As she watched, Jacinth thought of the tapestry that hung unfinished on her loom at home. She had already woven into it a picture of her father grinding flour at his mill. Now she wondered if she could add this street, and the stone cottages, and the lines of proud young men striding away on their adventure.
Jacinth's older sister, Wynna, rose on her tiptoes, lifting both hands in the air. "There goes Sten!" she cried. "I see him!" Then louder, "Good luck, Sten. Bring me a lily. I'll be waiting."
From the far edge of the passing ranks, Jacinth could just make out a strong, tan arm waving in reply.
"What does a lily look like?" she asked, for in fact she had never seen one, and now she wondered if the lilies themselves could also be added to the scene in the tapestry.
"A lily looks like a bell," said her mother. "A very beautiful bell, yellow as fire or ripe peaches or the sun when it rises."
Jacinth frowned, trying hard to imagine such a flower. "Why does Wynna want Sten to bring her one? Just because it's pretty?" she asked.
Wynna looked down at her and smiled and ruffled her hair. "It's more than that," she said. "You'll find out someday."
But Jacinth's other sister, Noa, who was fourteen and jealous of Jacinth's weavings, grinned wickedly and said, "No you won't. You'll never find out, old one-eye, because you're ugly, and nobody will ever want to bring you a lily!"
Jacinth ran her fingers across the familiar smooth skin where her left eye should have been. She remembered how her own reflection had made her run screaming from the still water of the millpond the first time she had seen it. And she knew Noa was right. She was ugly, and all the best things in the world, even flowers, were reserved for the beautiful. She bolted, covering her terrible face with her arms, heedless of her mother and Wynna as they cried, "Come back! Noa didn't mean it."
Jacinth ran alone through the deserted streets. The tears in her single eye dimmed the sun. The world, so bright with possibilities a moment before, seemed dark and frightening now. Rounding a corner, she lost her footing and hit the ground in a shower of dirt. Over and over she rolled, until she came to rest against a stone doorstep. There she lay, weeping. Dust stung her nose and throat. Her knees and elbows throbbed where she had scraped them in her fall. But the greatest pain of all lodged in her heart, where Noa's words repeated themselves insistently.
Just then, she heard a voice above her.
"Are you all right?"
Jacinth raised her head. From between the dusty strands of her hair, she saw a well-made shoe and the tips of two wooden crutches. Raising her head a bit further, she saw that the shoe fit a foot that was attached to a sturdy leg that was attached to a boy. The boy was clothed in brown wool-coarse, patched, and poorly spun, but clean. He had only one leg. Still, he was tall, and Jacinth could see that he was older than she, perhaps Noa's age.
"Are you all right?" he asked again.
She sat up and brushed her hair away from her face, waiting for his eyes to widen when he realized that she didn't look like other people. But his expression stayed the same. His pale brow was slightly furrowed, and his clear hazel eyes shone bright with concern.
With the back of her hand, she wiped the tears away. "Don't I scare you?" she said.
The boy looked puzzled. "Well, I was afraid you had hurt yourself."
"Oh, I did," said Jacinth, proudly displaying her bloody elbows.
The boy pursed his lips, which made him look much more grown-up than he really was. "Wait here," he said. "I'll get some water and a cloth. My master says it's bad to leave dirt in a scrape."
He turned and hobbled off into the house, which she now recognized as the shop of Bot the cobbler. A few minutes later, he returned with a crockery jug of cool water and a scrap of soft cloth. He stacked his crutches and, with surprisingly little trouble, sat down beside her on the doorstep. Gently, he took one of her elbows in his slender hands and began to clean the bits of gravel and blood from it.
"You're Jacinth, the miller's daughter, aren't you?" he said. "I've seen you before and I've heard my master talk about your weavings."
Jacinth nodded, suddenly afraid to speak for fear the tears would start again. If he had seen her before, that explained why her face hadn't frightened him.
"My name is Joth," he said. "I…I'm the cobbler's apprentice." Color rose suddenly in his cheeks, and he looked away from her, giving more attention to her elbow than it required.
She watched him silently, wondering at his strange behavior.
