Iylaine finds the stone

In years past Iylaine had always delighted in the autumn, but this one seemed unbearably ugly to her. She was older and believed herself a little wiser. She had changed unalterably since the last fall, and now, she thought, that she had lost the spotless innocence of a child, she could see the ugliness and the decay behind all the things she had once loved.

Always before she had liked to watch the charcoal burners as they tended the seething barrows that they built up like pagan tombs to undying fire-​​kings, but this year she hated their smutty smoke, hated the smudges of soot that every flat surface left on her clothes, and hated the way her hair reeked of the smoldering pyres.

Always before she had liked to climb the old apple trees in apple-​​time, for she was more nimble even in her dress than any boy. She would dangle her feet and pick and eat the fallow and the crimson apples until she grew faint with a sweet sickness, but this year when she went into the orchards, she could only see the rotten windfall apples scattered across the turf, slumping in their dark skins, warm and stinking and adin with the buzz of wasp wings.

Always before she had looked up to the trees in the weeks of their greatest majesty, when they glowed with every color of a clear fire and stood with the bluest skies of the year behind, but this year her gaze hung low, and she saw only the smothering blanket of dead leaves that fell upon the spindly October weeds. She saw how the rain beat them down into a thick mat, many layers deep. When she dug into it with her toe she saw how the black mold had already begun to spread beneath the glistening surface, and in the mornings she saw how the crystals of frost had already begun gathering there in preparation for winter’s long siege of the valley.

They had not long to wait. She had seen the harvest in and the leaves turn. This was the seventy-​​eighth sunset she had seen since Malcolm had gone away. Soon the last of the leaves would have fallen, and then the world would be ugly indeed. Perhaps he would not return.

Iylaine longed to run: she longed to leave the sooty smoke and the sweet-​​stinking orchards and the stubble fields behind. But Gunnilda had told her she must not run.

She must not run, she must not ride, she must not swim, she must not make the butter, and she must not touch the curing hams. She couldn’t tell her why, but it was what her mother had told her, and her mother before her, and so on back to Eve, as far as Gunnilda knew, who was told by the Lord Himself that her sorrow would be greatly multiplied.

The butter wouldn’t come, she had been told, and the hams would spoil if she touched them. For the rest, Iylaine was left to her imagination, and in her imagination she was a careless step away from horror. She supposed that if she jostled her insides on horseback, or even in a mad gallop on her own two feet, she would surely die in a welter of blood. It was a miracle she had not died the last time, three months before, when she had run as if she meant to escape her own body. Perhaps she very nearly had.

This time she had waited several days before she even dared walk a distance, but finally she had found the house unbearable. There was all the smoke, all the time spent indoors, all the hard work of putting up food for the winter months, but worst of all was that Wynna had learned her secret.

Iylaine already suspected that Gunnilda had told her father – he had looked at her so strangely these last days – but now that Wynna knew, Osgyth would know, and once Osgyth knew, all the world would.

The nights came so soon now; even before supper the sunset was only a smear of red in the dark sky, and the many stars were overhead. The sunset too seemed ugly, this seventy-​​eighth, and it was only the gathering night that seemed clear and pure. The stars glittered sharply like spikes of frost and made the air seem colder than it was.

The stars and the sky were clean, and she lifted her face to them, but when she took a deep breath she smelled the smoke of the filthy charcoal fires again, and she lowered her head and walked on. She would miss supper, but even eating seemed sordid to her. How she hated her body! How she longed to leave it, to be clean and pure like a star! But not in a welter of blood. She walked on, but slowly.

She realized that she was following her usual path up the hill and along the brook to the great three-​​armed willow tree, and for a moment she hesitated. She had not come in many days, for it had been raining at first, and then, after what Gunnilda had told her, she had not dared to walk any greater distance than that between the house and the barn.

More than that, though her shame was such that she had not dared even think of it yet, she did not want to see her cousin just then. The last time, he had surprised her when she had come sobbing to a clearing, seeking solitude above all else – and he had come sneaking into it. She did not know whether he had guessed, or whether he had some way of knowing, but the mere thought that he might have was a humiliation to her.

She had forgiven him, and she had come many times since to move the black stone from the hollow to the earth, but now that the shame was upon her again, she hesitated.

The last smudge of sunset had gone out, and the sky was dark from horizon to horizon. Her eyes were good – better than any man’s – but all color had bled from the world, and there was no more glory in the trees overhead than in the slick mat of dead of leaves beneath her feet.

The autumn was ugly and sordid, and she could still smell the smoke of the charcoal burners’ fires even at this distance. It was no use trying to flee. But she had come this far, and she could always move the stone – it was not the same as seeing him.

The leaves were dark at the base of the willow, and she could not see whether the dark stone lay upon them, but surely, she thought, he had passed in the week or ten days since she had last come. She groped blindly in the hollow for a moment, and found perhaps ten days of withered leaves and other litter within, but her hand soon closed over the cold stone. He had come.

She removed the stone and held it tightly between her palms, but far from her face, and she paid it no more attention. She had never dared kiss or caress the stone as she sometimes longed to do. She was not certain he would not be able to know of it. Perhaps elfin magic could even make stones speak. She leaned her cheek against the deeply furrowed bark of the willow instead, for she knew that willows never whispered the secrets they were told.

She held the stone until it had no more coolness to impart to her hands, and then she laid it gently upon the dark earth. It seemed to glow softly with the heat it had stolen from her. This did not seem strange to her at first. It took her a moment to realize that the stone was not dark but pale – not black but pink.