Greg Keyes - The Born Queen

“And where, husband, would that be?”

“We will have to hunt it,” he said. “It could take the rest of our lives. Who knows how much of the world we shall have to see?”

And she kissed him and seemed young for the first time since he had known her. Together they watched Skern grow before them.

I saw Zemlé grow old, never knowing what happened to me. When I walked the world again, healed as much as I could heal, she was years dead.

So I returned to the empty Witchhorn. I grieve and write. And I remember what I can.

There is one thing I won’t forget until the river finally takes me out into everything. That was the time I saw through his eyes.

I never imagined such a beautiful thing—to gaze with every eye of the forest, feel and hear through every leaf and fern. It was only once, years after the battle.

It happened where the tyrants once stood, the great ironoaks Aspar loved so well. They were all fallen, but acorns had sprouted, and for those first years things grew with unnatural speed. So many of the trees were already four or five kingsyards high, slender young things, but already starting to shadow out the underbrush, reconquering their territory.

A woman came there, still young, her face rosy from the winds, for that year was cooler. She was bundled in a wool coat, and she wore elkhide boots. I knew her, of course, for I once thought I loved her, and I did in a way.

Holding her hand was a girl of perhaps six or seven years. She had a bright, intelligent face that was full of wonder as she stared about the place.

“Here he is,” Winna told the girl. “Here is your father.”

And, through him, I felt every tree strain, and shudder, and yearn toward them, and all the birds sang at once. It was the last truly human thing I ever felt from him, and not long after that he slept, as sleep he must. When he slept, I awoke, and found the world changed.