Free Dragonfield by Jane Yolen

strands.
    New footsteps came to the Dream Weaver’s ear. Her hand went out.
    “A penny, a penny, young miss.” She knew by the sound there was a girl approaching, for the step was light and dancing.
    “Oh, yes, buy me a dream,” the girl said, calling over her shoulder to the boy who followed.
    The Weaver did not speak again. She knew better than to wheedle. The girl was already caught in her desire. The young so loved to dream. The Weaver knew the penny would come.
    “I do not know if I should,” said the boy. His voice was hesitant, yet pleased to be asked.
    “Of course you should,” said the girl. Then her voice dropped, and she moved close to him. “Please.”
    His hand went immediately to his pocket and drew out the coin.
    Hearing the movement, the Dream Weaver cupped her right hand. “A dream for a beautiful young woman,” she said in a flattering voice, though to her all the young were beautiful.
    “How do you know?” It was the girl in surprise.
    “She is beautiful, “said the boy. “There is no one as beautiful in the whole world. She has my heart.” His words were genuine, but the girl shrugged away his assurances.
    The Weaver had already taken threads from her basket and strung the warp while the boy was speaking. And this was the dream that she wove across the strands.
Brother Hart
    Deep in a wood, so dark and tangled few men dared enter it, there was a small clearing. And in that clearing lived a girl and her brother Hart.
    By day, in his deer shape, Brother Hart would go out and forage on green grass and budlings while his sister remained at home.
    But whenever dusk began, the girl Hinda would go to the edge of the clearing and call out in a high, sweet voice:
    Dear heart, Brother Hart,
    Come at my behest.
    We shall dine on berry wine
    And you shall have your rest.
    Then, in his deer heart, her brother would know the day’s enchantment was at an end and run swiftly home. There, at the lintel over the cottage door, he would rub between his antlers until the hide on his forehead broke bloodlessly apart. He would rub and rub further still until the brown hide skinned back along both sides and he stepped out a naked man.
    His sister would take the hide and shake it out and brush and comb it until it shone like polished wood. Then she hung the hide up by the antlers beside the door, with the legs dangling down. It would hang there until the morning when Brother Hart donned it once again and raced off to the lowland meadows to graze.
    What spell or sorcerer had brought them there, deep in the wood, neither could recall. Their faces mirrored one another, and their lives were twinned. Their memories, like the sorcerer, had vanished. The woods, the meadow, the clearing, the deer hide, the cottage door, were all they knew.
    Now one day in late spring, Brother Hart had gone as usual to the lowland meadows, leaving Hinda at home. She had washed and scrubbed the little cottage until it was neat and clean. She had put new straw in their bedding. But as she stood by the window brushing out her long dark hair, an unfamiliar sound greeted her ears: a loud, harsh calling, neither bird nor jackal nor good gray wolf.
    Again and again the call came. So Hinda went to the door, for she feared nothing in the wood. And who should come winded to the cottage but Brother Hart. He had no words to tell her in his deer form, but blood beaded his head like a crown. It was the first time she had ever seen him bleed. He pushed past her and collapsed, shivering, on their bed.
    Hinda ran over to him and would have bathed him with her tears, but the jangling noise called out again, close and insistent. She ran to the window to see.
    There was a man outside in the clearing. At least she thought it was a man. Yet he did not look like Brother Hart, who was the only man she knew.
    He was large where Brother Hart was slim. He was fair where Brother Hart was dark. He was hairy where Brother Hart was smooth. And he was dressed in animal