Free Love And War by Various

broke the feeling of ritual by saying, “Humans say of my kind that only a virgin may catch me.”
    “It is an old legend. That is not why you refuse me.” “It is old, and it is exactly why.”
     She spoke less firmly, more sadly. “And like most old legends, it is twisted and half
     true. It is not the humans who must be chaste. To be who I am, to serve whom I must - “ ”Enough,“ the stag said harshly. ”Noble vows aside you have refused my love.” The Forestmaster stared into his death-laden, proud eyes and closed her own. “I have.” “Why?” The word came out hard and sharp, as fresh and painful as it had been the first time it was spoken. “Why, when I have told you my own
     weakness and admitted that I love you?” For a moment the stag's proud pose was gone, and
     he looked almost alive in his hurt and desire.
    The Forestmaster said quietly, “Because I must.”
    The stag had regained his poise. “Because you choose. That choice is not without
     consequence.”
    “For you? For myself?”
    “For both. How do you dare refuse me?” He tried to sound dignified, arrogant. His voice
     barely shook.
    “I have refused others.” “None like me. There are none like me.” “And that, you feel,
     obliges me to yield the needs of a world to you. Go then.“ She added, ”But know I never wished you to.”
    He snorted, derisive even in a deer. “Naturally not. Service without debt is more pleasant
     than solitude.”
    As the Forestmaster watched him stride off, she murmured, “Anything is more pleasant than
     solitude.” He did not hear her.
    “One thing more.” He turned back to her, and she bent her head to listen. “You said
     something about destiny to the strangers.”
    She nodded, her mane rippling. “I said it to the warrior, though I was thinking of the
     knight. 'We do not mourn the loss of those who die fulfilling their destinies.' ”
    “Coldly put. Whom do you mourn? Those who die unfulfilled? Those with no destinies at all?”
    “All have destinies.” She looked up at the sky. From where he watched, her horn drew a
     line from him to the north star. “As all have stars. As you have a star.”
    “What of those who refuse their own star and would choose another?”
    She held the point of her horn unwavering. “Stars last. We do not. Refuse it as long as
     you must; it will still wait for you.”
    “But I may refuse it as long as I wish.”
    When she did not respond, he said, "If I cannot shape my own destiny, I still refuse the
     destiny shaped for me.
    Farewell - again.“ He barely heard her say, ”I know - again." He wondered if she were mourning. Near dawn the stag came to a dark and cheerless spot.
    When he arrived at the point near which the sedge was withered from the lake and no birds
     sang, he gazed around.
    Ahead of him a shadowy spirit in armour stood, waving his sword restlessly among the
     weeds. He bent forward, his lips moving in curses too old to mean much to any but the stag.
    The king jerked upright, startled, as the stag sang loudly:
    KING PERIS'S MEN WERE DUTY BOUND, TO GUARD THE WOOD FROM FEAR. THE KING, IN PRIDE, SET
     SWORD ASIDE, TO BARGAIN WITH THE DEER.
    King Peris responded, waving his sword in time to the music:
    “THERE IS NO HUNT FOR ME,” SAID HE, OF ANY CREATURE BORN, UNLESS I COULD IN SHADOW WOOD
     HUNT DOWN THE UNICORN."
    After a moment's hesitation, the stag responded:
    “NONE KNOWS SO WELL WHERE SHE MAY DWELL AS I WHO DID HER WILL, IF YOU WILL HEED, THEN I
     WILL LEAD, AND YOU MAY HAVE YOUR KILL.”
    The king resumed his search in the weeds. “Imagine hearing that old thing again, clumsy
     meter and all. What made you think of it?”
    The stag made no move to help the king. “I heard parts of it being sung last night.”
    “Well, well. Folk art endures amazingly, wouldn't you say? I wouldn't have thought anyone
     alive would remember it.” He looked sharply at the stag. “It was, I assume, someone alive.”
    "It