Joth dipped the cloth in the water and looked up again. "You didn't laugh," he said.
"Why should I laugh?"
Joth shrugged. "Most people think it's funny that a boy with only one foot makes shoes."
Something about Joth's words gave Jacinth a soft, warm feeling, as if a meadow full of buttercups had bloomed inside her. She looked at him, wondering if she could find some hint of a lie or a trick meant to make her trust him when she shouldn't. But his clear eyes seemed kind and honest.
At last she said, "I know. People think it's funny that a girl with only one eye should weave tapestries or go to see the lily hunt begin, too." She looked off toward the center of Aranho, where she knew the handsome young men must still be striding through the street on their way to the lilies that grew in the faraway forests. When she looked at Joth again, he was resting his chin in his hands and staring sadly away in the same direction.
Jacinth felt the tide of tears rising in her once more. "My sister says that no one will ever bring me a lily. She says I'm too ugly."
Joth sat up straight and smiled at her as softly as the last light of dusk. "I don't think you're ugly," he said. "I would bring you a lily if I had two good legs."
The strongest dike ever built could not have held back Jacinth's tears then. The hot, salty stream of them poured down her cheek as she stumbled up from the doorstep. She didn't know whether to hug Joth or run. She wanted to believe him. But no one had ever said such a thing to her before. What if he were lying? What if this were his way of making fun of her?
"Don't cry, Jacinth. Please don't," said Joth.
But she couldn't stop and, not knowing what else to do, she fled down the steps and into the street.
"It's true, Jacinth. You're not ugly," Joth called after her.
"I don't believe you!" she cried, without looking back.
Barely a week had passed when the first of the young men returned to Aranho, scruffy and mud-smeared but triumphant, bearing orange and yellow lilies like torches in their hands. That very evening, there was a proud, firm knock at the miller's door. Jacinth ran after Wynna as she hurried to answer it. There stood Sten, tall as clouds, the first stars strung like diamonds in the violet sky behind him. He smiled as he held out a flower on a leafy stem. Even the twilight could not rob the lily of its amber brilliance.
"Yes. Oh yes," whispered Wynna as she took it from him.
Jacinth watched as they walked arm in arm down the stone path to the gate, their bodies swaying together like stalks of wheat in the wind, and their faces aglow with mysterious joy. She thought of the scene in her tapestry-her father at his mill, the streets and the white cottages, the tall men with their knives and bows. She thought of Joth, and of what he had said to her. And for the first time, the deep winter coldness that would someday become old and familiar settled over her heart. For the first time, it occurred to her that perhaps there was no place at all in the tapestry for a boy with one leg, no place for a girl with one eye.
Soon enough, autumn came, and the citizens of Aranho prepared for the Great Wedding. The men stalked the fields in search of tender young deer, and the fattest pigs in the village were slaughtered. The women gossiped amiably among themselves as they sewed wedding costumes and cooked spicy dishes of squash, grain, and apples. Even the children ran errands and gathered branches laden with bright leaves for the marriage beds. Many of the men who had returned from the hunt with lilies that year were to be married. Sten and Wynna were among, the new couples who danced in the wedding circle and drank from the high elder's cup of secret wine.
After the wedding, Sten took Wynna away to the cottage he had built for them. The miller waved good-bye, his shoulders square and a smile of pride on his face. His wife wept, though she could not say why. And Noa ran at the newlyweds' heels like a puppy, begging them to invite her often to the new house.
But Jacinth went off by herself and climbed quietly to her loft in the rafters above the millstones. She cut the unfinished tapestry from her loom, rolled it up, tied it carefully with strong twine, and carried it to a dark corner, where it stood untouched for many years thereafter.
Summer followed summer, and Jacinth watched the passage of many lily hunts, many triumphant returns, and many weddings. Three years after Wynna's marriage, there was another knock at the door one midsummer's dusk, and then Noa was gone, too, off into the world with a lily in her hand and a man beside her. With each year, Jacinth felt herself changing into a woman, cherishing a woman's hopes and desires. But each year the chill in her heart grew a little deeper, and the anger and energy with which she faced the world grew a little stronger.
