The woods of my fathers had grown wild in my absence, the old paths choked with bitterthorn, the old cottage covered over with bracken. Itoccurred to me that they would not find my remains for years and years, if they ever did, and the thought did not distress me as much as it once would have.
I did not even wear my armor, on the day I went to the yew. Let them think me a lost herdswoman, an unwise traveler, and let them bury me with only a plain stone for a marker, if indeed there is anything left to bury.
Yet, as I approached the yew, there was no peace in my chest, no resignation. I felt instead a sudden, sharp joy, like the snap of a harrier’s wings at the very bottom of the dive. I walked faster, and still faster, till the bare branches struck my cheeks.
There was a man waiting for me beneath the yew. His back was turned, so that I saw only the battered red of his coat, the careless profligacy of his hair.
One hand was pressed hard to the bark of the yew, and the other was holding a lumpen iron ornament. (A gun,I thought, and did not know where the thought had come from.)
I drew my sword. The blade whispered against the sheath.
He turned, and it was—you. Of course it was you.
You smiled at me, and I remembered that smile. A little crooked, a little wry, as if you were trying to make up for the ardency of your eyes.
You said my name, and I remembered your voice, though I remembered it lower, harsher, like a frayed rope.
You stumbled over the roots until you were near enough to reach out—foolishly! trustingly!—and touch two long fingers to the back of my hand.
I did not pull away. I looked down, saw the ink that stained the beds of your nails, admired the delicate callus where your pen rested. I have always liked your hands.
I turned my palm slowly, wonderingly, until it met yours, until we stood hand in hand beneath the yew.
And then I remembered everything.
It came on me suddenly, the remembering, like a spring storm, and took me to the ground. You were there with me, kneeling in the snow. Your hands were cradling my jaw, and you were saying my name over and over, in a kind of terror.
I felt myself smile, wide and loose, the way I hadn’t smiled since I was a girl. “You came back for me.”
I watched you choke with relief, eyes closing as if you could hardly bear the sight of me. “Always,” you said, and your voice sounded more like the voice I remembered: fractured, scarred over.
I lifted my arms, hesitating still, just a little. But in all the lives that I could remember—and Lord, there were so many—I had never once hurt you.
I buried my hands in your hair, wrapped them in the boyish extravagance of your curls, as I never had, as I had done many times, as I would do many more. I felt time unweaving between us, the beginnings and endings lost in a reckless tangle, and I tightened my fists in your hair, holding fast to this one moment. You made a small and lovely sound, deep in your throat, and pressed your brow hard to mine.
We remained like that for a time, clinging to one another like children, our breath mingling and rising, riming our lashes with silvery frost.
You spoke first. “She’s coming. She knew I would run, I think, and she knows where we are—or at least,whenwe are—”
I pulled my face back from yours, just a little, so that I could see the lovely loam-black of your eyes. “Who is coming?”
You didn’t want to tell me. You stretched the moment out like a gift, letting me linger a little longer in a world where I didn’t know what you knew.
There was only one name you could say that would hurt me. I felt my fingers sag and fall from your hair. I closed my eyes and said, without any real conviction, “No.”
Your hands caught mine, thumbs circling soft as moth wings over the cracked stone of my palms. “I’m sorry,” you said. “She’s not who she says she is. She’s—her name isn’t even Yvanne.”
I did not answer. I did not open my eyes. I only listened, while you told me the story of the queen-who-was-not-the-queen, who was every queen. You told it well, of course; you had been telling stories for more lifetimes than either of us could remember.
Once, there was a woman who wanted more than she was given. She wanted it so badly that she shattered time itself beneath her heel and pieced it back together in the way that suited her best. History no longer simply happened, like an accident; it was told, like a story. And the queen told it many times.
The story of Dominion had many villains over the years, shifting along with the borders of her empire, and many storytellers. But it only ever had one hero, and her name was Una Everlasting.
Una the dragon-slayer, Una the queen-maker, Una the tragedy. Una, who died and was resurrected a hundred times, until she fought as no mortal could fight, with the memory of every battle burned into her very bones.(There was awe in your voice, even now—but surely a dog might learn any trick, given a thousand years of practice.)
I was not alone, in your story. I was trailed always by a cowardly historian, a man chosen by the queen to lead me to my death, like a farmer driving a balking animal to the butcher. And so—here your voice turned bitter as burnt hair—the historian buried the hero, over and over, and wrote her tale in the queen’s book.
Until at last they began to remember themselves, or at least each other. This the queen could not permit. So she told one final story—a story so perfect it gave her an empire and a crown, a thousand years from now—and hid the book away. But the historian stole it and ran back to his hero.
