The Maiden of Moonfane Forge

The following day was more of the same. Hayleigh had ministered to Vetch’s wounds, made sure he was well fed, and gave him ample time to rest, either drowsing in bed or sitting in the chair by the fire watching the flames flicker and lick across the logs. The mage’s magic was strange. Vetch had never seen any magic save Barrier-Casting in his life. The precise hand motions, the sensations that were both uncomfortable and comforting, and the gauzy-headedness that followed, all combined to leave him in awe of this healing magic. Hayleigh would focus on one wound at a time, for short durations at a time. Afterward, she would need to Slumber in a chair or in bed. As she described it, her healing magic could not miraculously take a man’s ills away, but it would stave off infection and speed the tissues toward healing and closing up. Vetch had witnessed injuries of all sorts, for even during training, soldiers took their share of licks, and yet he had never seen even a minor cut heal as quickly as his ghastly sword wound was healing, proof that this strange magic was working.

When she wasn’t healing him or Slumbering, Hayleigh lived a life that appeared to Vetch extremely plain and monotonous, hauling water, chopping wood, going out in the woodland to gather or hunt food. She seemed content in the life. She did not fit at all Vetch’s image of what a recluse of the enigmatic forest would be like. She was not old and haggard, not eccentric or strange, just a widowed woman living in self-imposed isolation.

Clouds obscured the sky outside and there were briefs periods of rainfall the third morning of Vetch’s stay in Hayleigh’s home. He sat before the fire again, stripped to the waist, while she attended to his injuries. He was beginning to enjoy the sessions of magical treatment. The sensations of restoration and vitality moving through him from her fingers were pleasant and reassuring. Muzzy-minded, he stared blankly over her head, her hair occasionally brushing his chin whiskers while she concentrated on the wound in his chest. Her breath caressed his skin as she worked her magic. When she stood up and bent over him to shift her attentions to the cut where his neck met his shoulder, he found his gaze now of a height with the neckline of her blouse. And as she bent forward, Vetch could not help but be met with a view down her shirt, treating him again to the sight of her ample breasts. They appeared supple and heavy and soft, and this time he did not avert his gaze. He saw her dark nipples, wondered at how they would feel under the brush of his fingers, and felt himself stir in his trousers.

Hayleigh’s fingers lifted from his neck and she moved a half step back, finished with the afternoon’s treatment. Quickly, Vetch looked away, hoping she had not noticed, his face flushing hot. He had been staring like some of the cruder soldiers did in the taverns. What had he been thinking? Silence stretched as Hayleigh looked down at him. Her face was flushed the same, and Vetch knew she had caught him.

“I—” he began.

“I’m not married anymore,” she said suddenly, cutting him off. “You can look upon me.” As she spoke these surprising words in a near whisper, she reached to unbutton the top two buttons of her blouse, bringing to bear tantalizing cleavage.

Vetch was caught speechless. Perhaps she misread his silence for shyness, for she giggled softly, her eyes darting swiftly to the crotch of his trousers and the interest therein that he could not disguise. She smiled and leaned closer, this time giving him freely the view he had stolen before.

“More than look, if you wish,” she added near his ear, in a voice gone husky. “Unless ...” she bent and touched her lips to the corner of his jaw, “there is someone back home who would be cross with you?” Another faint brush of her lips, lower down on his neck. “They’d need not know. This is one thing these woods have never provided me, but that is a still a need. One I desire very much. Do you desire me, handsome soldier?”

The mention of a someone back home cast just enough cool water on the searing skillet, as Vetch was recalled to Lily and his deep desire for her, how he had wanted to be near her night and day, and how the time between their brief encounters always felt like time without sustenance. He had ached for her words and laughter, the joyfulness in her eyes. He had ached for those things as hotly as he had ached for her physically, something he had only imagined experiencing, before all of her, her very self, the person he had fallen for, had been cruelly taken away.

Like a bubble popping, he experienced again that she was gone. The despair at knowing the woman he had loved was dead invaded him like jagged ice opening fissures in stone. For days after her death, he had been sure that he would never again feel anything for any other woman.

