Free A Knot in the Grain by Robin McKinley

said, astonished: “Why ever not?”
    She looked at his open, bewildered face. “Because I do not know what I must do. When I believed in my uncle and not in myself, I needed do nothing. I see that my uncle is not as I believed; but I am not accustomed to practical matters—to action—and I am afraid of him.” She sighed. “I am terribly afraid of him.”
    â€œWell, of course you are,” said Gelther stoutly. “I have heard—” He stopped, and smiled crookedly. “Never mind what I have heard. But perhaps I can help you. This is the sort of thing I’m good at—plotting and planning, you know, and then making a great deal of noise till things get done.”
    She looked at him wistfully and wished she could feel even a little of his enthusiasm for what such a task was likely to entail.
    Gelther was walking, slowly and stiffly, but walking, in five days, and had his first independent bath in the bathhouse behind the stone hall on the sixth. Luthe was never around when Gelther was awake; Gelther had asked, on that fifth day, when he went outside the sleeping room for the first time and saw nothing around him but trees, “Are you alone here?” His tone of voice suggested barely repressed horror.
    â€œNo, no, of course not,” she responded soothingly. “But our host is, um, shy.” She found the solitude so pleasant that she had to remind herself that not everyone might find it so.
    But she did wonder at Luthe’s continued elusiveness; she saw him herself every day, but always, somehow, just after Gelther had nodded into another convalescent nap. That fifth day, she taxed him with it. He replied placidly, “He’s your practical lesson, not mine. We will meet eventually. Don’t worry. You shan’t have to explain my vagaries much longer.”
    She showed Gelther the way to the wide silver lake, and they walked there together. “Where is your country?” she asked, a little hesitantly, for fear that he might think she was taking a liberty.
    He laughed. “I thought you were never going to ask me that,” he said. “No … I’m not offended. I’m from Vuek, just north of your Arn—I meant only that I cannot understand how you have not asked before. I asked you at once—indirectly perhaps, but I did ask.”
    She nodded, smiling. “I remember. That is different, somehow. You were the one in bed, and I was the one standing on my feet. You needed to know.”
    He looked at her. “I always need to know.”
    They came to the lake, and found a log to lean against, and sat down, Gelther very carefully. Then she asked the question that she had wished and feared to ask since she first saw the wounds in his side. “How—how did you happen to come here?”
    He frowned, staring off over the lake. “I’m not sure. I don’t remember much of it. At home, I hunt a lot when there isn’t anything else to do, and the tale was brought to me of a huge stag that had been sighted a way off, and I thought to track it. They said it had a rack of antlers the like of which had never been seen anywhere, and they knew I would be interested. I’m a good tracker, I would have found it anyway; but it was so damn easy to find you’d think it was waiting for me.…” His voice trailed off. “So, I found it, and it led me a fine dance, but my blood was up and I would have followed it across the world. And it turned on me. Deer don’t, you know—at least not unless one is wounded to death, and cornered. And this great beast—I’d been following it for days by then, and we were both pretty weary, but I’d never gotten close enough to it even to try to put an arrow in it—and it turned on me.” His voice was bewildered, and then reminiscent. “It did have antlers like nothing I’ve seen. It was a great chase.… I don’t remember after