Princess Etheria and the Battling Bucks

by Dwayne R. James

CHAPTER 2

  Thinking and Knowing

  Thé-B’doh’s hoof had barely touched Etheria’s body, when it was abruptly, and unapologetically, stopped short.

  Although the Princess’ travelling cloak was light enough for her to comfortably wear on even the hottest of Thenken days, its delicate appearance concealed a hidden power: it was also her very own protective shield.

  Within micro-seconds of sensing the deer’s heavy foot, the magical cloak abruptly inflated, pushing the hoof aside so brusquely that both bucks were knocked off balance, and thrown awkwardly to the dusty ground. Then, the cloak continued to expand so explosively that, moments later, it had completely enveloped the Princess, and taken the form of a large purple sphere with her safe inside of it.

  Even as the squire-els were rushing forward to restrain the fallen bucks with their wands, Etheria’s protective sphere was already rolling slowly away from them before bouncing once, and then lifting gently up into the air. For a time, it floated gracefully several meters above the bucks, spinning slowly in place, as if observing the signs of destruction below it.

  Etheria was no stranger to the inside of this sphere, having benefited from its protection a number of times in her exploration of Thenken, either when she had capsized her canoe in white water, or when she had slipped off a rock wall while climbing. She was actually quite comfortable inside the expanded cloak, as it was as soft as cotton against her body, and translucent enough for her to see what was going on outside.

  The cloak always reacted to danger immediately, but not so quickly that Etheria didn’t sometimes get cut or bruised, and she was reminded of this fact as she rubbed the tender area on her upper chest. It would smart for a few days, and likely develop a purple hoof-shaped bruise. Still, it was better than the alternative.

  The Princess looked at the bucks below her as they struggled against each other to get back on their feet. She had to admit that she felt perversely satisfied that they had been knocked so roughly to the ground by the sphere. Although part of her wondered if they had perhaps been hurt in the fall, another part of her found itself ambivalent about it.

  Cedric and Nigel were slowly backing away from the deer with their wands raised defensively. Solid golden light was shooting out of the tip of both of their wands, pushing against the bucks to move them back every time they appeared to be moving in the direction of the protective sphere. Nigel looked up at the cocooned Princess, and gestured to an area well on the other side of the glade, and closer to the stream. It was, she realized, where the two of them were withdrawing, and where he expected her to join them.

  The Princess willed the sphere first to move, and then to descend, and after a moment it was settling softly to the ground in the area of the glade that Nigel had indicated. The bucks, now safely corralled on the distant end of the glade were, not surprisingly, fighting again.

  Apparently satisfied that the danger had passed, the protective sphere instantly reverted back to the form of a cloak. Etheria emerged, not with shock or anger on her face, but with a look of fierce determination. She was taking a step back towards the bucks when the squire-els ran up to her, and blocked her path. She could see the resolve in their tiny coal-black eyes, and understood that they would not let her get that close to the bucks again so soon, even with the protective ability of her cloak.

  The Princess sighed, looked at the bickering bucks, and saw that she and the squire-els had once again been forgotten about.

  “I’m OK,” Etheria said, before her friends had a chance to ask. “They didn’t hurt me.” She wasn’t about to tell them how close the hoof had come, and she hoped that they wouldn’t ask to see if she had been bruised.

  As one, the squire-els narrowed their eyes. Etheria knew that this was the closest that they would come to giving her a lecture. Still, at times, their expressions could be harsher than words, and a lot more articulate too. She held up her hands apologetically and simply said, “I know. I know. That was stupid. It won’t happen again.”

  “Some day Princess,” admonished Cedric, “you’re going to come across something that your cloak can’t protect you against.” He was pointing at her accusingly now, his tiny finger wagging up and down.

  “Have you any idea how much paperwork is involved when we have to file an incident report?” asked Nigel in what was clearly a good-natured tone intended to lighten the mood. “Oberon would not be at all pleased with us!”

  Nigel emphasized his point with a quick exclamatory snort, while Cedric clicked his upper teeth with his tongue. Then they both sheathed their wands. It was clear that they considered the matter closed.

