No one, mortal, immortal, or creatures beyond the knowledge of either, can belong to two worlds. This was the change she had seen in him when he came after her.
And so, when they had her parents’ blessing—and she knew now that they would receive it, for it would be the last thing her dear parents would be able to do for their daughter—they would look for a new world. Perhaps it would be a world like the minstrel’s she had seen, striding over green hills that were always the same and always different. “How did you find me?” she thought, and he answered: “I saw you in the water of the rivers that flow from your lands to ours; I heard you in the wind that blew in your window before it blew in mine.” “But you did not know my world,” she thought. “No,” his reply came; “I knew nothing of your world.”
They walked on until it grew dark; and Linadel, at last, realized she was tired, and had to stop. By the last rays of the sun they found a tree whose branches hung low under the weight of round yellow fruit; and a stream ran beside the tree. Linadel sat down with a sigh, and they ate the sweet fruit and drank the cold water, and watched the sky over the trees turn rosy, and fade to amber touched with grey; and then black at last, and when Linadel turned her head she could see his profile against the dark trees only because she could remember how it went. She fell asleep sitting up, while he, not accustomed to sleep or the need for it, thought about how he had lived till now, and what would come to him next, and how Linadel had always been a part of everything. Her head nodded forward, and he caught her in his arms as she crumpled to the grass.
When Alora awoke at last, Gilvan saw with a relief that made his knees bend that she was still Alora: her gaze was weak but clear, and she looked around for him at once, knowing that he would be there. He sat down abruptly on the edge of their bed, and when she felt for his hand it was as cold and strengthless as hers. They felt each other’s blood begin to flow again in the touching palms; but with the blood came tears: Linadel, their Linadel, was gone.
“We will look for her,” Alora said at last. “We must look for her. No one has ever thought to look.”
Gilvan thought about this; in the long narrow well of their grief, it seemed perfectly reasonable, and that no one had ever sought a faerie-stolen child before was irrelevant. “Where shall we begin?”
Alora sat up. “I will show you. Where are my clothes?”
Her ladies-in-waiting, then the gentlemen of the King’s Inner Chambers, then the courtiers, ministers, special ambassadors, Lords of the King’s Outer Chambers, Ladies of the Royal Robes and Seals, visiting noblemen and their families—who were a little slower than the rest to hear about anything that happened since they were unfamiliar with palace routine—and at last even the pageboys, the downstairs servants, and the entire kitchen staff, none of whom had ever thought to question their monarchs in the slightest detail hitherto—all protested vehemently, desperately, when the King and Queen emerged from their private bedroom and, pale but composed, declared that they were going in search of their daughter.
They were dressed as though they might be a woodcutter and his wife, except that each wore the gold chain of office that a king or queen was expected to wear (except in the bath) until the day each retired. The Keepers of the Wardrobe, even through their sorrow, were startled that the King and Queen could even find such plain clothes to put on.
“No good will come of this,” all wailed at them, forgetting in their grief that they were daring to disagree, even hysterically disagree, with their sovereigns. “No good will come of anything that has to do with the faeries,” all said, weeping and pulling their hair and patting at the Queen’s skirts and the King’s knees. “What if we lose you too?” The last was at first a murmur, since these people, like people everywhere, believed that bad luck—which in this land meant faeries—may come to investigate discussions of bad luck; but it took hold, and more and more of the grief-mad palace residents gave up, and spoke it aloud, and it swelled till it might have become a panic.
“There is nothing to suggest that you are going to,” said the King, patiently, or at least nearly so; and the Queen, who perhaps understood despair a little better than her husband, said, “Those who are so upset at the idea that they can’t stay home may come with us; but only on the condition that they will be quiet.”
Gilvan gave his wife only one brief weary look at this, but he could follow the sense behind it, so he said merely: “You will have a very long walk of it, anyone who does come.”
But the King’s patience and the Queen’s tenderness, which were perhaps a little obviously delivered as to a crowd of foolish children, had their effect. There was a pause as everyone looked at everyone else, and Alora and Gilvan resignedly overlooked them all. “Let me at least make you some sandwiches,” said the Chief Cook, at last; and she wiped her eyes on her white apron and disappeared below. Most of her undercooks and assistants slowly detached themselves from the crowd and followed her; and those who remained sat down, and most of them put their heads in their hands. A few spoke to their particular friends in low tones, and several went to the kitchens themselves to ask that they be provided with sandwiches too. A great many of these were made at last, and put in knapsacks with apples and other food that might reasonably survive being banged about in pockets and on shoulders; and some clever person suggested that everybody should bring a blanket—and when the King and Queen finally set out, about twenty of their court, all of whom were excellent walkers, went with them. Alora and Gilvan carried their own bundles, and such was the morale of the party that no one dared try to seek that honor for themselves.
Alora led them to the meadow where she and Linadel had seen the small blue flowers years ago. They startled a small herd of aradel, which fled silently, eyes wide and tails high, veering away from the forest directly ahead of them and entering the trees at the royal party’s right hand. Alora stood at the center of the meadow and turned her head first one way and then the other as if she were listening; Gilvan stood near her, hands in pockets, staring at the sky and squinting, but more, it seemed, at his thoughts than at the sunlight. “This way,” she said at last, and led the royal herd into the forest also; but not the way the aradel had gone.
They were deep in the woods when the light began to fail them, and they made a camp of blankets and addressed themselves to the sandwiches. There was a tiny stream that twisted through the trees near where they lay; the water was sweet, and with patience one could fill a water-bottle. The King himself built a fire and lit it—and it burnt. Everybody was impressed, which did not please Gilvan: he knew perfectly well he could build a proper fire that would burn, and continue to burn, and not splutter and smoke, even if he was a king. Somebody produced some packets of tea, and somebody’s friend turned out to be wearing a tin pot, suitable for boiling water in, under his curiously shaped hat.