The Sable Moon by Nancy Springer Page A

Desperately, Trevyn hit him again, hard enough to split his own knuckles. Gwern staggered and shrugged off the blow.
    â€œIf you go near her,” Trevyn gasped wildly, “I will kill you!”
    â€œYou can’t,” Gwern stated, and ambled away down the stairs. Trevyn sensed that he was right, and in sheerest chagrin he wept.
    â€œHow was the carole?” Megan’s mother asked her the next morning.
    â€œWonderful,” her daughter answered. “There were marvelous ices. And I believe. Trevyn liked my dress.” She smiled in a way that made her mother’s heart ache, for the goodwife hated to see the girl disappointed.
    Confidently Megan waited for Trevyn to come to her. But instead came Gwern, with his bare brown feet hanging down, bareback and bridleless on Trevyn’s golden stallion. The big horse obeyed him at a touch. Filled with sudden foreboding, Meg went out to the fence to meet him, and he vaulted down from his steed to speak to her.
    â€œPrince Trevyn started back to Laueroc early this morning,” he told her. “I have come to take his leave of you, since he would not.”
    Meg regarded him steadily, her sharp face only a little tauter than usual, for she was practiced in hiding her feelings. “And which of us has frightened him away,” she asked at last, “ye or me?”
    â€œYou,” Gwern said promptly. “He bears no love for me.”
    Her face twitched at that. “And how does it come to be,” she wondered aloud, “that ye’re Trevyn, and yet ye’re not Trevyn?”
    â€œI don’t know,” he grumbled, then looked at her with something like alarm. “Did you speak to him of that?”
    â€œNay! He is not ready; he is terrified.” Meg was the wise woodland Maiden, as Gwern knew, but she knew herself only as a hurt and bewildered girl. Tears trickled from her eyes. “Will he ever come back to me?” she murmured.
    Gwern came to her, finding his way around the rough rail fence. “Megan, I love you,” he said flatly. “Let me stay with you, since Trevyn would not.”
    She quirked a wry smile at him, amused in spite of her misery. “I don’t know much,” she retorted, “but I know wild, and ye’re as wild as wind. And ye cannot bear to be long away from him. How long would ye stay?”
    â€œA few days,” Gwern admitted. “But if he goes over ocean, I must learn to bear that pang. I cannot leave earth. My sustenance is in the soil beneath my feet.”
    â€œAnd he longs to go to Elwestrand,” Meg mused. “The tides wash in his eyes.… Go now, Gwern. I don’t need yer comfort. But if ye need mine someday, come to me.”
    She spoke bravely. But that night, after the fire was banked and she went to her bed, despair struck her that went too deep even for tears. She had let herself show a woman’s heart, and the showing had driven Trevyn from her. For who would want to be loved by a skinny thing like her? To think it of him, and he the Prince! And yet, what of that kiss.…
    In months to come, when she had driven from her all other hope of his regard, the memory of that kiss was still to linger in the heart of her heart, like a glowing coal in the ashes of a benighted fire.

Chapter Five
    The winter holidays had nearly ended when Trevyn returned to his home—to Laueroc, fair city of meadowlarks. No birds sang now over the meadows that ringed the town, but the towers shone golden in the wintry sunlight. In the fairest tower, Trevyn knew, King Hal dreamed his visionary dreams. Below, artists of all sorts wrought their own dreams within his protecting walls. The countless concerns of the court city of Isle hummed on, and Alan saw to them all, frowning.
    King Alan heard the shout go up when Trevyn rode in, and he met his son at the gates to the keep. Time was when he would have been waiting with a stick in his hand, to thrash the Prince