Reunion by Kara Dalkey

rabbit you’ve flushed from its warren.”
    â€œIt’s a thief and a false prophet, not a rabbit,” Vortimer grumbled. “Tie him to the back of the horse and let’s get going.”
    â€œWhat kind of prophet can’t foresee his own capture and avoid it?” asked the other guard.
    â€œAs I said, he’s a fraud,” Vortimer replied.
    The forest was so near, and the inner voice was not distracting him at the moment. Corwin decided to bolt for it. He kicked the guard in the knee and tried to push him aside. But as the first guard fell in astonishment, the second guard came up swiftly with his sword drawn. Faustus and Vortimer each grabbed one of Corwin’s arms and pulled back tightly.
    â€œIt would seem,” Vortimer hissed in Corwin’s ear, “that your word can’t be trusted for anything. But at least now I can truthfully claim that we had to do you harm to prevent you from escaping. You are giving Faustus the opportunity to deliver the thrashing he has been dying to give.”
    With an ugly smile, Faustus drew back his fist.
    â€œStop!” cried a high-pitched voice from somewhere down the path.
    And everyone did. And stared.

Chapter Four
    She was incredibly striking, with long, silvery-blond hair—not the silver of old age, but the shine of newly minted metal. Her eyes were a shade of green-blue that Corwin had never seen before. She was slender, yet muscled, and wore a glimmering but tattered gown of blue and silver fish scales. She didn’t look much older than Corwin, but there was strength, determination, and not a little desperation in her eyes. But the strangest thing of all was, when their gazes met, he knew her, as if he’d been acquainted with her all his life. He knew that she was from another world vastly different from his own, a world of water, and that she felt very strange upon land. And he knew a dire purpose drove her and had caused her to come seeking . . . him?
    He carefully took in every inch of her, and he let out a small gasp as he noticed her hands. He knew those hands—he had seen them during his visions in the forest. He realized that some of those visions must have been her thoughts—that it was she who had mourned over the old drowned merman.
    New thoughts struck him—he saw himself, suddenly, from her eyes. What a skinny, disreputable-looking rat I am! He felt the other mind within his mind leap with joy at the sight of her, a feeling not unlike Corwin’s reactions to the memory of his mother. What new kind of madness is this? Who is this girl? How does this other mind know her, and why am I caught up in all this? I just wanted to be free and left alone!
    Corwin and the girl’s entwined thoughts demanded of each other the same questions: Who are you? How is this possible?
    Vortimer, Faustus, and the guards were beginning to recover their composure. “Go away, girl!” Prince Vortimer commanded. “This is none of your concern.”
    She furrowed her brow and didn’t budge from where she stood. “Give . . . me . . . the . . . prince,” she said, haltingly, as though she were unfamiliar with their language and was still learning it. She was so otherworldly, with such determination in her eyes, that she truly seemed a force to be reckoned with.
    Vortimer and Faustus looked at each other. “What do you want with me?” Vortimer asked, an edge of fear to his voice.
    Faustus giggled. “Maybe she is the Queen of Fairyland, come to take you off to her bower to be her husband.”
    â€œMaybe she is a renegade from some gypsy playacting troupe,” suggested one of the guards. “If so, they need a better costumer.”
    â€œShe doesn’t mean you ,” Corwin blurted to Vortimer, somehow knowing this to be true, although the images he was sharing with the strange girl confused him. It had something to do with the shell he had found and the