  Etheria looked up from her squire-els, took one last glance at the battling bucks, turned away from them, and then led her tiny friends along the shore of the stream until they were well upstream of the pile of excrement. They jumped out onto a large flat rock that split the stream in two. As they sat down, Etheria pulled several drinking cups from a pocket in her cloak, filled them with fresh sweetwater from the stream, handed one to each of her companions, and lifted the third one to her lips. For several minutes they sat quietly, sipping the golden liquid from their cups, and staring at the mist that danced within them. Every once in a while, the wind would blow snippets of the buck’s argument over to them, and remind them that not everything within the glade was so peaceful.

  “It looks hopeless,” Cedric said finally. He was sitting on the Princess’ right side as she dangled her feet in the cool water. His tiny legs couldn’t reach the stream, so they hung out into empty space beyond the rock’s ledge. “I can’t see what you can possibly do to help them Princess, or even why you insist on trying.”

  “It’s…it’s hard to explain,” she answered, her voice trailing off. How could she explain it to Cedric, when she couldn’t even understand it herself?

  They stopped speaking altogether for a time as they drank their water. At first, the silence that settled upon them was uncomfortable but, as it endured, it eventually made itself at home. Their cups now empty, Etheria returned them to the hidden pocket of her cloak.

  The Princess looked up at the sun to judge how much time had passed since they had entered the glade, and then back down at the bubbling stream. As she wondered about how best to answer Nigel, she watched as the water flowed in the current past the rock that they were sitting on, and how it circled in behind the rock to create an eddy of calm water. There were several such eddies in this stream, and she could see numerous tiny water spiders skimming across their surfaces. These spiders would undoubtedly not have been able to survive in the fast moving water outside the eddies, yet within them, they thrived. And so too did the tiny minnows that she could see just beneath the surface of the water, and the crayfish that darted from one underwater shadow to another.

  It was the same, she realized, in much larger rivers too. In fact, she frequently marvelled at how there could be pockets of safety and tranquility in even the wildest of rivers. When her father, King Rowan, slipped into such an eddy while paddling his canoe in white water, he called it a resteddy. It was a chance to rest and take a break in the middle of a set of rapids, scout out what was ahead of him down river, and admire the kinetic movement of the fast flowing water all around him.

  Her father, it seemed, loved eddies so much, that he had practically built their house in one! The cabin that the King and Princess called home was constructed on top of an immense rock on the shore of a turbulent, fast flowing section of the Sweetwater river, and its porch hung out over the eddy that pooled behind this rock. The eddy created a large calm area of water that was about half the size of a football field (which is apparently a universal unit of measurement even in Thenken). In summer, the King anchored a raft in the middle of the eddy, and in winter kept a portion of it clear for skating. Appropriately, Rowan had named their cabin, and the grounds around it, the RestEddy.

  As Etheria dipped her hand out into the stream to feel the strength of its current, she stared thoughtfully at th
e tiny resteddies all around her. There were a number of rocks splitting the surface of the waterway, and behind each of them was a area of relative calm. The eddies were monopolizing her attention, and she could not quite figure out why.

  Resteddies, Princess Etheria thought to herself. What would resteddies have to do with Cedric’s question?

  The Princess had just asked herself this question because she well knew that, often, while we’re in the middle of pondering some deep question, our eyes or ears are frequently pulled away, and attracted to something, and it’s like we’re just noticing it—or some tiny detail about it—for the very first time. She was aware that, most of the time, this was the Universe trying to get our attention by giving us a nudge towards the very answer that we’re seeking. In this case, Etheria’s eyes were repeatedly being drawn towards the resteddies in the stream, and experience had shown her that this meant that they were somehow relevant to what Cedric was asking her. Still, she didn’t exactly know why, or how. So, she thought about it some more, and let her mind drift a little.

  Etheria looked at the water spiders in the eddy downstream from her, and found herself imagining that this stream was a large river, and that the spiders were actually tiny canoes. It was this observation that finally opened her mind’s eye. When the answer finally came to her, she wondered why it had taken so long. It was, after all, exceedingly obvious.

  Not long ago, while she and her father were in a much larger resteddy, she had asked him virtually the same question that Cedric had just tendered to her.

