The Summer Child

"Let's hope that's the last of them," he said to the warhorse. Turning, he entered the cave.

Echoes sounded from the walls, so the king ran down a tunnel of sound. A woman's voice was speaking.

"Welcome, daughter, we've been expecting you..."

The king rounded corner after corner, cursing the teasing echo that made him think the speaker was near.

"There is a curse..."

"It must fall on me!" the voice nearly stopped the king short. He recognized it. "Kyri," he breathed, and hastened on.

"...A sacrifice must be made."

The king arrived in time to see the girl fall onto the stone. Her mother was beside her, placing the body more neatly, making it ready. The older woman turned, having whetted a knife, and handed the blade to the matron.

"Do not touch her!" the cry echoed around the cavern. Without looking up, the mother smiled. Damon, laboring up the steps as if the air was mud, stretched out his arms. "She must not die."

"But someone must," the mother's red lips tipped into a smile. The king reached the top of the steps, sweat across his brow. "Then take me." His voice was breathless, but he managed to stand up straight, and repeat, "Take me. I will die for her, for the land."

"Are you sure?" the hag cackled.

The king glanced at her, and then turned to look down at Kyri, resting as peaceful as a child on the slab. She did not stir or seem to hear at all.

"Do you give yourself willingly?"

"Yes," he said, without looking away from the maiden's face. "I will die for you."

"Very well," the two said together. The body on the slab faded slowly away.

"What?" the king shouted, and the echoes nearly deafened him. "Where is she?"

The matron gestured impatiently for him to lie down on the stone. "She is fine, and returned home. Even now she sits up on the lawn of the palace you built for her, and see her wolf running to her. With his help she stands," the woman kept speaking as the king did her bidding, and lay down. The stone was colder than anything he had imagined, cold enough to tear the skin from his bones. With effort he forced himself to rest, and as the soothing voice went on with the sound of a spinning whetstone, he closed his eyes... "She is going towards the palace, where the birds are singing in her garden for the dawn. And now she turns, and looks north, and remembers..."

The blow was sudden. The pain swiftly followed. And then the king felt himself falling, falling, flying as if he was a bird over fields full of wheat, of leafy green vines, and finally, houses and farms and a palace on a hill, with tiers of plantings layered all the way down into the valley. And then it was as if he swooped down closer, and approached the east wing, where men and women were gathering and looking north expectantly, as if waiting for someone.

Kyri, he thought, they're waiting for Kyri. He could almost touch the ground, but then he was lifted, and the beating of a bird's wings seemed to fall into the rhythm of a horse's gait. River was under him and galloping. Ahead of them, at the palace, the people were beginning to point and cry out happily—looking to him, why to him, oh, where was she?

As he drew closer River slowed. He could see the faces of the crowd, and how they parted, and a woman, tall and dark haired and radiant, came forward. She was alive, as he was, and there on her brow was a crown.

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