Free Gaal the Conqueror by John White

weather remained mild, and they slept well under the stars
at night. Whenever they came to a lake, they would clean themselves up.
    They grew to know and to enjoy Authentio. "How old are
you?" John asked him admiringly one morning.
    "I have lived nineteen summers, my lord."
    "Do you have a sweetheart?" Eleanor asked. (In Eleanor's
day, those in Canada talked about sweethearts and fiancees, not
girlfriends or boyfriends.)
    Authentio was clearly puzzled. "What is that?"
    "I mean, are you engaged or anything?"
    "It has to do with marriage, my lady?" Authentio flushed a
little.
    "Yes."

    He smiled shyly. "The elders of my village will choose a wife
for me. I am to wait until I have completed twenty summers."
    "Hm! I don't think I'd like that," Eleanor said. "I mean, I
wouldn't want someone to choose for me and make me marry."
The discussion that followed went on for an hour or two. "Do
you live alone or with your parents?" Eleanor asked at length.
    "My father died two years ago. I live with my mother. People
call her the widow Illith."
    "What's she like?"
    "She is small and gentle. But she has the wisdom of the ages
locked beneath her little thatch of gray hair."
    Gradually they forgot about Shagah as nature around them
and the clear air they breathed constantly invigorated and renewed their spirits. Evil and terror seemed distant and hard to
believe in. But their thirteenth night (Eleanor was sure it was
not a coincidence, but John said she was being silly) proved to
be terrifying.
    In a small wooded area they had built a fire and had distributed themselves evenly around it to sleep. Sleep came quickly
and seemed to all of them to be deep and dreamless. It was
there that moonlight eventually rested on them. But the moonlight rested likewise on the sinister activity around them. Had
they been able to observe what was taking place, they would
have seen the elm trees waking and stretching their sleepy
limbs. Then they would have seen the slow approach of the
elms, elms that from all sides waded across patches of moonlight and shadow toward the sleepers. The trees had pulled
their roots up a little from the earth so that now partly clear,
they looked like people wading in deep water. They moved
slowly and ponderously toward the trio.
    They sang soothingly as they came, in a low, moaning chant,
to which the rest of the forest trees responded, some with creakings and others with groaning. An oak tree nearby groaned,
"Waken, young ones, waken, waken lest death surprise you!" John stirred, turned over and went on sleeping. He was cold,
but neither the cold nor the sounds awoke him. Other trees
slowly bent their boughs, straining at their own roots as if to
intercept and impede the elms. The forest was aroused, awake
and in urgent motion. But since only the elm trees were free
to wade through the earth, their progress toward the three
sleepers was unhindered.

    Or almost so. Two or three times there were clashes of bough
against bough, as oak or fir or beech bent forward to seize the
moving elms with their own limbs. But the elms would bend
backward, sometimes almost to the ground, evading the grasp
of the older trees.
    Soon their circle was complete. They linked their boughs
together like dancers whose arms entwine over one another's
shoulders. The Dance of the Elms had begun. Their chant
changed and quickened as they circled, now to the left, now to
the right, around the three sleeping figures.
    For more than an hour the dance continued, and at last John
began to do something many people do when they are close
to waking-he began to dream. He was standing on the ice in
Black Sturgeon Lake. It was clear ice which shone like a mirror
so he could look down at his upside-down reflection in the lake
below. Then to his horror he saw fingers of a giant hand reach
up from below to surround the upside-down John, as though
they were about to pull him down into the depths of the lake.
When he looked