  Etheria and her father King Rowan had been out paddling a remote section of the Sweetwater River, he in his large birch bark canoe, and she in a smaller version that the river otters had presented to her on her eighth birthday. They had named it for her in honour of the Riverie, the King’s three-masted schooner that sailed the deeper, wider sections of the Sweetwater. Etheria’s small birch bark canoe was called the Tiny Riverie.

  Earlier that day, her father had stopped to help a young fox cross the river. In Etheria’s opinion, it had taken too much time out of a day that she had expected to spend alone with her father. She didn’t understand why it was necessary to help, when the fox could have simply walked downstream for another hour, and then climbed across a beaver dam to the other shore of the Sweetwater herself.

  Later, long after the fox had been dropped off, and significantly behind schedule as far as Etheria was concerned, she and her father pulled their canoes into a resteddy behind a large rock in the middle of the river. They were part of the way down a challenging set of rapids which had proven difficult to run because the sun was very low in the sky, and was reflecting off the water and into their eyes. They couldn’t see their way nearly as well as they should have been able to, and Etheria was frustrated because she had already bounced off a number of rocks that she normally would have been able to see.

  She had been looking forward to these rapids for weeks, and hadn’t really enjoyed running them because of the sun in her eyes, and the awkwardness of her descent. So, soon after pulling into the resteddy beside her father, Etheria told him what she was feeling. She explained that they wouldn’t have been forced to run the rapids so late in the day, if he hadn’t insisted that they stop and help the fox.

  “This isn’t the first time this kind of thing has happened Dad,” she said to him. “It seems like you’re always putting other people first; ahead of yourself…ahead of me,” she added almost as an afterthought. “It’s not like you ever get anything out of it anyhow.”

  She looked away from her father, speaking into thin air and grateful that he was just letting her speak. Her frustration was dissipating with every word she delivered, so she finished by saying, almost apologetically, “I just don’t understand Dad—this was supposed to be our trip.”

  Her father took a long time to think about what she had said, and seemed to stare forever at the tall pine trees along the shore as they moved against the clouds in the sky.

  As was usual whenever he was in a state of deep contemplation, the King was habitually fingering the amber pendant that hung on an invisible cord around his neck. About the size of hockey puck, the pendant’s golden amber held a number of objects captive, most notably the perfectly preserved body of an ancient honey bee. The amulet had deep sentimental significance for the King, and he often found himself either holding, or closely examining it, especially when formulating a response to a difficult question.

  When Rowan finally responded to his daughter, his voice was calm, and without a hint of retribution. “I know this may not make a lot of sense to you Etheria,” he said finally, “but the reason that I do it has everything to do with what I believe about my place in the world, and in the Universe.”

  He looked at his young daughter in the canoe beside his as if to warn her that a long speech was on the horizon. She recognized the signal immediately, and moved out of the kneeling position in her canoe to sit more comfortably on the thatched-twig seat.

  “You see Etheria,” King Rowan continued, “I believe that, in this Universe, we are each smaller pieces of a much larger whole.”

  As he spoke this, he leaned back in his canoe, and spread his arms wide. He looked first at the trees above them, and then at the water around and below them. The King and Princess had attracted the attention of a number of animals along the river. On one side, a bear stopped lumbering along the shore briefly to look their way and grunt. On the other shore, a family of river otters paused at the top of a mud slide to cock their ears in Rowan and Etheria’s direction before slipping down the river bank, and splashing into the water and out of sight.

  “It may not seem obvious that we are connected, and it is admittedly a difficult concept to grasp.” He was now looking directly at her. “But the distinction between each of us is a lot less solid than you might imagine. Our physical bodies may be distinct Etheria (to illustrate this point, Rowan reached over, and gently tweaked Etheria’s nose) but our minds and our consciousnesses know no such boundaries. Especially here in Thenken.”

  Rowan stopped for a moment to let his words sink in. He looked up at the sky, and then pointed to a cloud. “Look,” he said, “that cloud looks just like you.”

  Etheria gazed skyward, and sure enough there was a majestic white cloud that did in fact look just like her. She quickly realized however that the effect was more than coincidental. Not only did the cloud look like it been carved by a master sculptor, but it was in fact smiling broadly and waving at them.

  “Dad,” Etheria said as if she were peering at him over a pair of glasses. “You did that.”

