Free Dragonfield by Jane Yolen Page B

must stay.”
    “No, no, you must go,” Hinda said again. “I cannot have you here at night. If you love me, go.” Then she added softly, her dark eyes on his, “But come again in the morning.”
    Her sudden fear puzzled him, but it also touched him, so he stood and smoothed down the skins of his coat. “I will go. But I will return.”
    He whistled his animals to him, and left the clearing as swiftly as he had come.
    Hinda would have called after him then, called after and made him stay, but she did not even know his name. So she went instead to the clearing’s edge and cried:
    Dear heart, Brother Hart,
    Come at my bidding.
    We shall dine on berry wine
    And dance at my wedding.
    And hearing her voice, Brother Hart raced home.
    He stopped at the clearing’s edge, raised his head, and sniffed. The smell of man hung on the air, heavy and threatening. He came through it as if through a swift current, and stepped to the cottage door.
    Rubbing his head more savagely than ever on the lintel, as if to rip off his thoughts with his hide, Brother Hart removed his skin.
    “The hunter was here,” he said as he crossed the threshold of the door.
    “He does not seek you,” Hinda replied.
    “You will not see him again. You will tell him to go.”
    “I see him for your sake,” said Hinda. “If he sees me, he does not see you. If he hunts me, he does not hunt you. I do it for you, brother dear.”
    Satisfied, Brother Hart sat down to eat. But Hinda was not hungry. She served her brother and watched as he ate his fill.
    “You should sleep,” she said when he was done. “Sleep, and I will rub your head and sing to you.”
    “I am tired,” he answered. “My head aches where yesterday he struck me. My heart aches still with the fear. I tremble all over. You are right. I should sleep.”
    So he lay down on the bed and Hinda sat by him. She rubbed cinquefoil on his head to soothe it and sang him many songs, and soon Brother Hart was asleep.
    When the moon lit the clearing, the hunter returned. He could not wait until the morning; Hinda’s fear had made him afraid, though he had never known fear before. He dared not leave her alone in the forest. But he moved quietly as a beast in the dark. He left his dogs behind.
    The cottage in the clearing was still except for a breath of song, wordless and longing, that floated on the air. It was Hinda’s voice, and when the hunter heard it, he smiled for she was singing a tune he had taught her.
    He moved out into the clearing, more boldly now. Then suddenly he stopped. He saw a strange shape hanging by the cottage door. It was a deerskin, a fine buck’s hide, hung by the antlers and the legs dangling down.
    Caution, an old habit, claimed him. He circled the clearing, never once making a sound. He approached the cottage from the side, and Hinda’s singing led him on. When he reached the window, he peered in.
    Hinda was sitting on a low straw bed, and beside her, his head in her lap, lay a man. The man was slim and naked and dark. His hair was long and straight and came to his shoulders. The hunter could not see his face, but he lay in sleep like a man who was no stranger to the bed.
    The hunter controlled the shaking of his hands, but he could not control his heart. He allowed himself one moment of fierce anger. With his knife he thrust a long gash on the left side of the deerskin that hung by the door. Then he was gone.
    In the cottage Brother Hart cried out in his sleep, a swift sharp cry. His hand went to his side and suddenly, under his heart, a thin red line like a knife’s slash appeared. It bled for a moment. Hinda caught his hand up in hers and at the sight of the blood she grew pale. It was the second time she had seen Brother Hart bleed.
    She got up without disturbing him and went to the cupboard where she found a white linen towel. She washed the wound with water. The cut was long, but it was not deep. Some scratch he had got in the woods perhaps. She knew it would heal