The bird turned his head to one side, gazing at her out of one bright eye. “I am always near,” he sang.
“You’re following me?” She bared her teeth. “Go away. I don’t want you.”
“You want me more than you know,” said the bird. “But you must let the wolf go.”
“I can’t,” said Daylily. “Not anymore.” She felt the Bronze weighing her down, and for a moment she was the wolf tied to the stakes, brought low by chains and bindings. “It’s too late.”
“It’s never too late,” said the bird. “Not while I lead you.”
“You don’t lead me!” Daylily said. “No one leads me!” And she lunged at the bird, her fingers snatching, but he flew from her grasp, light as drifting smoke, up into the branches of a tree she had not seen standing near.
She stood and realized that what she had thought was the blackness of despair was in fact the deepness of night surrounding her. She even saw a glimmer of fireflies and, up above, between the branches of the tree, stars gleamed in the sky. The bird had disappeared, but she felt somehow that he was near. She smelled sweet things on the wind, the scents of fruits and nectars, contrasting with the smells of rot and spoil.
She turned. And found herself facing Foxbrush.
“Daylily!” he gasped, his voice as frightened as though he saw a ghost.
She could scarcely discern his face in the gloom. But she recognized him at once by some sixth sense she did not know she possessed. She stood a moment beneath the spreading fig tree and the starlight, and she stared at him. He was all the things she had fled; but where had her flight led her?
“Daylily!” he spoke her name again as though he wanted to say something more but could not find the words. He took a step toward her.
Then she fell into his arms.
This could not be Daylily. It must be some phantom or some dream, come to walk the waking world. It could not be Lady Daylily of Middlecrescent! For Daylily never wept as this girl wept, her face buried in Foxbrush’s chest, embracing him in trembling desperation. Foxbrush stood as still as a totem stone, his arms at his sides, and she clung to him and dampened his shirt with her tears. Slowly he lifted his arms and wrapped them around her, holding her close to his thudding heart. All thoughts of what he had just seen and heard—the stone, the broken Lioness, Nidawi and her strange declarations—fled his mind. Everything about him was caught up in this one dreadful, horrible, wonderful moment. He held on to Daylily and he loved her more now than he had ever before loved anything or anyone. He felt strong and he felt weak; he could both move great mountains and be knocked down with a feather.
They stood thus for some time, and time meant nothing to either of them. Many eyes watched: eyes of the bird in the branches of the tree above, and the fireflies darting to and fro, and the fey beasts in the jungle shadows. And yet they were completely alone in that piece of eternity.
At last Daylily stepped back, though she still held Foxbrush by the arms. She could not meet his gaze but stood with her head bowed, weighted down by the enormous pull of the Bronze around her neck. Foxbrush saw it, and he recalled with sudden, gut-wrenching pain what Nidawi had told him about Cren Cru.
“Twelve in all it took, and it melted down Meadhbh’s twelve-pronged crown to give each of them a piece, a binding.”
He put out his hand and took hold of the Bronze. But it burned him, and he dropped it quickly, drawing a sharp breath of pain. Daylily let go of him then and placed both her hands over the stone, hiding it against her bosom.
“Twelfth Night is coming,” she said. “Eleven nights have I been bound by the Bronze.”
Her voice was strange and thin. Foxbrush frowned without understanding and wondered if she would let him hold her again. Somehow, he didn’t think it would be a good idea to try. “It’s been months, Daylily,” he said. “Months since I saw you.”
She shook her head. “It has been eleven nights. And Twelfth Night is coming. The final tithe is demanded.”
Foxbrush licked his cracking lips. “You are not one of them,” he said, though he knew he deceived no one, not even himself.
“I am not one,” Daylily whispered. Her shoulder was stained with fresh, oozing blood from the wound Foxbrush had watched Lark dress. Her body trembled with the pain of it, but she could scarcely feel a thing through the Bronze she wore. “I am not one. I am many. And I am gone.”
“No!” said Foxbrush, and his voice was more fierce than she had ever heard it. He reached out to her, grasping her arms. “No, you are not one of them! You are yourself and . . . and you don’t have to go back!”