  Rowan grinned toothily.

  “Guilty as charged,” he answered. “You see, you and I can share thoughts and ideas with our words, and even our perceptions through what we see. The bear that just walked by on the other side of the river wouldn’t be able to see that cloud in the same way. To the bear, it wouldn’t have looked a thing like you.” He pointed at a bird high above them. “It’d be the same with that eagle. From a different perspective, a person might see something completely different in that cloud, but you and I see pretty much the same thing. That’s because we’re connected, and sharing aspects of the same perspective.

  “And it’s not just the two of us. As a community, we are all connected, and are often unaware of the impact that our actions have on others.”

  The bow of Rowan’s canoe had drifted slightly out of the resteddy and into the current, and his craft began to swivel slowly away from Etheria. Rowan raised his hand in front of him, and gestured towards the bow, slowly moving his hand through the air back in the direction of the resteddy. Obediently, the bow of the birch bark vessel followed, until the canoe had returned to the calm eddy water. However, the wave that was created by his return pushed Etheria away from her father, and closer to the other side of the eddy. To avoid being pulled out into the fast moving water, the Princess pulled out her paddle, and used it to draw herself back beside her father’s larger canoe. r />
  Rowan smiled pleasantly and lifted his eyebrows expectantly, as if this experience somehow illustrated his point. Then he reached out and took hold of the Tiny Riverie’s gunnels to hold her in place beside him.

  Etheria put her paddle back into her canoe, and looked back at her father who continued to speak.

  “I have found a bizarre serendipity when it comes to doing things for other people,” he said. “More often than not, in helping them, I am presented with new and timely opportunities as well as challenges, and there is always a reward.”

  Etheria cocked her head, and without her having to actually form the words, Rowan understood the question that was brewing in her mind.

  “Not like any reward that you’re thinking of. I believe that to truly benefit from such an experience, you must be able to completely divest yourself of any expectation of reciprocity.”

  As he spoke, Rowan pulled a small wooden cup out of a pocket of his robe, and dipped it into the river beside his canoe. It brimmed with sparkling golden liquid as he pulled it up to his mouth, and he stared at it as he spoke.

  “I don’t do it because I want to be rewarded with money, praise, or even gratitude for that matter. I do it because I always receive something much more valuable than any of that.” He took a brief sip from his cup, swirled the liquid around in his mouth and swallowed before finishing his sentence. “I am rewarded with the experience.”

  Rowan paused long enough for his daughter’s attempt at disguising her dismissive scoff with a clearing of her throat, and continued.

  “I am daily amazed at how these challenges have served to develop some skill in me that was lacking, or to fill a gap in my knowledge, or my understanding of something.“ He gestured into the air with the hand that held the cup. “For example, I had never been to that area of the forest where we just helped the young fox. Now as a result of helping her, we’ve had a personal tour, and even made a new friend.”

  The King took a long drink of water from his cup as Etheria thought for a moment.

  “OK,” she said tentatively, “I get that last part, but I don’t understand what it has to do with looking at the world holistically.”

  Rowan smiled at his young daughter’s proper use of the term, and reached out and rubbed the top of her hair in exactly the way that made her squirm. As he pushed her bangs up on her forehead—it was something that he kept insisting on doing even though she didn’t like her bangs that way—she swatted his hand away playfully.

  “Good question. I was just about to get to that, as it is the most important point.” He gently knocked his empty cup upside down against the gunnels of his canoe to shake the final drops out of it, and slipped it back inside his cloak. There was a noticeable bulge in the fabric when he first put the cup in, but moments after he had pulled his hand away, the lump had completely disappeared.

  “I don’t just provide assistance to other people to help them, I also do it because it helps me.”

  Etheria paused in the middle of fixing her bangs, and looked at him suddenly, her eyes narrowed in disbelief.

  “If that seems selfish,” Rowan continued, “consider this. With each person I help, and every challenge I accept, I become a stronger, more knowledgeable—and more complete—person, and my abilities are bolstered and enhanced. As a result, I am able to help even more people, with even more challenging problems.”

  The King reached forward and grasped the handle of his paddle, and rested it across the gunnels so that the blade hung out over the water beside his canoe.

