“He was a good man, a noble man,” Emory said finally. “I hope I can step well into the path he forged. With you at my side.”
He had said something like that before, when first she came to consciousness in his arms—You are my destiny, and I am yours.
Ama did not know how to respond to this; she was not certain what he meant by it, though she suspected. And a little flame in her spurted up—Do I have no say in this matter?—but she said nothing of this kind.
Instead she said, “And your father’s horse? What of him?”
“He is dead, of course,” Emory answered. “The horse goes with the rider.”
Ama’s eyes went to Reynard, afield by the river, and for a moment it was as if his skin had been flayed back, and there was a skeleton, bones on fire, where the horse should have been.
But then she squeezed her eyes shut, and opened them again, and the horse was there, as he should be, brown pelt dappled in sunlight, placid and perfectly fine.
Ama’s Braids
The next morning, when they returned to the road, they sat both astride the horse, Ama in front and Emory pressed behind her, his arms reaching around her sides to hold the reins.
She liked the way he felt, nestled along the length of her body, her head fitting into the nook of his neck, his chest forming a rest upon which for her to lean, each of his legs cupping each of hers. At the small of her back was the waxing and waning of him, sometimes hard, sometimes soft, and either way Ama pretended not to notice.
It was a fine day. The sky, at first just patches of light between trees, widened to a great blue expanse as the day went on and the forest thinned into field. Reynard seemed to have benefited as much from the day of rest as Ama did; he trotted along, knees high, nostrils flared, and he delighted in spooking himself when a squirrel ran across their path.
“Easy,” said Emory, but his tone was light; his voice seemed as playful as Reynard’s gait.
That morning, before they’d started down the trail, Emory had handed Ama a wide-toothed silver comb she had not noticed before. She liked the way it glinted in the light, and she turned it over in her hands several times, admiring it, until Emory had said, “In case you’d like to arrange your hair,” and then Ama realized that she was meant to run it through her tangles.
She had felt her hair and blushed; it was matted from the fever and the river, and it had not occurred to her in the least that it was something she should tend to. But she took the comb and ran it through, picking out the knots, until the teeth no longer caught. Her hair was longer than Emory’s; his fell just to his shoulders, though in curls, and hers reached near to her waist.
“May I?” said Emory, and she had nodded, and he had taken her hair in his hands and plaited it into two long braids. “It’s a womanish thing to know how to do,” Emory admitted, “but when I was a boy my mother allowed me to dress her hair, from time to time.” He tied each braid with a piece of leather torn from the piece he used to gather his own hair.
So, when the wind came up on the trail, Ama’s hair did not annoy her.
They rode in silence for most of the morning, each enjoying the play of light in the trees and, later, in the tall grasses, when they emerged from the forest. The field in which they found themselves felt almost unreasonably beautiful to Ama; there was so much movement! The way the grasses dipped and swayed as if in waves of green water; the brown and gold birds that flew up out of the grasses, like hidden treasure, when Reynard startled them; the one diamond-backed snake that slithered across their path, emerging suddenly, gazing at them through slit eyes, causing Emory to draw Reynard up short, then disappearing just as quickly into the thick deep grass on the other side of the trail, its skin as shiny as polished wood.
“So much beauty,” Ama whispered.
“Yes,” Emory agreed, and breathed warmth into her hair, taking a deep breath in as if the smell of her was perfume to him.
“I want to hear about your home,” Ama said to Emory after they’d stopped to eat and stretch their legs, when they were back in the saddle once more.
“You’ll see it for yourself soon enough,” Emory said.
“But as long as we’re here,” Ama said, “I want to hear how you describe it.”
“Well,” said Emory, “I’m no bard, but I know my home as well as I know my own horse.”
“Good,” said Ama. “Tell me.”
Emory was quiet for a moment, gathering his thoughts. Then he began, “Harding is probably one of the nicest places you could find. The weather, first off—rarely too cold, only in deep ice a few weeks a year, and the worst of the heat only lasts a month or so in the summer.”
“And the people?”
“The people? Oh, everyone is kind. We get along. That is not to say that there are never any problems, but between the castle and the village and the outlying vassals and the servants, we get along better than most.”
“Who are your closest companions?” Ama asked.
“Well, I would say my closest friend is the falconer. Pawlin is his name.”
“Why him?”
“Why?” Emory said, as if he had never before considered the why of his friendship with the falconer. “Well, we have known each other all our lives. Pawlin was born just six months before I was, and his father often hunted with mine. It made sense for him to be my companion, I suppose.” Emory fell quiet for a moment, thinking. Then, just when Ama assumed he had lost that trail of thought, Emory said, “He’s funny. I like that about him. He makes me laugh. Oh, he takes everyone to task, Pawlin does! A sharp wit, a quick tongue. Nothing gets past Pawlin. As sharp as Isolda’s beak, he is.”
“Isolda?”
“His hawk. He’s got many birds, an aviary full of them. But Isolda is different than the rest of them.”
“Different?”
“Oh, yes. Different.”
“How is she different?”
Emory seemed to chew on this question for a good long while. At last he said, “You shall see. Soon enough. You shall.”
“And the dragon from which you rescued me?” Ama asked. “What was that creature like? How did you defeat it?”
“Oh,” said Emory, “let’s not fill your head with such ugly things, when the day is so wide and fine.”
And that was all he said about that.
The path they rode parted the tall grass like the hairline on a giant’s head. Ama, exhausted still from what had come before, accepted Emory’s silence and allowed herself to relax into the arms of her prince. She allowed her neck and eyes to soften, allowed him to hold her there, atop Reynard’s back. Emory was steering the way, and Reynard was bearing them forward, and for Ama there was nothing to do but be borne and steered.
The Lynx’s Eye
They stopped again well before dark, to make camp one more time. They’d arrive in Harding on the morrow, Emory promised, and the first thing he would do would be to order her a bath—as hot as Ama pleased.
For now, there was no hot water in which to wash, so while Emory unsaddled the horse and cleared a place to build up a fire, Ama wandered away, parting the soft tall grass with gentle hands, stretching her legs and filling her chest with deep breaths.
She didn’t plan to go far, for she had no shoes, as Emory’s boots were impossibly big, but the ground was even and pleasant, and the whispers of the wind in the grass seemed to promise her something if she walked a bit farther, and then farther still.