At last, the time for her own lily went by, as she had feared it would, without event. After the Great Wedding that year, she trudged back toward her father's mill alone, tearing the garlands from her long hair and wishing she could tear away the maiden's gown she wore as well. As it happened, she passed the cobbler's shop on her way, and there stood Joth on the doorstep. He had grown taller in the time that had passed, and his kind hazel eyes were set in a leaner face, with a jaw more firm and knowing than she remembered. His crutches were propped beneath his arms, and he held a jar of dark ale in his hands. He was smiling.
"Hello, Jacinth. It was a fine day for the wedding, wasn't it?" he said.
"If you like that sort of thing," she replied.
Joth held out his jar. "Will you have a drink of ale with me, to wish the newlyweds well?"
But Jacinth's frustrations swept over her head like angry water, and she shouted, "How can you be so gay about it? Don't you see that there's no place for us here? Half the roads in the world are closed to us for no good reason at all!"
She started to run, her head awhirl with her own cares. But the crash of breaking crockery in the road behind her made her stop. She turned.
There lay the ale jar, a heap of shattered fragments in a dark brown pool. Joth's eyes were wet and bright, and his body as taut as a bowstring. "Then what are we to do?" he cried. "Lie down and die? I would rather make my own roads!"
He spun on his one leg and disappeared into the cobbler's shop.
All through the smoky autumn and the winter, Jacinth spent her days alone in the meads and thickets, foraging for bark and stones and roots with which to dye her yarns. At night, she lit candles in the chilly loft and sat at her loom while the wind rushed across the meadows and through the brittle trees outside. She worked as if a demon lived inside her. Her fingers grew stiff and raw, and thin lines creased her forehead from the effort of peering at close work with her single eye. Only when the sun rose and the candles had turned to stubs did she ever give in to sleep, for she hated the dreams that came to her, and awoke from them weeping.
The tapestries she wove in that long, dark season became her only respite. When her heart thrashed like a desperate bird, when she could not face her lonely bed, she wove tapestries, and they were like no others. They were filled with all the power, beauty, and pain that had no other way of escaping from her. She spun fabulous worlds, told impossible tales, and the people she wove danced and wept as if they were alive.
When the weather began to soften and the air to grow rich with the smells of green buds, a merchant came to the miller's door. He said that in his village, which lay two days' ride to the west, he had heard rumors of the one-eyed weaver of Aranho. He asked to see the tapestries, and when Jacinth showed them to him, he bought several, paying her well for them.
The next afternoon, Jacinth sat in the dappled sunlight beneath a willow tree and bounced Wynna's children on her knee. They were used to her and thought nothing of the fact that their aunt had an eyeless cheek. They spoke to her and laughed as if she were anyone else. Jacinth felt the fragrant spring breeze touch her. She thought of her good fortune with the merchant, and of the places and futures she had woven into the tapestries. It came to her that perhaps Joth was right. Perhaps even a woman with one eye, if she was strong enough, could make her own roads.
That summer, Jacinth watched a man build a new cottage. As she observed him, she took careful stock of the money she had made from the sale of her tapestries. When the man was finished and she had learned all she could from watching him, she set about making a cottage for herself. She chose a small piece of land near a creek on the outskirts of Aranho and she bought a few tools. From a glazier who lived nearby, she purchased six round pats of thick, bubbly glass with which to make a window.
The work of building a house was not easy. The sun reddened her skin, and the tools slipped sometimes and bit into her weary hands. She made mistakes, for she had to learn as she went along. At first, the villagers laughed and jeered at her because it was unheard of for a woman to build her own house. They said that Jacinth must wish she were a man. Noa ordered her to stop, for her actions were unseemly and embarrassing. But Jacinth only smiled and went on.
When it became clear that her project would succeed, the villagers stopped laughing and grew sullen. Still she worked, and before the summer ended, she moved her loom from the loft above the millstones to her own snug cottage with its thick window, straw roof, and warm hearth. In a corner by the fire, she propped the unfinished tapestry she had cut from the loom so many years before. There it stood mutely, where she could always see it.