  “You’re familiar with the ancient Thenken blessing Mi’raute?”

  “Of course,” answered Etheria. “It’s a greeting that you use when you want to express deep respect for somebody.”

  “Yes, but what is lesser known is that the word also represents a core philosophical truth for the Thenken Ancients, and it is related to the idea that I am trying to express to you now.” The King cleared his throat. “Like many concepts from the Ancients, the meaning of Mi’raute is a balance of three individual aspects that are each of equal importance. These aspects are: gratitude, humility and service.” The King held his hand up and flipped up a finger as he listed each aspect.

  “The relationship between three separate aspects of the human experience is actually a fairly common concept,” continued the King. “Many people consider ‘three’ to be a number full of significance and of deep magic. It is primarily why you will often hear people say that ‘things happen in threes’, and it’s a good indication of whether a person is an optimist or a pessimist as to whether they expect good or bad things to happen in threes.

  “Still, they’re not wrong. The number does have a mystical relationship with reality, and you see symbols for it everywhere, even here in Thenken. Most notably in a design that you see pretty much every day Etheria.”

  Etheria was initially surprised by this revelation, but not for long. She grinned slyly as she immediately intuited what symbol her father meant, it was, after all, on the bow of her canoe.

  “The Royal Seal,” she said proudly.

  “Exactly.” As he spoke, the King used his finger to paint a shape in the air in front of him, and a glowing golden symbol of the Thenken Royal Seal appeared and floated between them. “I’ve told you about this seal before. How it is reminiscent of a Celtic Knot, and is comprised of a classic triquetra intertwined with a five-petaled flower.”

  The Princess nodded.

  “The triquetra is a unique ancient symbol both here and in the waking world,” continued the King. “Simply defined, a triquetra is ‘three cornered’,” he pointed to each of the corners of the floating golden symbol, “and it has been used over the years by both Pagans and Christians alike to symbolize the integration of three important aspects of their core beliefs. For Pagans, the three aspects are usually Mind, Body, and Spirit. For Christians, it is the Father, Son, and Holy Ghost. However, you could also look at it as the mergence of Past, Present, and Future, or the relationship between Land, Sky, and Sea...”

  The Princess whistled.

  “...and I could go on and on. In the Thenken Royal Seal though, the triquetra obviously represents the Mi’raute concept with its integration of ...”

  “Gratitude, Humility, and Service,” interrupted the Princess.

  “Precisely.”

  “What about the flower?” asked Etheria. “Does it represent anything beyond the fact that the Kingdom is covered in wildflowers?”

  “As a matter of fact, yes it does,” answered Rowan. “Simply put, the five-petaled flower represents awareness. It is symbolic of the union of our five senses, and how they can be used in concert to keep us fully aware in the moment, and in such a way that the sum becomes an entity in and of itself when it is complete.” The King flicked at one of the corners of the floating Seal, and it began to spin in the air. “And before you get a chance to ask, the circle that surrounds the entire design is symbolic of the whole of which we are all a part. It is eternal and, like a circle, has no beginning and no end.”

  With that, the King snatched the symbol from the air, and held it flat in his hand. Then he swung his arm wide, and launched the Royal Seal into the air like a Frisbee. It soared out beyond the eddy and, as Etheria and Rowan watched, it traced a wide arc around them before finally colliding with a tall rock face on the far side of the river and exploding in a shower of gold and red sparks. When the shower had cleared a little, the Royal Seal was clearly visible on the rock wall as if it had been etched there in dark charcoal.

  “So, when you address somebody with Mi’raute Etheria, you are telling them three things. That you are grateful for what you have—or are about to—learn from them, that you are bowing humbly before the inherent goodness in their spirit, and that you pledge your service to that spirit.”

  Etheria was still watching the sparks fizzle and fade as they fell from the rock wall as her father continued, “The belief behind the Mi’raute greeting, as well as the point that I�
��m belabouring here, is that, through mutual gratitude, respect, and service, you and the person that you are blessing are both ultimately evolved in some way. In the end, this philosophy makes the whole, of which you are both a part, more complete because you have made yourself better, and have helped others within it to be better too.”

  Rowan looked at his young daughter, and saw the intense look of concentration on her face. He waited a moment for his words to sink in and then said, “Does that make sense to you?”