Yet, here was a new warmth seeping into those cracks, sensations he had not expected to feel again, let alone so soon after such loss. Love, it was not. Affection, perhaps? Affection for one who had been kind to him, and who was candid about her interest in him? It was the first of any such good emotions he could remember feeling since the attack on his town, and it was something he wished to explore. Did he not at least deserve to let his guard down after all he had been through, feel something close to happiness again? What if ... what if he simply never returned to Moonfane Forge and all the pain that thoughts of that place brought him now? What was stopping him from staying here, and having all that entailed?

Hayleigh’s hands were on his bared shoulders now. While Vetch’s thoughts writhed in conflict like fish hauled up from the water in a basket, she touched her full lips to his, a gentle press that warmed him.

“Don’t answer yet.” She spoke softly, trailing her fingers over his body as she stood back from him. “I regret I must Slumber now. So it goes with us mages. But it shouldn’t be long. And then ... later on ...”

Vetch found himself nodding dumbly. She favored him with a smile, her eyes alight with promise, before she left him there at a robust simmer in order to return to her bedroom and the magical state of Slumber she must heed. He watched her go and knew attraction to her. She was unlike Lily had been. She was not tall, not lithe, but round of face and ample of body. Perhaps it was her being so different from Lily that helped him set aside his pain and consider her in this way. He could tell she was older than him, but not by many years as he judged, a woman of an age to be confident and settled into her own physical bearing. And she used that bearing, translated through her hips in her stride away from him, and the effect on him was another stirring that took some time in fading, even after she had retired to the other room.

Vetch sat for a time and did little more than feed wood into the fire. Eventually, the heat of his physical interest cooled to be replaced by the soporific heat of the fire. In like fashion, the strange cloudy-headedness that came over him while Hayleigh was working her magic on his wounds cleared. His mind felt more relaxed than it had in many days, yet without the conversation and ministrations of his host to keep him occupied, his thoughts began to wander again to all the tragedy that had brought him to her home. There was little to do in the humble cottage besides thinking before the fire and listening to the strange red bird sing its sporadic songs.

The bird was allowed to come and go as it pleased, its cage always left open. There was a flap set underneath the eave of the roof by which it could leave and enter the cottage at its leisure. It was gone at the moment.

Of a sudden, Vetch felt too restless to be drowsing before the fire like an old dog. It was much of all he could do the day prior, but with the help of the magic-guided healing, his energy was returning to him at the same improbable rate as his wounds were mending. He took his shirt from where it had been draped over the opposite chair and pulled it back on, then put on his boots and let himself outside. The high gray clouds and gusty wind made it feel more like fall than spring, but the sprinkling rain at least had abated.

He hadn’t really any thoughts on what he wanted to do other than take in some fresh air and move his legs. Funny how years of being a soldier had created a man so averse to staying sedentary for longer than a day, he thought. Even without a place he was supposed to march, he felt the need to march regardless. He strolled a lap around the little cottage, seeing it all for the first time. The foundations and lower walls were stone, upon which a newer home of wood and thatch had been built. Possibly there had been the remains of a much older dwelling prior to Hayleigh’s arrival and she, or someone before her, had built upon it. It was a similar composition to Ennric’s house. Vetch wondered how Ennric was getting on. If they’d had the old man’s sturdy experience with them during the battle upon the forest road, could Vetch and his fellow soldier’s have come out the victors? Or would Vetch only be mourning yet one more friend now? Ennric had said he was finished with fighting. For the first time, Vetch felt he could understand where the old man was coming from with that sentiment.

For no reason other than it was the direction he was facing upon completing his circuit of the cottage, Vetch chose to stroll beside the stream that ran before it, following it upstream through the trees. It was only when he was well out of sight of Hayleigh’s home that he realized he’d not even thought to bring his sword with him, but had left it leaning beside her door. Still, he felt no apprehension at these woods anymore. After the terror the raiders had inflicted upon he and his soldiers, there was little else Bannerman’s Wood could offer up that would make him feel afraid.

The land rose gradually uphill and soon Vetch came upon a narrow path, little more than a clearer track in the leaf litter. Probably Hayleigh used it when out gathering food in the forest. It turned away from the stream and Vetch found himself walking beneath tall trees with bright green, fan-shaped leaves that clapped gently against one another whenever a breeze stole through. He paused to stare up at one of these giants when a motion in his peripheral drew his attention. Pushing his hair out of his eyes, he gazed off to where something moved behind a stand of thick shrubs as tall as a man. The thing that moved was large enough to shove its way through the dense vegetation. Leaves shuddered and fell, and branches strained and snapped.

