“Ilido,” Arethmay said one day not long after, early in the afternoon. “Fia hasn’t seen much of the forest around about, and it will be winter soon; the good weather may not last much longer. Why don’t you show her the woods? It is quite beautiful here, Fia, nothing like what we are used to at home, but very beautiful in its own way.”

Fia smiled and agreed; she had been wishing she could go for a ramble in the forest, beneath the pines, but had felt there were more important things to do.

She slipped on her light walking boots and was happy to be soon out on the mountain slope, in the warm fall sun again.

It was beautiful, as Arethmay had said. The towering trees were the tallest Fia had ever seen, and the slender stands of mountain maple and white-barked aspen were golden leaved in the bright sunshine.

“So, how many brothers and sisters do you have?” she asked Ilido cheerfully. Although they had become friends during the evenings, there had never been much call for conversation on their own.

They had come upon a pretty little stream that hurried over its rocky, golden-brown bed, and Fia was searching through the stones at the bottom for one of the proper shape. Her brother had shown her the trick, to find a large pebble that fit smoothly in her hand and draw it out of the cold rushing mountain water. Then curl her hand around it and hold it there for a few moments. When she opened her hand it would be transformed; no longer wet and cold, it would be dry and warm, its color changed a little, as if it were a different stone altogether.

“One—well, none really,” Ilido replied. “My older brother and I were the only ones… most of the others didn’t live long.” He paused. “But, I’m the only one now, since he was killed in the fighting.”

He let out a long breath, like he had been holding it in. Fia looked up and could suddenly see that he had been plowing through, knowing he had to get it over with, but he didn’t like to talk about it.

“Oh,” she said, and felt foolishly small and insufferably cheerful. She had simply assumed that everybody had other children in their families. Not every family had as many as hers did, but everyone she had ever met had at least several brothers or sisters. She had heard of those that sometimes had sad times with their babies, but to meet one… and then ask such a terribly insensitive question! She just hadn’t been thinking. She wanted to be friends hoping that he might fill in the place now so emptied of her own siblings. And she had blundered right off the start. She suddenly felt like crying at her stupidity.

“I’m sorry,” she said, and stood up, her pebble in hand. She stepped out of the stream and felt a desperate need to say something to break the uncomfortable silence.

“My older brothers are gone to the troubles, too.” It was the first thing she could think of and immediately wished she hadn’t. What was it to him if a hundred brothers had gone? They weren’t killed, at least not yet, and they weren’t his.

But he didn’t seem affronted. He stepped forward.

“I…” he began, but seemed to change his mind. “What are you doing?”

“Evin taught me this,” she said for no reason. “It changes.” She opened her hand to reveal the small stone, dull and dry. He put out his hand and she dropped it onto his palm.

“See how warm it is?”

Ilido nodded, a curious smile behind his eyes. He turned it in his hand, and then gave it back.

“It changes, just from being held a few moments.” She dipped it into the water, and brought it up again. It shone and glistened. “He said that life’s like that. Changes perspective whenever something new happens. It’ll look dull and warm, and then it’ll be shiny and cold, and change back again. But it’s always still just the same stone underneath, no matter how it looks.”

“He said that?” he commented idly, and then a lopsided smile quirked his lips ruefully. “I suppose he’s right. Though sometimes it doesn’t seem possible that it can go back again.”

“Back again where?” she queried uncertainly.

He nodded at the stone in her hand. “Warm and dull.”

“Oh, it’s just a river stone,” she said hurriedly, and tossed it into the stream. Immediately it was lost among the others.

“Oh, you shouldn’t have done that!” Ilido looked up quickly. “I’d have liked to keep it.”

She looked at the rippling surface of the swift-moving water.

“Maybe we can find it again,” he suggested, his tone warming to the idea.

“I’m afraid not,” she said apologetically. “That’s almost impossible to do.”

“But let’s try.” He grinned and went to one knee on the brink, one hand in the stream half supporting his weight while the other dove for pebbles. She half laughed and tried to help as well, searching for ones that seemed to have a similar shape. But rippling water distorts everything beneath it, shimmering in a hundred images. It was nearly impossible to know the true shape of a stone before you pulled it above water; as it broke surface it seemed to change like some mirage that a trickster uses.

