“I don’t know what you’re talking about.”
The sylph laughed then like a whooshing breeze and tickled Lionheart under the chin. “Foolish!” it cried. “You know nothing, but you think you know everything! How mortal you are, how clever, how sad.” Its laughter ended suddenly, and the sylph itself vanished. Lionheart, for a moment, believed himself alone. Then a little voice in his ear said, “Let me fetch the other mortal out of the dance.”
“What?”
“Let me fulfill my duty to you, kind savior. Let me fetch back the mortal you lost and bring him to you. Would that please you?”
“Yes!” Lionheart said. “Yes, that would please me! Find Foxbrush and bring him back. At once, if you can!”
“Farewell, then,” said the sylph. And it was gone. The leaves of the silver-branch trees fluttered gently, the only sign of the creature’s passing. Lionheart stood alone in the Wood Between.
“I should have asked him to find Daylily,” he muttered. But it was too late. And was he now to leave her himself? To return to the safety of the Near World and . . . and what? He’d made his peace with his father. Rose Red no longer waited with faithful friendship; she was long since gone. All his ties there were severed.
“Why, then?” he asked the empty air. “Why would you send me back? Why not let me find Daylily and at least do one good turn by her?”
There was no answer. The Path at his feet pointed to the gate, and Lionheart could not deny it forever.
He passed between the two trees, and the Wilderlands watched him go.
The flock of sylphs crashed through the Wood, singing as they went.
“We have him, and we’ll keep him!
We’ll dance and whirl and sweep him
Through the merry In Between
To places he has never been,
And never more will he be seen
By mortal eye again!”
At first, Foxbrush could not understand the words, so loud was the roaring of the voices singing them. But the deeper they progressed into the forest, the gentler his captors became, as though more certain of their catch. When at last they let him touch the ground once more—pushing and prodding him when he fell to his knees—he could hear their words very well. But his mind could not accept it.
“That . . . that was quite a gale!” he gasped, clutching his shirt, which had been torn to ribbons by snatching branches. A little afraid what he might discover, he felt around, testing his own limbs to make certain they were all still attached.
He found Lionheart’s scroll tucked into his trouser pocket. Somehow, feeling it there made him angry, and anger made him brave enough to stand. He coughed to clear his throat and smoothed down his hair with both hands. “An unusual natural phenomenon,” he said, lying to himself for what comfort a lie might offer. “A powerful summer gale is what that was. Probably several accounts of it in Gullfinger’s Guide to the Natural Sciences.”
The next few moments were spent in far more desperate self-lies as he struggled to convince himself that the winds in the trees above him were not whispering to one another.
“Look at me! I’m a natural phenomenian!”
“A natural phenemenon!”
“A natural phenomonomonom!”
Lionheart was nowhere to be seen. But surely he must be close, perhaps only a few yards away. The Wood was so thick here, it was possible for all manner of things to lie hidden within inches of each other. Foxbrush shuddered. His imagination was not keen even at its best, but one needed very little to begin picturing wild creatures lying low, shielded beneath the heavy fern fronds, ready to leap; or snakes slithering silent paths and just brushing one’s foot.
“Ahhh . . .” Foxbrush grimaced and tried to straighten the rags of his shirt. “There will be a clear trail back the way I came,” he told himself. “Broken twigs, bent grass, so forth. It’s always so in the books. Gullfinger himself wrote a section on surviving in the wilds, and I’m sure I can remember most of what he said.”
Even as he spoke, his eyes lifted unwillingly to the tree branches swaying above him as the wind creatures passed through, shushing leaves and breaking twigs, chattering among themselves. Despite himself, Foxbrush heard and understood each word.
“It’s not as fun as the Fiery One.”
“It does not billow as that one did.”
“And it’s not so red.”
At first, the horror of talking breezes was too much for Foxbrush, and he cringed and clutched the hair at his temples. Then he realized what they had said.
“Fiery One?” he muttered. “Red . . . Daylily?”
In a rush, his own fear was forgotten, and he addressed himself to the tossing branches (for he could not see the sylphs themselves). “I say, have you seen my lady Daylily?” He felt the fool indeed and blushed. Did he, after all, expect a breeze to answer?