She explained her theory to her custodian, Naeli's friend, as they sat down for lunch. The berries, she said, were like bright little suns; they could warm up the woods when it was too cool. The mushrooms were chilly and gray, like clouds; they would be pleasant in the hot sun-drenched clearings.
Naeli's friend applauded the ingenuity of this idea, then asked how many berries and mushrooms Fasra had actually collected. Fasra reluctantly showed her basket. Then Naeli's friend showed Fasra her own daughter's basket: it was more than twice as full as Fasra's. Many children had brought in full baskets from the morning's berrying, Naeli's friend explained, perhaps a bit tactlessly, so a change of method seemed in order.
Fasra's face fell and she turned away. But she wasn't stupid; she could learn a hard lesson when she had to. And she had brought three baskets along, which she was determined to bring home full to Naeli, whom she loved as fiercely as Naeli loved her.
So she went to work in the afternoon in grim earnest. The nearby clearing had been plucked clean in the morning, so she searched the ones that were farther away. And she filled two baskets with clusterfruit and skeneberries, bringing them proudly back to her custodian.
It was the third basket that brought disaster. She had resolved to bring back a basket full of cleft-caps, the rarest edible mushroom in our woods. But she started on this too late in the day. That third basket-and her iron willsealed her fate.
In midafternoon, the other children began to wander back, with berrysmeared faces and full baskets. They were happy, but tired, and a little frightened by the lengthening shadows. Darkness was rising from the earth; they wanted to go home; their custodians wanted to take them …but Fasra was missing.
Naeli's friend left her own daughter in someone else's care and ran to the place where Fasra had been last seen. She kept calling out Fasra's name until the girl finally appeared at the edge of a clearing, like a wood-sprite reluctant to leave the forest shadows.
"Come back," Naeli's friend said to the proud child. "We're going home."
"Not till I'm done. My basket's only half full."
Now, if I'd been there, I might have indulged the little girl with a few more moments to pick mushrooms. I might have helped her. I might have bribed her with the contents of my own baskets. And if the child had balked again at coming home I might have said, You are more important to your mother than a basket of mushrooms.
Or, weary from the long day, tired of the child's imperious manner, frightened by the onset of darkness, I might have done exactly what Naeli's friend did. Which was to shout, "No! Come now!"
"Just a moment," Fasra said icily. "I'm not finished."
"You're finished when I say you're finished!" Naeli's friend cried. "Darkness is rising! Come home."
"Not till I'm done."
"We're leaving," Naeli's friend said, walking toward the girl, who ran back a few steps into the wood.
"No!" shouted Fasra. "No! No! No!"
Naeli's friend turned and began to walk away. "Good-bye," she said, over her shoulder. "I hope you can make your way out of the forest by yourself."
There was no answer. After a few steps more she turned and looked back. Fasra had vanished.
They searched for her, of course. But the day was growing old, and they had other children to take care of, their own children. Finally they returned to Caroc without Fasra, and Naeli's friend brought the terrible news to my house around sunset.
Naeli came to Besk's shop immediately. She was weeping, but she managed to tell the story as she knew it.
"Naeli, I'm sorry," was all I could find to say, as she sobbed. "I loved her, too."
"Her name will be mentioned at the next Mysteries," Besk promised her, his pale brown face etched with grief. He was very fond of Naeli, and Fasra too.
"What do you mean?" cried Naeli, in fresh alarm. "Aren't you going to help me find her?'
Besk and I stared at each other in astonishment. Then Besk said firmly, "No. You must mourn her, Naeli. No one can help her now."
"White-faced Bargainer," she cursed him. "Stay here and lick your pennies! My brother will still help me!"
"Help you do what?" I shouted. "I won't help you commit suicide. It's already getting dark!"
"She's alone!" Naeli said. "She's never been alone this long. She'll be getting cold. She'll be afraid. And soon it will be dark and they will come for her. The Bargainers. The Enemy. The Whisperer in the Dark. They'll come for her!"
She stared at us in silence for a few moments as Besk and I refused to meet her eye. The thought of the beloved child dying alone in the dark woods was terrible. But there was nothing we could do. We knew that. We resented Naeli for not knowing it, too.
"Help me!" she screamed in my face. "Help me! Why won't you help me?" Then she ran from the shop, leaving the door swinging open behind her.
I turned resolutely back to the work we'd been doing, a commission from the Baron of Caroc which was to be ready the next day. But Besk reached over and grabbed me by the shoulder.
"Go after her," he said. "Go now. Hurry, Roble."
"No," I said stubbornly. "She'll come to her senses in a little while."
"She's in her senses now," Besk replied. "But that doesn't mean for her what it does for dull fellows like you and me. She is a great one, an empress or a merchant lady by rights. If she lived in the wide world, she would be one or the other by now, or something better than both. She knows everything you know, how the law is about to be broken in the woods. To you, that means she must not enter there. To her, it means she must. Go, Roble. Run. It may be too late as I stand here talking…."
Besk was a good man, but he'd never sent me home early in the ten years I'd been working for him. This, more than anything else, struck me with urgency. I dropped my tools and ran out the open door.
The sun had set, and the narrow lanes of Caroc Town were heavy with shadow. The dark blue radiance left in the evening sky was already dim and fading. As I left the side-lanes for the Road I heard the hillconches ring out like thunder, breaking the law.
"Naeli!" I shouted as I ran. "Wait! Naeli!"
She didn't wait. At the edge of town there were only the black-armored Riders on their black steeds. I could hear the one's voice as I ran up to them, but made no sense of the words. (I realize now what he was saying, of course, having said it so many times myself.)
The one finished speaking and I asked them, "Have you seen a woman pass this way? I-"
The Rider who had not spoken drew his truncheon and pointed it at my throat. Neither of them said a word, and I found myself unable to speak either.
Now I know that the Rider was only threatening to kill me if I tried to enter the woods. But then his gesture seemed full of mystic import. I had never confronted one of these Riders in their dark regalia before, never thought about what they implied. The forest where Fasra had vanished had now taken Naeli, too. But it was their forest, I realized: only they could cross and recross it in the lawless hours. I didn't understand how they dared to do it. But I realized that I couldn't imitate them, that I must not. They had forbidden it. And in that strange moment they seemed to have more power than the Four Barons themselves. After all, the Barons could only say what the law was. The Riders said what it was not, and rode beyond its limits.
"Will you at least look for her?" I pleaded, when I found my voice again. "Her daughter is there, too, a girl of seven years …lost in the woods."
They still did not speak. I suppose they were simply hesitating, wondering whether to explain to me that they could not afford to wander from the Road, that they were powerless and couldn't really help. I suppose they resented me as I had resented Naeli, demanding more than I could give. But I felt none of this. I felt as if I had bowed down in prayer to two statues of the Strange Gods, or asked a favor of a stone wall.