They searched until their hands were red and freezing, and their backs were aching from bending over so long.

“I don’t think we can find it,” she said at length.

“It must be here. This is where you threw it.”

“Yes, but that doesn’t mean we’ll find it. Rocks look different from different angles; we could have picked it up and tossed it aside without noticing.” She shook her head. “That isn’t the point of it anyway, Ilido. There are thousands of river pebbles, just like thousands of lives. You can’t say that this one is more special than another. You can’t keep one with you, or pretty soon it’s the pebble you’ll notice and not the change. The stone doesn’t represent all of life, but the obstacles, and they’re all different from each other.”

“Yes, but I wanted it to remind me of what your brother said.”

She turned to the stream, and sunk her cold hand into the chilling water. Slowly feeling along the bottom her fingers found a smooth stone.

“Here,” she said. “Remember with this one. But it’s better to just remember anew every time you find a stream.”

She dropped the golden brown rock into the palm of his hand.

“And it’s smaller than the other anyway, it’ll be less heavy.” She stood up. “Weren’t you going to show me the cliff?”

He tucked the stone into his pocket and leaped across the water to her side of the stream.

“It’s over here.” He started off.

The day was so beautiful that she almost danced along the warm mountain slopes under the pillar-like trees, the air smelling sweetly of pine needles and fallen leaves. It wasn’t very far, only over a few ridges. An enormous old pine, with orange and reddish tinges in its bark, stood facing the cliff like two icons of the mountains keeping an eye on each other.

The ridge had broken off along a fault line long ago, and now moss hung in every crack and crevice in the outcropping of stone.

The afternoon sun angled now to strike only fitfully along its face. They sat down on the warmth of a carpet of pine needles along the opposite sun-drenched slope, with the heat of the day bringing out the heady smell of last year’s forest all around them. The Big Pine stood halfway down the slope, its towering trunk tinged with even more orange than usual in the reddish winter sun.

Ilido took the stream pebble out of his pocket, turning it over in his hand.

“Did you spend a lot of time with your brother?” he asked.

“Not a lot.” She shrugged. “But he was awfully fun to be around, and he always showed us the neatest things, and told us the little secrets of where the squirrels’ nests were and how to tell from its tracks if a deer was nervous or calm. And why water always ran so fast downhill.”

“Why?”

“Because it misses its mother, the ocean.” She laughed. Then he laughed, too.

“He must be a great brother.” He rubbed the pebble.

“He is.” She turned her head sideways to lay it on her arms, which were folded on top of her knees. The sunlight fell warm on her cheek.

“I hope he returns safely,” he offered.

She nodded. “I think that he will.”

“Why do you think so?”

“I don’t know. It just seems like it.” The air was still and sleepy, trying to catch the warmth in the last golden days before winter came.

“How long ago did your brother die?” she asked. She really wanted to know, and the silence between them seemed comfortable enough now.

“Three months ago.”

She was silent. That wasn’t very long.

“It seems like yesterday, when we heard, but like a thousand years ago that I saw him last.”

“You don’t have to say anything,” she said. “I understand it must be hard.”

“I wish I could meet your brother,” Ilido said, and there was a glint in his eye where a tear sparkled.

“Maybe you will. Someday. I hope so,” she said softly.

“He fell defending…” Ilido reached out and crushed a leaf into powder. “Defending his king. The enemy was pressing in and he saw it. There was a general retreat and everyone was ordered back, but he saw what was happening. He broke the circle and saved…” He stared hard at the moss-covered cliffside.

“Did the king get out?” she asked, breathlessly, almost in a whisper. It seemed a little harsh to ask questions, but now she really wanted to know.

Ilido glanced at her and swallowed hard. “Yes,” he said.

“Then you should be proud of him,” she said softly, tears in her own eyes. “Very, very proud of him.”

Her heart ached. She was proud of him, and she’d never even known him.

