James Silke: Prisoner of the Horned helmet

He leaned forward, gathered Robin’s hands as light glinted in his warm eyes. “No, child, your dances will tell the tales the animals and elves tell, and speak of far pavilions, and of gods and goddesses riding the wind, bathing in the sky, and building castles out of cobwebs and clouds.”

He paused and directed her eyes to the floor of the stage as if it were the whole of ail the earth. He whispered, “You think now, Robin Lakehair, that you are an outcast, but you are not.” He looked into her moist eyes. “You have come home.”

A month later, when many visitors from the forest tribes had gathered in Rag Camp to celebrate midsummer, Robin Lakehair performed for the first time. It was the opening number, a dance designed to distract the little children so the main entertainment could begin. It was titled, “Tails Up.” She performed as a dragonfly, and wore pea green tights, small yellow wings and a long red tail. Some of the adults had no idea what her dance was about, while others imagined it meant strange and significant things. But their children howled and rolled about with delight, and the tiny ones kissed her nose and petted her tail, so the parents applauded appreciatively.

A massive armored figure standing in the night shadows at the edge of the forest also watched Robin’s debut. As she moved among the children laughing and hugging them, his body shifted in place as if he would approach her, but he did not. Instead he turned and strode back into the forest night.

That night Gath of Baal rode slowly up a narrow gulley toward the top of Calling Rock. About him the darkness held an eerie hollowness and echoed with the soft plodding of the horse’s hooves. At the summit, he dismounted and led the animal through the shrubs and boulders into the clearing beside the naked thorn tree. A lonely silence oppressed the area. Not even the wind spoke among the leaves.

Within the circle of small blackened rocks that Robin had once gathered for her fire, he placed a few logs and dry leaves. They lit easily. He spread his blankets below an outcropping of rock, and removed his armor. After feeding the stallion, he ate some bread and cold meat, and drank some wine. A breeze moved softly through the rocks, but its faint whistle only enhanced the magnitude of the silence and solitude.

He lay down on his blankets using his saddle as a pillow, and picked up his helmet, studied it for a long time, fascinated with every detail of its powerful construction and the pulsing life in its steel. Tomorrow he would head for the Land of Smoking Skies to begin the hunt. But not tonight. He set the helmet down and looked at the fire.

Demons and ogres began to take shape within the red and orange dancing tongues. All the spawn of darkness that the Master of Darkness could send against him seemed to writhe in the red heat to the sounds of night predators creeping and slithering in time with the noisy flames. For a moment he glimpsed an old frowsy wrinkled bukko with laughter in his eyes fighting at his side, and he smiled. He peered past the flames at a small huddled shape sleeping in the embrace of the exposed roots at the base of the thorn tree. When it moved, he could see the long red-gold hair of a girl, and when she turned her face to the firelight he could see her soft, plump lips, stretching and sighing like little red dancers.

Later, during the darkest hours of the night, when the fire had turned to glowing embers, his sleeping body shifted slightly and he muttered contentedly, like a man in the middle of a dream.