tree and the misty sky beyond, wondering if I would ever be able to fly with such ease. “We all pay one way or another,” I muttered.

  Yes. Dair inched closer. Frain, this brother Tirell of yours—

  Now, how had he known I was thinking of Tirell? “He paid,” I said.

  Yes. So did Trevyn. He smiled in that eerie, wolfish way of his. I no longer minded it.

  “They are very much alike.”

  Yes. I have heard that Trevyn was a proper headstrong young fool—

  “He certainly was!” Maeve broke in, hearing the name. She came over to us from where she had been peeling fruit nearby. “I think Trevyn and Tirell are twins of a sort, or reflections. Light and dark—Isle and Vale are both magical. Bright or black, magic is yet magic.” She handed me a piece of fruit and frowned. “Frain, get something on your feet. You’ll catch cold, worn out as you are.” She went and fetched Dair’s discarded shirt and came at me with it.

  “Maeve,” I said in mild annoyance, “I am all right. Why must you always be mothering me?”

  She put the confounded rag on my feet and looked me full in the face. “With me it is a choice between mothering and coupling,” she said.

  “Oh.” I swallowed. “Well, mother me as much as you like.”

  Sometime early in my convalescence the griffin came bounding into the meadow on its lion legs, talons upraised, stunning in the light, so golden. I thought it had come to punish me for the sake of the green things I had attacked. I knew I would not resist it, so I did not move as it ran up to me. Nor did Dair, who sat beside me.

  “I am sorry,” I told the griffin. “I have given my apology to all of them, and my word. It will not happen again.”

  To my astonishment the griffin arched its leonine body and touched its great beak to the earth at my feet. My lord, it said, your pardon. You have come at last, and I did not recognize you.

  “I am no lord,” I said.

  Ah, but you are. Lonn D’Aerie.…

  It was my name in the Old Language, meaning Swan Lord; I knew that by now. Elfin name or true-name, Dair called it. He had a true-name as well, but it was just his own—Dair. Everything about him was true.

  I am greatly honored and relieved, the griffin said, still gracefully bowing. I thought I had let in a destroyer, and all has come to good nevertheless. My lord, am I free to go?

  “I am no lord,” I said.

  Anyone can see that you are the greatest of lords. Please, good Lonn D’Aerie, my dismissal.…

  “Certainly,” I said dazedly. “Go.”

  It arose, wheeled and bounded off, let out one metallic cry and vanished into the forest. I turned to Dair.

  “I am no lord,” I half pleaded. But he only grinned at me in that aggravating way of his.

  I let the matter drift out of my mind. I was not ready to deal with this lordship, whatever it was. For several days I lay in abeyance, letting the future take vague form in my dreams. I would return to Vale, I thought. I would be able to face Tirell now, maybe even bring about some sort of accord between him and Shamarra. Perhaps Dair and Maeve would come with me; I hated to think of parting from them.… I began to walk, to exercise myself, and I found that I could venture a little farther each day.

  One morning I noticed that the fern flower’s exquisite petals were bent far back, that they were turning fawn brown at the edges.

  “You are dying!” I exclaimed. “But why?”

  I AM NOT DYING IN THE USUAL CUT-FLOWER WAY, it said primly. I AM PREPARING SEED.

  I remembered something about seed. “How is it to be spread?” I asked. “The wind?”

  YOU WILL TAKE IT, I SUPPOSE. YOU ARE MY LORD. The fern flower droned happily to itself, a honey-humming sound. MY SCIONS WILL FLOWER THROUGHOUT THE WORLD, CONFER THE POWER …

  I turned away lest I say something impolite. I was getting tired of this “lord” business, and I did not want to spend the rest of my immortal life plodding about planting seeds.

  SONG OF THE ONE WILL SOUND ONCE MORE.

  Seedsong be damned. I had been wandering for years; I very much wanted to go back to my homeland and stay there. A lord, indeed! I was Alys’s fool, as always, unless I was Shamarra’s. I caught sight of a hootoo bird and kicked at a clod of lush grass before I could stop myself.

  LONN D’AERIC, said a familiar voice, THERE IS NO NEED TO SULK.