“I am,” he said. “That’s what makes it so hard. He was so truly great, it’s impossible that I can ever be even half of that. And I’m all that’s left now.”

His hand picked up a twig and one by one snapped it into inch-long pieces. Then he went on, restlessly.

“It keeps coming back to me, if only I’d been old enough, I could have been there. It could have been me that broke the ring, and ought to have been me that was killed.” He glanced down. “That would have been a much better way.”

There was silence in the far reaches of the forest. Then a squirrel two ridges away dropped a pinecone, and the sound drifted to her faintly.

He continued after his pause. “He was stronger and smarter, he always knew exactly what to do, and could do it. He would be able to take care of things better and I’m… I’m not that good. I don’t know what to do or what to say, even in the little things. He should be here, it’s his place, and it’s his job. I’m no good at it! I’ll never be good at it.” He dropped the stub of the stick. “Or what about the other men there? Couldn’t they see anything? Why weren’t they there, why was he cut off to begin with? Why didn’t someone else defend him?”

“I’m sure there were others,” she said quietly. “Others must have also defended the king.”

But he didn’t seem to be listening very closely.

“He shouldn’t have died.” Ilido’s lip quivered in near anger. “It was his responsibility; it should never have been left to me.”

She looked at him more sharply, a little angered at his tone. Of course it was hard to deal with a close loss. She could imagine how she’d feel if Evin never came home. But she wouldn’t… whine about it! Why couldn’t he face up to it bravely? She was suddenly a little angry with him, heartlessly perhaps. She wanted to be able to think better of him.

“I’m sure you can handle it.” She tried to keep her voice upbeat. “You have to look after your mother, but you can do that.”

“You don’t understand,” he replied, shaking his head.

She quickly stood up. It always angered her immensely when she was told that. Ever since a child she had possessed very good powers of understanding, and to be dismissed in so offhanded a manner always rubbed her hard against the grain. She tried formulating a decent reply, but he continued.

“You don’t understand, and you can’t understand.” His words were not angry, as they ought to have been. They seemed only sad.

“It’s my fault for telling you; I thought…” He trailed to silence, looking out through the stilled forest with the intensity of internal anguish.

“It just should have been somebody else!” He flung his head into his arms and shook with tears.

Surprised, angered, and half frightened of what she might say if she stayed, she turned away quickly and quietly and hurried back along the slope, picking up speed as she went. By the time he had disappeared from view behind her she was running, her long legs reaching for the ground as if something unknown had caught her up and was hurtling her along.

She didn’t stop when she broke from the last oaks, dashed across the open glade, and ducked into the quiet darkness of the stable, already crying. Her feet carried her to a hay pile and she sank down on it, hunched her shoulders and sobbed into her sleeve, breathing in shaky gasps.

What was so wrong so suddenly? Why were things so impossible to understand?

She was out of place here. Everything felt wrong and mixed up. She wished she could spirit herself away home.

“Fia?” Andro asked curiously. She looked up at the friendly concern in his face, and hitched a breath.

“What makes you cry, hmm?” He hunched down to one knee in the hay. “What has happened?”

She shook her head. “I just…”

She didn’t know why she was crying, but something hard and unforgiving was pressing against the back of her throat, pounding dully in her mind like a war drum. She had tried to be friends, and now they had quarreled. And worse, she ought to have helped him in his sorrow and failed, and he had shut her out. Perhaps he did it without meaning to, but he had treated her as though she were a tiny child. His “You don’t understand” still grated inside her. Maybe she didn’t, but maybe she did.

And if she didn’t, he could have at least attempted to explain. It sounded like an excuse, a cover for something he didn’t want to tell her. If it was, then it meant he was… she hated to think it. That he didn’t have grit.

Why did Ilido have to take it so hard? People everywhere had their brothers die in battle. And fathers, or husbands. It was an honorable end, and death comes to all sooner or later. They were remembered with tears, true, but with heads held high because of their bravery. They were remembered with pride. It was hard to face bereavement well, and the extra duties that fell to others when a torch was dropped, but it was done with bravery. Ilido wasn’t a coward, was he? She didn’t want him to be. But why couldn’t he stand straight and tall, and face into the wind?

