His legs would scarcely carry him. A sharp pain was beginning in his chest. He stumbled around looking for familiar things. He found her grave, coming on it very suddenly, almost tripping on the mound of earth. He stood looking down at it, his whole face aching with grief.
He felt her slipping from him; he gasped at the shock of it, after so long together with her, as if she pulled roots up from his body. He felt her leave him, and then, for a moment, as she turned toward him for the last time, he saw her.
She was real as the air, her small heart-shaped face, her wide eyes, her lips parted. She seemed about to speak to him, and he called her name, joyous, reaching for her, and then she sank down into her grave and was gone.
He dropped onto his knees, exhausted. On the weatherbeaten mound of earth a rock lay, and he reached for it, because he thought he saw an image on it. But it was just a flat rock.
He slumped down, his spirit sinking into his belly. He saw what a fool he was. He had made here only what he had brought with him, laid on like a scab over the land, without roots or vigor, and now vanishing. He had lost Benna, for his follies, and his children. He was alone, with nothing, in an enormous wilderness.
“Corban.”
His name struck him like a bolt of lightning. He lifted his head, turning his gaze up toward the line of the trees. He saw nothing, until she moved.
Mav came down out of the trees toward him. Her hair was like blackened silver around her, threaded through with flowers. Her skin was like silver. She walked light as a deer on the grass.
In the shadows behind her, he saw the dark man, waiting.
He rose to his feet. His sister had stopped, there, halfway to him. Calling him. He felt his body creak and settle into life again. He stooped a moment, and put his hand down flat on the grave at his feet, and whispered Benna’s name. Then he stood and walked up after his sister, toward the forest.
CECELIA HOLLAND has written twenty-four historical novels over the course of a distinguished career that spans more than a quarter of a century. Recounting tales from Salisbury Plain and the building of Stonehenge, to the Holy Land in the time of the Crusades, to the brawling streets of San Francisco during the Gold Rush, Holland’s novels have won high praise for their vivid settings and meticulous research. She lives in Eureka, California.
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