Instinctively, Vetch’s hand went to where his sword grip would be, were he wearing his sword. When he realized again that he wasn’t, the ghost of the battle upon the road made him freeze in place. He couldn’t run, couldn’t act. No action came to him. This had never happened to him before. He stared like a child caught out in the road before a galloping horse, unable to move to one side or the other until a parent grabbed them by the arm and swept them out of the way.

And then the great beast thrust itself through the shrubs and gave its broad, horned head a shake. Leaves and twigs fell from its shaggy white mane. Vetch stared uncomprehending as the panthegrunn spotted him, gave a friendly grunt, and then trotted to him like a friendly dog.

“Fae!” Vetch spouted in disbelief, as she pushed her great snout into his face. He took hold of her horns, as he’d seen Lily do so many times, to keep her from bowling him over in her enthusiasm. “Were you following us all this time? You poor beast, you’re a mess!” He pulled more sticks and leaves from out of her hair and brushed more off of her back, before giving her a good scratching behind both ears. “But who else would you follow, I suppose, with Lily gone, and Marigold too? At least you made it away from the fires and kept yourself alive.”

The possibility of staying in this place with Hayleigh, that Vetch had considered before, now warred with his sense of responsibility. Surely, it would be best to lead Lily’s beloved panthegrunn back home? Someone had to take care of her. Who would he entrust her to, though? Who but the two mages in town had even known how to care for such a beast?

As if reading Vetch’s thoughts, Fae gave him a particularly strong nudge with her head that nearly staggered him off his feet. She then turned and, with her uniquely lioness-like strides, walked off the way she had come.

“Fae. Fae!” Vetch called. “Come here, girl!” He hadn’t expected calling her to work. Only Lily had ever been able to command the strange beast in such a way. Still, he would have to find a way to lead her back to Hayleigh’s cottage. Hayleigh was a mage, so perhaps she would know what to do with a charge-beast. He certainly didn’t want to leave Fae to roam the forest alone. If she had followed he and his fellow soldiers this far, then she clearly still sought human companionship. Vetch felt it would be a betrayal to the memory of Lily if he were to simply let her beloved panthegrunn wander off into the wild on her own.

Fae pushed her way back through the thick shrubs and Vetch reluctantly followed, now wishing he had his blade with him simply for cutting a path through the scratching, snagging branches. Fae bullishly pressed on through the plant life while Vetch tried to keep pace. He could find no way to regain her attention or coax her to come back with him as she led him out from beneath the tall trees to a clearing marked with moist, spongy ground, grasses, and cattails. They went beside a pond that Vetch recognized as the source of the stream that flowed before Hayleigh’s cottage. He didn’t want to find himself traipsing through some wet mire, if that was where the panthegrunn was going, especially with the day getting on toward afternoon and a sprinkle of rain starting to fall again. If he followed for too long, too deep into the woods, he might find himself lost. Hayleigh would wake from Slumber and wonder where he’d gone.

As Fae walked around the curve of the pond, Vetch smelled faint woodsmoke and then his eyes fell upon a heap of rags lying beside a little campfire. Fae stopped and sat down like a contented housecat. Perturbed, Vetch approached the campfire. The rags stirred, and then sat up, and he saw that it was a woman who had been asleep beside the weak fire, wrapped in a blanket and dressed in a torn skirt. When she turned her head toward him and their eyes met, Vetch’s jaw fell open and he began trembling all over.

“Lily?” No. It could not be her. She was dead. Killed by the evil mage who had raised an army against their home town and stolen Marigold away. He was dreaming. He had fallen asleep before the fire in Hayleigh’s little cottage and was having impossible dreams as an after-effect of the magic done upon his injuries.

“Vetch? Vetch!” Lily clapped her hands to her mouth and stood quickly. For a moment, she stared at him. When he heard her voice, he knew she was real. No dream could recreate such perfect music in his ears. She opened her arms and hastened to him, and then he was enclosing her in his embrace, as she held him as tightly as she could. And his trembling grew and suddenly tears were streaming down his face, and her hair dried them from his cheeks as he sobbed.

“How? How?” he asked again and again. But he didn’t care how. He didn’t care. His Lily lived, and he would never let her go again.