“Ilido,” she managed, her words in disorder. “… About his brother.”

Andro dropped his eyes to the straw.

“He’s out there now…” She indicated the woods with her head. “Weeping like…”

Andro nodded slowly, his expression grave and understanding.

“Why can’t he accept it?” she suddenly implored. “Many die in war…” She hunched her shoulders around the hollow she felt inside.

He shook his head slowly. “We do not understand everything of Ilido or his brother. Often there are things we do not see, and we cannot judge without knowing. It is hard on Ilido, that is easy to see, and the entire whys and where fores… there is no way we can discover it all. Nor is it necessary. Whatever the cause, we cannot change things for anyone else. We must be onlookers at this point. We can only try to be ready if there is some way we can help. And not decide what is fact when we do not know all.”

He put out his large and roughened hand, and her smaller, smoother one was grateful to slip into it. The warmth and strength of him seemed to travel to her from his hand, and the pressing at her throat faded away, the pounding ceased.

“What is has yet to be revealed, and darkness is often a time of great decision. I cannot think ill of him for wishing it could be avoided, or for struggling in the need to make a choice. We ought to wait until the day returns to see what has happened during a stormy night.”

He stood and pulled Fia to her feet with the same motion. Her tears had stopped and now she smiled. It felt good, like sunshine after rain.

“You are right, Andro,” she said, wiping her eyes with her apron. She had been hasty in her judgment. And she really didn’t understand much of Ilido’s circumstances.

“Thank you for being patient. Thank you for reminding me to be also.”

“We all need the patience of others from time to time. And we all need reminding.” He smiled, “Come, bring an armful of wood with me as we go to the house.”

There was something about his smile; it could be glad and sorry at the same time. As if there was a sorrow behind it so deep that no happiness could ever chase it out, but there was joy even deeper than the sadness, deep down in the very roots of his being, down where no despair could ever reach it. The sorrow and the joy mingled together and he felt them both at the same time, and neither one could ever blot the other out. But the joy was the strongest. Fia wondered suddenly if that was where his strength came from, like the man of whom the ancient poet had written:

“…He withstands the blazing sun,

He fears no darkling night,

He walks alone in calm,

His soul has known the shadow and the light…”

He knew them both, and he had now little to fear.

The wood scraped against her sleeves as she followed Andro to the kitchen door, and as they stepped inside the homey interior was like a warm embrace, with the smells of a hundred wonderful things lurking in the rafters like memories of beautiful times. Fia felt strangely clean inside, lightened inexplicably by the afternoon.

She put her armload in the wood box after Andro’s, and looked up as she brushed off her sleeves. Arethmay stood with one hand on the counter, pausing between one thing and the next. Fia saw her now with new eyes. She had lost her oldest son, and how many others she did not know. But no one would have known it by her actions, ever patient, ever kind, her fingers parting the bread dough or ladling out the stew. Gentle, gracious, like the rain in spring that sadly melts the snow and turns it all to mud, in knowledge of the better season coming. Her sorrows had been like a fire, which burns up the dross but leaves the silver shining brightly.

As Fia looked at her, it was only now that she noticed that, like solid sterling, Arethmay really did softly shine.

Fia whisked up the broom and prepared to sweep the wood dust dropped from their hauling; as she passed, the young girl slipped an arm around the lady’s shoulder.

“Mother Arie,” she whispered, using Calima’s rare but apt name for her, “I’m so glad you’re here. Because, I love you, too.”

She looked at Fia, a little uncertain of the cause, but her motherly smile accepted the feeling Fia had offered. Her quick hand came up to pat the younger cheek and Fia lingered, loath to slip away. Suddenly Arethmay folded her into a soft embrace and put her cheek against the autumn brown hair.

“Every duckling needs a mother,” she said softly. “Even when they’re far away.”

Then she released her, but half of Fia’s heart didn’t want to go.

“You do well, dear.” She smiled.

Fia’s eyes almost smarted, but her lips were smiling as she began to sweep the scatterings of the wood towards the door.

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