By the time the leaves changed color, the world seemed a different place to Jacinth. Her senses, which had for so long been deadened by her sorrow, began to awaken again. When she wandered in the groves and fields in search of dyestuffs, the songs of hidden birds swept over her like wind, and the autumn sun made her body tingle with pleasure. The smells of soil and ripe fruit and leaf mold no longer made her think of wintry death. Instead, they seemed a part of something wonderful and vast, a ritual of the earth much larger and more lasting than that of men. She gathered berries and insects and flowers that she had never noticed before, and the dyes they yielded gave her a palette like that of no other weaver in the land. When winter came, all the corners and nooks of her house were stuffed with skeins of yarn in every color, ready to be threaded into warp and weft and woven into the images of Jacinth's heart.
While the snow fell and the sharp wind blew it into drifts, Jacinth sat at her loom. She worked long hours every day, stopping only when she needed firewood or food, or when her eye grew too tired to decipher the threads before her. In the cheerful warmth of the cottage, her fingers stayed supple much longer than they had in the drafty mill loft. From dawn till dusk, the well-made window let in winter's pale light, which served her much better than the flames of tallow candles had. Jacinth finished tapestry after tapestry, each one alive and powerful in its own right, each one an improvement on the last.
When the ice and snow began to melt and the first green shoots of grass pushed up from the muddy fields, three men came to Aranho asking for the one-eyed weaver. Two of the men were ordinary merchants who had driven donkey carts from villages in the nearby countryside. But the third man wore rich clothes and rode a glossy black horse.
"I am here in the service of a wealthy nobleman," he said. "My master asked me to pay you for some tapestries to warm the stone walls of his house."
Jacinth shrugged and spread her winter's work in the sun for the men to see. Then she watched with her arms crossed and her lips pressed tight together as they argued and compromised with one another over who was to get which of the pieces. A part of her felt elated and triumphant at this evidence of her success. But the old bitterness still lay inside her like a small, sharp jewel. And the part of her that cherished it could not forget that although men might desire her tapestries, they had never desired the woman who wove them.
The next week, Jacinth took her dye pot to a sunny glade near the creek. She filled the pot with water and set it to boil over an open fire, then went about gathering enough meadow flowers to make a good yellow dye. As she stooped to pick a handful of wild mustard, she heard someone whistling in a tuneless and preoccupied way among the linden trees that grew by the water. She stood up to see who it could be, and the whistling stopped.
"Jacinth, is that you?" someone called.
She recognized Joth hobbling toward her over the muddy spring soil. She sighed, for in a small, mean way, she resented the fact that no one except another cripple ever took the trouble to greet her with such kindness. Nevertheless, the air was so sweet and warm and the songs of the robins so bright that she made up her mind to be friendly in return.
"Hello," she said. "What brings you to the creek today?"
"Cobbler's reeds," he said, standing still before her with the sun in his hair. "Old Bot sent me to see if there will be enough cobbler's reeds this year to make shoes for those who can't afford leather."
Jacinth dropped the mustard flowers into her basket, and she and Joth wandered toward the waiting dye pot. "And what will you tell him? Will there be enough reeds?"
Joth nodded. "A sizable crop. And what brings you to the creek?"
"Yellow dye." Jacinth motioned toward the flowers that lay in her basket like a mound of captured sunlight, bees whirring above them in a single-minded search for pollen.
When they reached the dye pot, Jacinth shooed the bees away and tipped the basket up. Joth, with his crutches tucked under his arms, scooped the fragrant harvest into the boiling water for her. He lay down in the grass and, chewing on a single leafy blade, watched her stir the dye with a stick and carefully add unspun flax to it. The water hissed and bubbled.
In the drowsy afternoon, Joth began to talk, slowly and idly, laughing now and then, about leather and lasts and awls, and about his childhood in the house of Bot the cobbler. Much to her astonishment, Jacinth found herself speaking in return. She told him about the little round beetles from which she made her best blue dye, and about the long winter of weaving and the light that came through her window.
Shadows were thin and the air had grown chilly when Joth looked down at his hands and said, "I'm sorry. You must think I'm a silly fool to lie in the grass all day and bother you when you are busy with your work."
