Hart's Hope

6

The Farmer's Wife Now the life of Orem Scanthips, the Little King, began this way: with a man following a hart through the wood; with a woman bathing at a stream.

Molly the farmer's wife had her six sons and didn't long for more. Six sons, three daughters: too many sons to divide the farm among them, too many daughters to marry them off with any sort of dowry. It was not a son she longed to make when she went that spring morning to her hidden place on the banks of the Banning. She went with a twist of magic in her fingers, so none could follow; but she was followed. Or rather, she was found.

It was a dark place, a still place, where the river ran narrow and deep and so swiftly that a twig was lost in an instant, so quietly that all songs were heard, all footfalls noted. The trees reached out over the water and met in a dense roof so that the sun did not dance upon the stream. It was cold here, even in the summer. A cave made of leaves and water, all the cold and terrible things of a woman: it was Molly's truest home, the place where she dared to call herself by her most secret name.

Bloom, she whispered, naming herself.

Hush, spoke the river in reply. Hush, for the end of your life is coming, following the traces of a deer.

The Pandering Hart

A great grey hart stood across the stream from her. Molly knew him well, knew that in the hart and hind were magics beyond the reach of the silly farm women of Waterswatch. Beyond even her own reach, and she was the best of them. The blood of the Hart, they say, stains all the world. So she watched as the hart condescended to drink from the stream; watched as water fell silver from his mouth back to the river; watched as behind the great beast a hunter came, arrow nocked, bow down but ready to be drawn in an instant.

Do not dare to harm the horned head, she cried silently.

And, as if obedient to her utterance, the hunter stood and watched the deer drink, letting the nock slip from the string, letting the bow grow slack. No death today for the hundred-pointed head.

Molly studied the hunter as the hunter studied the hart. He was a strong-looking man. Not tall, and as dark as men of the west always were. He wore the deep green of the King—a soldier, then. But not like most soldiers, for Molly had never seen a slogger who had the wit to recognize the beauty of a deer; nor did she know any man at all who could fix his attention on one thing for such a long time. The man's eyes gleamed in the darkness of her green and silent cave. He was so still, and yet even slack his arms had power in them. Even silent, his lips commanded attention. And she knew, or thought she knew, or dreamed it even as it happened: she knew that this was no common soldier of the King. It was Palicrovol himself, yes, Palicrovol the Exile, the Husband of Far Beauty. No wonder, she thought, no wonder he stares with such longing at the hart. He wishes some god could be freed to bring him ease. Well, Queen Beauty, if you watch today, see how I bring him ease, thought Molly, thought fecund Daughter Bloom, for I will have this man, will have the life of him in me.

But a part of her answered, with peace only the Sweet Sisters could bring, My children are not bom monsters, and a woman is not truly chaste if she refuses what man the Hart brings. Her womb, which had been so often full, cried out to be filled again. But this time, this time with a King's son, this time with the Hart's child.

"Man," she whispered. Such was the stillness of the place that he heard and yet was not afraid.

"Woman," he said, and his face showed cold amusement.

"Are you strong as this river?"

"Are you," he answered, "as deep?"

In answer she lay upon the grassy, leafy bank and smiled. Come to me, if there's as much man

as king in you.

As if he heard her taunt, he crossed the river, naked now except for his knife—for he would not be unarmed. He fought the current bravely, but still he came ashore far downstream from her, and she watched as he came dripping and exhausted from the water. River Banning was called unfordable and far from safe to swim. Yet the King had crossed it for her. Molly's legs trembled.

He stood over her, leaves and grass and dirt clinging to his shins. He had no beauty to him, and yet there was a quivering deep in her belly as she looked at him.

"Woman, what do they call you?" There was neither lust nor affection in his gaze. He would not pretend that she was young and beautiful, for she was neither. Her belly sagged within her skirts, her thighs were heavy and her dugs hung as loose as the udder of an aging cow. What the Hart brings together is what would not have come together without him. Beauty or not, it was plain that he desired what she desired, and as much.

"I am Bloom," she said, giving her secret woman's name to him, though he was a man. The Hart

had led him.

"Has the forest given you to me?"

"I have a husband," she said. "I will not be yours."

To her surprise, he looked angry and stepped back, as if her wifehood would be a bar to him.

"Man," she said, "I will not be yours. But will you not be mine?"

"Yes," he said, "Yes I will. Yes."

He took her as the hart mounts the hind, and she cried out in the pain and pleasure of the giving and the taking. He put the seed of a son in her, and then kissed her at the small of her back, behind her womb. "What comes of this only God will say," he said to her. But she only hummed and lay naked on the bank, not even turning to watch him as he plunged again into the flood and swam away. God had not brought him, didn't he know it? No, it was not God but the Hart that would say what came of this; the blood of the Hart, the blood that flowed from her belly even though she had not been a virgin, as though he had secretly pierced her with his knife. What you have made in me, O Palicrovol, she said to her memory of his flesh, what you have made in me I will make stronger than you. I will make him large and strong. Nine children I have born alive, and always my husband's own. But this one is not my husband's. This one is mine. I will name him Orem, for silver water flowed from his father's body on the morning he was made.