  Etheria shifted her weight in the seat a little, and felt her canoe rock gently in the resteddy. Then she looked back at her father and lied.

  “Yes, I think it does.”

  Rowan smiled knowingly and added, “There is one last thing. The choice to help is yours alone to make. Do not do it out of guilt or coercion.“

  Rowan emphasized his point by taking Etheria’s hand firmly in his own.

  “Sometimes helping other people will put you in danger, and you have to consider those risks. If somebody is panicking or irrational, it is best to step back and wait for them to come to their senses. If you put yourself at risk, you will not be able to help them, or anybody else for that matter.”

  “But how will I know when I think I can help?”

  “In a way, you have just answered your own question Etheria. There is a difference between thinking and knowing. When we think that we can do something, we fail more often than not. When we know that we can do something, we always succeed. The human soul has an innate capacity for knowing its own truth, that is, if you’re paying attention enough to listen,” continued the King on a seeming non-sequitur. “That’s why I’ve always tried to expose you to as many different ideas as possible—even the controversial ones—and have never minded when others spoke out in front of you as well.”

  The Princess smiled knowingly. “You’re talking about Fowler aren’t you?”

  The King chuckled. “Well yes, he certainly has his share of radical conspiracy theories doesn’t he? Especially when it comes to his views on organized religions!” The King arched his eyebrows dramatically. “I’m sure you’re aware that I don’t agree with everything he says Etheria, but I don’t mind him challenging me, or you for that matter, because I know that you and I are both of us smart enough to make up our own minds at the end of the day. I’m also confident that you’re intuitive enough to know what works for you when we’re exposed to new ideas. Similarly, let your intuition guide you when you’re presented with an opportunity to help somebody. If, ultimately, you decide to help, do it with your full attention.”

  Etheria wasn’t completely convinced by her father’s words. Sure, they sounded nice, but she was not her father. He always seemed to know what to do in tough situations, and he always looked so calm doing it too.

  “But how do you…” she started, stumbling on the wording. “How do you do it when you … don’t know what to do?”

  “You mean how do I figure out how to help?”

  “Yeah.”

  “That’s actually a very easy question to answer. When you can’t find a solution on the outside, you just look on the inside.”

  The King smiled as Etheria tilted her head in obvious confusion.

  “Well, put it this way: I’ve heard it said (and it’s something I deeply believe) that you will never encounter a problem or a challenge that you don’t already possess the skills to solve. So when you’re trying to solve this problem, don’t try and invent the solution, try to remember it instead.”

  Her father had said some nutty things in her lifetime, but this one seemed to be in contention for the top prize. Remember the solution to a problem she probably had never heard of before? What was he talking about?

  “I don’t understand,” she said. She figured that this would be more polite than what she really wanted to say to him. She assumed that it was a breach of protocol in the Thenken Kingdom to question a King’s mental state, even if you were related to him.

  “One of the benefits of living a linear life,” Rowan continued, “is that we have the power of reflection at our disposal. Experience, is often the best teacher, and subtlety among the best lessons to learn. We all have experiences from our past that have bearing on things that are happening now. As I just said, each challenge we solve gives us the tools we need to tackle tougher challenges, so it’s important for us to keep track of what we’ve already learned. That’s why it will serve you to reflect upon your past experiences when you are searching for a solution to a present problem.”

  “Haven’t you always told me to seize the present moment? If I’m always looking back, wouldn’t that put me at risk of living in the past?”

  “Not quite. You’re simply being reflective, and thinking about a number of different things—experiences in this case—that have happened to you. It is like scanning the jumbled pieces of a jigsaw puzzle in order to assemble it. You pick up one piece, look at it. Think about it, compare it to others that are like it, and finally put it where it fits. In some ways, life is a puzzle, one that actually grows bigger with every day. And, even more amazingly,” he added almost as an afterthought. “As you assemble your life’s puzzle, you’ll find that pieces that you’ve already fit into place, will fit perfect well in other parts of the puzzle too, and make a completely different kind of sense in their new context.”

  The Princess raised her eyebrows as her father’s words settled into her brain and made themselves comfortable.

