Free Wheel of Stars by Andre Norton

Faintly scented with the apples in a small table basket—that was all.
    What she sought was not here. There remained her bedroom. Gwennan, flinging her outer garments on the kitchen sofa, went sure-footed now in that direction.
    The door was shut. Had she not left it open that morning?
    Her hand went to the latch which she did not yet raise. Light—faint—but to be seen through the dusk of this part of the hall. It formed a thin line before her feet where the door didn’t quite meet the time-warped boards of the floor. It was too faint really to be from the lamp—still it was there.
    Gwennan swallowed. Her mouth was dry, yet the palms of her hands were damp. She must—Her hand tightened with determination on the latch, she jerked open the door with more force than she had planned. Nor did she this time reach for the light switch. There was already a wan radiance, glowing, not steady, but pulsating as if timed to the breathing of some creature.
    On the sea chest at the loot of the bed rested a ball of what looked to be yellowish crystal—from the heart of which radiated that glow. Theball rested on a carved base about the size of her hand, centering a tray fashioned like a miniature platter or wide dish. From that dish small tails of blueish smoke curled up—to dissipate quickly in the air. Those provided the scent which was thick in this room.
    Gwennan advanced one bemused step at a time. It seemed to her that since she had first sighted it the pulsations of the globe had become faster and stronger. Now she felt again that sharp, outward spinning pain above her eyes, so strongly that she fell to her knees, her hands supporting her head, knowing that something was happening to her as she began to shake with a fear of the unknown and of what lay ahead. This was a beginning, only of that fact was she clearly aware.
    A haze began to envelope the globe. Whether it was born of the light, or came as a reaction of her own eyes, she could not have said. Gwennan only realized that she was now captive to something she did not understand, as unable to move as if she had been physically bound.
    There were things shifting just under the surface of the globe. Shadows came and went—and with a definite purpose—of that Gwennan was convinced. They became clearer—more distinct. For a flash of moment she was sure she glimpsed that statue from the hall of Lyle House—the woman who was also a tree. Save now it was alive—wind tossed the leaf-strung hair, the branch arms were flung high in exultation, as if the dryad welcomed the coming of a storm.
    There passed another who strode with purpose. Gwennan thought she saw armor or a garmentwhich carried a sheen of metal. The tree woman looped down a branch, her leafed fingers ran across the traveler’s head. She laughed as the other jerked away—her lips rounding into a circle—puffing out—sending loose leaves whirling.
    Both were gone. Instead Gwennan looked upon a seashore where waves hurled their way landward to spread foam lace upon sand. In those waves hopped and skipped small dark things Gwennan never plainly saw but which she believed were neither fish nor wading birds—but some form of life quite outside her knowledge of what was normal and right.
    Always the smoke curled lazily and she felt more and more heavy eyed, almost drowsy—and as if nothing outside the globe had importance.
    Once more the scene changed. This time she recognized the mound. There stood the three stones, tall, challenging the sky, suggesting a strength harder than their own rocky surfaces. In a way they represented—
    Door—or anchor? Gwennan’s dulled thoughts caught and lost, caught and lost.
    Her hands were resting on the edge of the chest, one palm down, on either side of the tray-plate. On the surface of that drifted bits of a blue gravel—or so the smoke-producing substance looked to her—and among them was no hint of coals or flame. The girl breathed slowly, deeply, in rhythm now with the