Ceallach went, and it was better for a time, but it was not the path, and very soon they both stopped and looked about them, each holding the other's hand and feeling very tired and frightened and wish ing desperately to be home again.
"We have to go on," said Ceallach.
"But which way?" asked Meadhbh. "I'm afraid I've lost us. The path is nowhere near here."
"I will show you," said a voice, and Thistle followed, shadowy and standing right amid a thorn thicket where no one could have walked.
"Is that herself?" asked Ceallach, "or only something like it?— Meadhbh, don't trust it."
"Wiser still," said Thistle, and walked out of the brambles and held out her hand again, clearer and sterner than before. "But that way leads to An Beag and I doubt you would like that. Come, I say —Ceallach and Meadhbh, come now."
There was a wanting, a desire as strong as for the water horse, and first Ceallach and then Meadhbh started to go, but each held the other back in small hesitations that made one great one.
"So, well," said the Sidhe. "But I am called. I hear your father calling me. If he calls a third time I must go and leave you, and that would be dangerous. The woods are roused and he is in danger as deep as yours. Come, I say, come now!"
Meadhbh went. It was the part about her father in danger that won her; and Ceallach came running an instant later. "Ah!" Meadhbh cried in fright, for the Sidhe at once flung her gray cloak about them both and cut off the sun. Strong arms held them, and there was a scent of flowers and grass and a grayness which stole the sight like mist, passing then to dark. Meadhbh was falling asleep and knew she ought to be afraid, but she was not. Ceallach knew too and struggled, or thought that he did, but the sleep came on him: he heard the Sidhe whisper his name.
They slept, not wishing to, wrapped all in gray.
So Arafel carried them both as she came, and laid them gently on the bracken.
"No harm is on them," she said to their father. Her heart hurt her to see how the years had dealt with this Man. It hurt her most to see his fright, how he ran and fell to his knees next his children, and gathered them each in an arm, sleeping as they were, hugging them and holding them as if he had just had part of his heart torn from him and restored. Arafel sat down crosslegged where she stood so that she need not look down at him, and wistfully gazed on the three of them until Ciaran found Ms wits again. "They are sleeping," she assured him, for he might not understand that sleep. "It was easier to bring them so."
"Arafel," he said, holding his children against his heart, two red-and-golden heads nodded together beneath his fair beard. Tears ran on his face. The years had graven lines about his eyes. He was heavy with a man's full strength, and yet held his burden so gently his hands could not have bruised a flower.
So quickly the years fled. Each time she looked at him something of him had changed, and life seemed to have more and more power over him. "They have grown so," she said with a nod toward the children.
"Yes. They've grown." Pain touched his face, a patient kind of pain, long-suffering. "I hoped this time—I had most hope of you, that when I truly needed you—I hoped you had them."
"I." Arafel laid a hand on the stone at her breast. It was like a wound, his look. "No. You wrong me, Man."
"Not that you would do them harm. Never that."
"Or misguide them. Or take them into Eald without your know ing."
"Where were they then? Lost? Only lost, after all?"
"O Man, Man."
"I thought," he said, "perhaps there had gotten to be too much of the world about me for you to hear me any longer. That perhaps it was a place only they could go."
The pain was deep and everywhere, but there were no tears for it. He was at once too proud and too humble and it wounded her more than tears. "You do not understand," she said. "I've always heard you."
"And never came."
"The time—is not the same for me. There was a moment I could come, and I have left things now—O believe me, my dear friend, that you never walked in Eald unattended, going or coming."
"I had hoped for a word through the years," he said simply, and his brows knit together. "That, if nothing more." He wound his fingers gently in his children's red hair and looked down at them and up again earnestly. "But this is more. Far more. This is all I ask."
"There was a difference in this calling. I felt it. Ah, Ciaran, I ran, I ran. I cannot tell you all of it, not here. Never think that it was nothing to me that you came."
"They were in danger, then."
"They fared better in it than some would have. There's much of their father in them." She saw the fear and put out her hand to his. "A silly nix, a danger most to children. Keep them from the forest And yourself—O my friend, no more of walks into the wood. I shall come to you, rather. Things are darker than they were and the way has changed."
He had always had more sight than most. Fear crept in where pain had been. "How, changed?"
"This is not the place to talk of it. Hist, Branwyn is calling."
"Branwyn." A thousand distracted cares drew at him, graving lines on his face. He hugged his children and tried to get to his feet, but Arafel was quicker, and laid her hand on his shoulder.
"Let me take the girl," Arafel said, "and come with me."
He yielded up his daughter and Arafel took the girl into her arms, within her cloak, while he took his son and rose.
It was the merest shifting through the shadow, the lightest journey —and very swift. The walls of Caer Wiell showed beyond the mist, and grew out of shadow into daylight.
"So they are safe and home," said Arafel, and already the children were beginning to rub at their eyes as at the passing of an ordinary sleep. She set Meadhbh on her feet on the ground and steadied her, and looked into her face a moment. "Are you quite well, then?"
Meadhbh blinked and nodded dazedly. And Ceallach waked thor oughly and hugged his father's neck as Meadhbh discovered her father and her home at once and hurled herself against him to throw her arms about him.
"They know me as Thistle," Arafel said, beginning to depart into the night of her own world. "And that is best."
"Come back," Ciaran cried after her.
She stayed, half in his sunlight.
"Come soon," he wished her.
"To Caer Wiell? Yes, if you wish that. I shall come tonight—Yes, I shall. It is time I did that. Look for me at moonrise."
The children bunked and then losing sight of her, tumbled words one over the other, of water horses and river nixes and paths and rescues. Arafel heard them, even so.
And went her own way.
"She sent it back," said Meadhbh to her father, "into the river then, and we were afraid of her—minding what you always said about strangers—" It stuck in her throat to tell him what choice she had been offered, for that was too deep and too dark and too much knowledge of her growing heart to show to anyone, most of all any one she loved. Somehow she passed over all the rest of it, even know ing the Name of the creature; and so did Ceallach. She was not the same; she would never be the same again after knowing how to choose, and neither would Ceallach; and she discovered this as she faced her father, at once afraid and desperately sure what she was doing. She had begun to grow up and apart in a way she thought was right—but it was not something to speak of.
And Ciaran saw the secrets nesting in both his children, not being blind. "You have been with the Sidhe," he said, and felt the least and most desperate jealousy of those he loved most in all the world. "And some things are not for ordinary ears. There are those who would be frightened by hearing it, do you understand? Be wise and quiet on it." So he took them each by the hand and brought them toward the gates of Caer Wiell.