Percival's Angel by Anne Eliot Crompton Page A

the land.”
    â€œNonetheless…” Alanna swallowed the spit of fright. “To raise him at all, anyway, I must live somehow.”
    â€œThere, you will live by your own hands and wits.”
    Ivie murmured, “How would we enter there, Edik? I have always heard that none who entered there came out alive.”
    â€œI can take you safely in.”
    You can?
    Alanna and Ivie turned round to face Edik. Spring light glinted in his graying, black curls, in his squinting, suddenly merry, brown eyes.
    I thought I knew this man, my Lord’s steward! I knew him loyal, dedicated, truthful…loving. What more may be there to know? What secret has he kept, all these years?
    Ivie asked, “But…once in…how would we ever come out again?”
    â€œYou would not.”
    â€œNot ever?”
    â€œNot ever. Think not to go, young Ivie, if you will ever wish to return.”
    Holy Mary! “Percy!” Alanna cried softly, “Percy could never return from there?”
    â€œHe could not, Lady.”
    â€œThen…the King’s long arm could not reach him there!”
    â€œIt could not.”
    New, unknown strength stiffened Alanna’s arms. Sleeping Percy stirred and wiggled against her grip. “But would he hear tales, songs, of Knighthood and Chivalry?” Well I know the power of such songs!
    â€œUnlikely.”
    â€œSo he would never know what he had missed, I mean, what he had been saved from!”
    â€œHe would think himself a Fey, Lady, like those who live there.”
    Fey. Good Folk. I must think again on this…The Good Folk have no goodness, no virtue, no Honor.
    â€œAh…I am not sure…”
    â€œYour Percy will be Fey or Knight, Lady. That is the choice God gives you.”
    â€œNever Knight! Never Knight!” Alanna kissed the soft, fuzzy head nuzzled in her neck. Have I not seen enough of the virtue and Honor that breed endless Death, circling like ravens? “Edik, I will go! I will take Percy to the Fey forest!”
    â€œWhisper, Lady.”
    â€œAh, yes.” But no one had heard. The dusky room beyond Edik was empty.
    Brightly eager now, Alanna turned to Ivie. “You will come, Ivie? Had I been offered this chance when I was young…”
    But Alanna stopped there. When she was young she had been virtuous, honorable. She had always done as she was told. Her braid, now graying, had been a dark, rich brown, like fertile soil; never tinged with the fire of self-will, like Ivie’s braid.
    Is this truly a good choice for Ivie?
    Till a moment ago Ivie had no choice. She faced rough old Sir Ryan’s bed, repeated childbirths, likely death in childbirth; and there was no escape. Now…
    After all, who knows what may await in the Fey forest? Magic castles? Frog princes? Maybe a truly better life!
    â€œYou can stay here and wed Sir Ryan if—”
    â€œI’d go to Hell first, if I knew the way!”
    â€œNot so far,” Edik said gently. “But fast. They are saying down in the hall that Sir Ryan rides here now.”
    Holy Mary! And me just up from childbed, and all of forty years old!
    All the same. “Edik, we will go with you.”
    â€œTomorrow night, then. Before the moon flowers full.”
    ***
    Edik pulled his donkey up on a dark edge of forest. He turned to Alanna and Ivie, reining in behind him, and said very softly, “Ladies, this is your last chance to turn back.”
    The four donkeys huddled together, waggling nervous ears and shaking heads. One was laden with the little baggage Edik had allowed to be packed. (“Take only what you can carry, walking.”) The only exception, Alanna’s wooden Mary statue, lay strapped along the donkey’s back. Alanna would not leave her garden without that. Down the donkey’s sides bulged two sacks of tools and cook pots wrapped in clothes. Nothing clinked or jangled. For two nights they had traveled silent but for soft