  I spun about in startled recognition. It was the leafy vastness above me, the World Tree, I knew that. But the voice, aloof and amused and tender all at once.…

  “Alys?” I cried.

  “So, you know me these days.” She sounded almost friendly. “I am here, as I am everywhere. I have always been within compass of your call, Frain. Can you see that now?”

  “Yes,” I whispered.

  “Do not be so afraid. You have done well, splendidly well. I would be honored even to have you banging at me with rocks again.”

  I blushed and said nothing. Dair and Maeve came up to stand beside me.

  “You have earned your wings, Lonn D’Aeric, Swan Lord,” said Alys. “Let wings take you wherever you wish to go, with my blessing. Your quest is done.”

  “But—” I stopped, mired in ignorance.

  “What is it?”

  “The fern flower said—”

  “You have done your part.” She sounded amused again. “The task of spreading the seed belongs to the wandering wolf here.”

  He was a man at the moment. Me? he said, rather stupidly.

  “Yes, indeed, Dair. Have you forgotten already? Are you not Trevyn’s son? He brought the magic back to Isle, and you shall bring a better magic back to the mainland world, an understanding for all people, not just a special few. You have been a part of the One’s greatest dream, you three travelers. Maeve understands these things when she is thinking, but you two—” Alys began to sound annoyed. “Frain, will you consider only that insignificant Vale? And Dair! You know you have been born for something special. Will you never give a thought to anything except your friend here and your next meal?”

  I stole a glance at him. The look on his face was tragic.

  “Oh, come, now.” Alys’s tone softened. “You do well enough, Dair. You are a creature of instinct, wolfwit, I know that.”

  Am I no longer to follow Frain at all? D
air whispered, stricken. I reached over and put an arm around him; I had to. There was a long silence.

  “You may follow him yet a little while,” the goddess said at last. “You will know when the time comes to leave him.”

  “And I am done?” I asked.

  “Yes. Fly away, Frain.”

  “And Maeve?”

  “She knows her destiny as well as I do. Ask her.” The tone was one of dismissal. Golden leaves rustled as if with the passing of a spirit, then were still.

  “Goodbye, Mother,” Maeve murmured. “For now.”

  I looked at her. Though she seemed very old to me—as she had looked old ever since she had confronted Alys for my sake—in that moment she did not seem old in the dying way. Maeve reminded me of the fern flower. She seemed pregnant with something, full.

  “One final form for me,” she said in answer to my glance. She smiled in that gentle way of hers. “My quest is over, Frain. I will remain here, and my life will end here. Not everyone is so fortunate, to come back to their Source for life’s completion.”

  “Are you thinking of going up as a dragonfly, perhaps?” I asked, trying to match her soft, unimpassioned tone.

  “No, I am not to fly, Frain. You are the flyer. Will you soon be ready?”

  I looked away to the western distance, to where the dark green treetop canopy turned bluish and met the mist. “A few days, I think.”

  “When you are ready, I will show you.”

  I walked and ate and slept and dreamed. Wings flickered in my dreams. The fern flower turned limp and entirely brown, a nut-brown seedpod growing amidst the withered petals. Then the petals fell away. The pod was firm and full. One day I felt the strength and urgency that told me it was time to fly. I went to Maeve. She looked at me and nodded, then handed the seedpod to Dair.

  “It will never be depleted,” she said. “It will last you till world’s end.” Then in a quite different tone she added, “Son, let me kiss you—”

  Dair did not know how to kiss. He let her kiss him, and he nuzzled her wordlessly.

  “Now.…” said Maeve, and she closed her eyes.

  She did it so well, so beautifully. Her hair turned to feathers the color of polished bronze; they lapped around her neck like a warrior’s mail, and a fringe of mane grew below. Her face was that of an eagle, with a great ivory beak; her hands were gleaming talons. With intense clarity I noticed the amber tufts of feathers just above them, floating airily, the feathery tuft of hair at the end of her leonine tail. She was all colors of gold, shining sungold and burnished bronze; she was a griffin and she settled in her place at the roots of the Tree, its guardian.