“So pensive for a little one,” he interrupted her thoughts. “I know the island encourages it, but you must not grow up too fast, Lebía.”
“It is not merely the island, Otar,” she said.
A howl shattered the air, as though it were made of glass. There was something human in the howl.
“That is no wolf,” said Svetlomír, gathering the long hem of robe in his right hand and running off like a ten-year-old boy. Lebía sprinted after him. The entire village already crowded the beach, keeping a healthy distance from an enormous black wolf with nearly human eyes. At its feet lay an emaciated body, milk-white, but spotted with livid red. Lebía gasped and ran to him. It was Mirnían.
“You’ve grown so much, swanling,” said the wolf.
Before Lebía could fully register the fact that a wolf had spoken to her, the creature had turned and leaped into the water. Mirnían groaned in pain, and Lebía’s attention was snapped away from the she-wolf. Svetlomír picked up Mirnían with no effort at all, he was so wasted away.
“Svetlomír, you are not afraid of the leprosy?” Lebía asked.
“No, little bird.” He smiled. “Are you?”
“No,” she said, surprised at herself. “Otar, will you do something for me? Let me take care of him. Put him in my home.”
Svetlomír’s eyebrows momentarily met in the middle, but his expression softened as he looked at her.
“Yes, swanling. That would be a good thing.”
Lebía dedicated herself entirely to Mirnían’s care. Her presence seemed to ease his pain, her touch to stop the progress of the disease. After only a few days, his emaciated body filled out. Through the petulant lips and the pain etched into the lines around his eyes, Lebía glimpsed something she had never seen in Mirnían—a man of courage and gentleness.
Two weeks later, he awoke for the first time. When he saw her face, he shook his head as though trying to dispel the lingering tendrils of a dream.
“It cannot be,” he whispered.
She caressed his head, and he leaned toward her as if she were a hearth-fire. After that moment, he recovered not in days, but in hours. With every one of those hours, to her surprise, Lebía lost another piece of her heart to him. Even when he slept, she sat by him, content merely to stare at him. She pitied him, but it was more complicated than that—something thrilling and joyful, a stirring attraction that went far deeper than physical allure. She sensed his emotions and his pain as though they were her own.
“How did you come here?” asked Mirnían one morning, when he was strong enough to sit up in bed and hold a bowl of soup with his own hands. “You must know that we have been combing the wilds to find you. We thought you were lost, or worse. You’ve heard about the invasion?”
“Yes, there is talk of little else among the pilgrims.”
“What happened to you?”
“When Voran disappeared, chaos erupted among the pilgrims, and none of the warriors—most of whom were barely out of the seminary—wanted to take command. Half of the families clamored to return to Vasyllia, and they would have, if not for the white stag.
“I saw it before the rest, standing still on a hill-top, its antlers sparkling in the sun. It came to me, no one else, and as the people saw it, the noise stopped. Everyone stopped. Everyone stared. It came right up to me and kissed me—that’s the only way I can describe it—then moved away into the woods. I felt like it was calling me, so I followed.
“I didn’t speak to anyone—who would listen to me, anyway? —I just followed. Soon everyone was following me, even the warriors. We seemed to have passed into another place, because when we walked out of the woods, we were on the shores of a sea. I couldn’t see the other end of it.
“Five longboats waited on the shore, and a small group of Vasylli—or so they seemed by their dress, even if it was a little outmoded—greeted us. Otar Svetlomír was at their head, carrying a loaf of bread in an embroidered white towel, with a wooden cup of salt in the middle.
“They welcomed us like family, and before we knew it we were all on the boats. We sailed to a dim dot on the horizon. Ghavan Isle, they call it.”
“Are they Vasylli?” asked Mirnían.
“Yes, for the most part. Many came here because they wanted to leave the bustle of Vasyllia for a quiet life. Many of them seemed also to have premonitions of Vasyllia’s impending doom, and so left before it was too late.”
“But how did they all find it? Were all of them led here like you and the pilgrims?”
“Yes. The call came in different ways for different people. Sometimes they found it as though by accident. Other times creatures—the white stag, a particularly large firebird, or strange chimaeras—appeared to lead them to awaiting boats. The first settlers, it is said, were led here by the Sirin directly.”
“Are you not lonely, Lebía?”
“It is a quiet life here, but busy. We live off the land. It is different from what I am accustomed to, but I like it. Though I confess I am lonely in the evenings. I miss Voran a great deal.”
Mirnían’s face darkened visibly.
“What happened to you two in the wild, Mirnían?” She asked, barely hearing her voice above the thump of her heart.
He looked at the floor for a long time as the last colors of day faded to twilight. She waited.
“We were separated when we entered the Lows of Aer,” he said. He looked at her directly with a gaze that puzzled her, even as it stopped her breath with its coldness. “I do not know where he is.”
Two more weeks passed. Lebía rejoiced to see Mirnían turn away from his dour thoughts and look outward. She often sat with him in front of the house overlooking the valley, already dusted with snow. Occasionally, she even noticed a tear on his cheek, but he always tried to cover it with a forced laugh. They spoke about small, trivial things, but their intimacy grew. Still, Lebía doubted he would ever see her as anyone other than the little girl he had played with as a child.
No matter what she did, the leprosy still remained on his body. She prayed constantly to Adonais—“Tell me what I must do to heal him!” —but no illumination was forthcoming. While Mirnían improved, even allowing himself the rare pleasure of walking through the woods, he was not well, and soon it weighed him down again. His leprosy precluded any possibility of mingling with the villagers, which did not in the least help his tendency to brood.
One quiet afternoon about three weeks after Mirnían’s arrival, Lebía walked home after a long day of preparing vegetables for the winter. As usual, she walked alone, content to be with her thoughts, allowing the twittering girls that walked out with her to take the paths before her. The smell of fresh snow was a welcome relief after hours of sweat and dirt, though even the sea-air could not completely dissipate the ever-present tang of manure. She hugged her fur as she turned toward the setting sun and home. It shone steadily between the trees, but for a moment Lebía thought it moved sideways. She stopped, curious. The light flashed again, but now it was a second sun. Her heart tripped and ran forward as she realized what that light was. The stag had returned.
She ran into the woods. The trees spoke to her in hushed voices, their language caressing and mellifluous, pointing her toward the stag. The golden light of the antlers faded in and out of view, but she followed it easily. Soon she was deep in a part of the island she had not yet explored, where the spruces and pines grew taller and more sparse, allowing much of the sun to filter through columns of bark. On the sun-side, the trees blazed orange, but their shadow-sides were purple, giving her the strange sensation of being in two places at once. The gold antlers stopped. Their light brightened as she approached. The stag turned to face her. Its eyes were full of opal tears.
Lebía saw the sun and the moon facing each other in a darkling sky, but they were Voran and Mirnían also. She saw Sabíana, but with a different face, one she did not recognize for its sternness and warlike aspect. Now the sun was Sabíana, and it was shrouded in black, yet a fiery ring shone around the blackness. She saw smoke and fog and ruins of stone. She saw pearly bones overgrown with rich flora that pulsed with life. Where did she see all this? Was it in the opal tears of the stag?
She snapped back, as if awakening from a dream. The stag stood bowed on two forelegs before her. She felt a summons from it: mount, it said. At first, she was afraid, but the stag’s eyes were reassuring. She mounted.