  “You made a good point though,” continued the King, “If you are attached to your past, then you expect every day of your future to be just like every day has already been in your past. You close yourself off to new possibilities; you stop evolving. I’m not advocating this. Instead, I’m saying that you can look for inspiration from your past experiences to guide you into the uncertainty of your future without expecting that things will be exactly the same. It will make it easier for you when you’re stepping into the unknown.”

  Rowan stopped talking, and squeezed his daughter’s hand. ”Now, before you get a chance to ask another question, I’m going to end this discussion with a final thought. When you’re stuck, think about what you’ve done Etheria, and it will help you with what you do. Now, what say we find a place to set up a camp site, and we can return to these rapids tomorrow when the light’s a little better. Then, we can run them from the top as many times as you’d like.”

  Etheria smiled broadly as her father let go of her hand and, slowly, his canoe slipped backwards in the resteddy. He reached out with his paddle beyond the eddy line, caught the current on the tip of its blade, spun his craft around so that his bow was pointing downstream, and once more, he was out in the fast moving water. Etheria moved back to a kneeling position, picked up her paddle, performed a similar move, and followed her father down the river.

  Etheria had lied to her father that day in the eddy, and now, watching the bucks struggling against each other at the far end of the glade, she thought that she was finally beginning to understand what he was trying to tell her.

  Sitting there by the stream in the glade, she told this story to squire-els. When she was done, they nodded in understanding.

  “I’ve used Mi’raute all my life,” said Nigel. “But I had no idea that it had such a deep meaning.”

  Notwithstanding Nigel’s words, Etheria suspected that the two squire-els were humouring her in much the same way as she did her father that day on the river.

  “So Cedric,” she said, finally responding to his earlier question. “I don’t yet know what I will do, but I know that I can do something, as surely as I know that I must do something.”

  “But,” spoke Nigel. “Do they even want you to do something?”

  Etheria chewed lightly at her bottom lip as she considered this. “Good question.” She smiled at Nigel. “I guess that’s the first step isn’t it? That’ll be the first thing I find out once they calm down a little.”

  “If they calm down a little,” muttered Cedric almost too
quietly to be heard.

  So, with that the trio waited patiently for the bucks to settle down, and continued to watch the sun move across the morning sky. In time, they noticed that the argument began to abate, and the bucks eventually stopped arguing long enough to amble sideways over to the stream for a drink. They approached the water slightly upstream from the rock on which the trio was perched (with the squire-els watching warily), and had to step into the water up to their ankles in order for them both to be able to dip their snouts deep enough to drink. As the golden mist over the stream swirled and formed images around the locked heads of the massive deer, Etheria stood up on the rock and addressed them.

  “Would you like me to help you?” she asked proudly. “If you agree, I know that I can find a way to release you.”

  Truth be told, Etheria didn’t exactly understand how she emphatically knew that she could succeed in freeing the conjoined bucks, it was just something that her heart and her head were telling her to say.

  The two deer were silent. They had stopped drinking, and had pulled their heads up away from the water, but avoided looking directly at the young girl.

  “It only takes one to answer,” Etheria said, looking directly at Thé-B’doh’s great eye. Slowly, the eye swivelled up to meet her gaze briefly, and then moved quickly away.

  Quietly Thé-B’doh answered, “Yes.” His voice quivered.

  Immediately, Pahweetor snorted in disgust. “Fine.” he said, and then added quietly “You never could fight your own battles…”

  Thé-B’doh was about to respond angrily to this last comment when a noise the likes of which they’d never heard split the air in the glade, and it stopped them both short.

  They looked over to see Etheria brandishing what looked like a gnarled stick above her head. The stick appeared to be the source of the awesome din (It was a sound that was very foreign to the bucks. It was actually the sound of an entire brass section of an orchestra playing a single sustained note with fortissimo).

  The sound stopped abruptly, and Etheria lowered her magic wand.

  “I’ll need the two of you to stop bickering while I’m helping you,” she said sternly. “Or I will quite literally put a cork in it.”

  Then the Princess rubbed her chin thoughtfully, and narrowed her eyes thoughtfully at the mess of antlers before her. She scratched her head with the end of her wand, looked at each of her squire-els in turn, and said “Well, here goes something…”

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