Jacinth glanced at him and smiled, for his solemn frown looked out of place beside the foxtails that rode here and there among the strands of his shining hair.
"Not at all," she said. "No one has ever spoken to me that way before. And I've never spoken to anyone as I have to you just now, except perhaps in dreams." She felt her cheeks redden and she brushed her face with the full sleeve of her blouse, as if to wipe away steam from the dye pot.
Joth reached for his crutches and began the slow process of standing up. Jacinth offered him her arm, and he leaned against her as he rose. She felt the warmth of his strong hands on her shoulder and remembered how gently he had cleaned the gravel from her elbows when they were children.
"I'll be back a week from today," he said, "to check the reeds again. Perhaps I'll see you."
"Perhaps," said Jacinth, and she waved to him as he started across the field toward Aranho. When he had dwindled to a small, limping figure in the distance, she sat down by the fire and picked up a stick. Staring after him, she stirred the ruddy embers beneath the dye pot into a confusion of hungry flames.
They met many times in the field beside the creek that spring. Joth came more and more often to check the reeds, and Jacinth found reasons, no matter how small, to gather whatever flowers were blooming in the meadow. In the long afternoons, only the birds and the buzzing insects heard the murmur of two human voices in the glens and linden groves. As spring turned into summer, Joth and Jacinth spoke to each other first like gregarious children, then like old friends. By and by, they spoke almost without words.
The first month of summer was nearly through when Jacinth recognized the longing that welled up in them both. They lay beside the creek, propped on their elbows, facing each other. Joth tickled her lips with a long blade of timothy. Then softly, with his fingertips, he stroked her hair and her cheek and the smooth hollow above it, which no one but Jacinth had ever touched before. She closed her eye and felt the large wetness of tears forming there and did not know whether joy brought them, or confusion, or knowledge that the time was not yet right.
Jacinth caught his hand and wove her fingers through his. "Though I wish it were otherwise," she said, "we must be patient awhile longer."
A shadow fell across Joth's face, and his eyes grew dark for a moment. "Have I overstepped myself?" he asked. The question seemed simple, but in the sound of his voice and the way he held his head, Jacinth saw that he had left much unasked. She held his hand tighter.
"No, dear Joth," she said. "You are like the sun to me. No day seems whole without you anymore. No task seems meaningful. But there is something I must do first." She gazed at him, thinking of the tapestry, of the lily she had never received, and of the bitterness that lingered in spite of her love for Joth. From a thicket across the stream came the hollow cry of a short-eared owl.
So it came to pass that in the early summer Jacinth prepared to join the lily hunt. She told no one the exact nature of her plan, not even Joth, though she was sometimes certain he had guessed it. She made herself a pair of stout, coarse trousers and a sturdy jerkin the color of thick forests. The smith of Aranho gazed at her quizzically when she bought a tempered dirk from him; the fletcher frowned at her request for a bow and a quiver of ashwood arrows. But in the end, her gold was as good as anyone else's, and they accepted her money though she offered no explanations. Last of all, she straightened her back and strode into the shop of Bot the cobbler, as if she were any other customer.
Bot was old, and his hands too gnarled for proper cobbling, so Joth did the fine work while Bot cut leather and cajoled his customers. Jacinth ordered a pair of tall leather boots from him, finished with beeswax to keep out the cold and damp.
"I'll be walking a long way," she said as Bot measured her. "Sometimes through deep mud and sometimes over rocks."
She looked up and saw Joth watching her as he worked at his last, one eyebrow raised. Her heart quickened with fear and excitement at the thought of the task she was about to undertake.
At last the appointed morning arrived. In the chill light of dawn, Jacinth dressed carefully, as she imagined a knight might dress before battle, pale and filled with the need to trust something larger than herself, a set of rules, a ritual made right by centuries of practice. She tugged the new boots over her calves, slipped the dirk through her belt and the quiver over her shoulders. Then she knotted a bag of journey bread at her hip, took up her bow, and started down the road to Aranho, looking neither right nor left.
By the time she reached the village, a crowd of young men had already gathered in the square, all laughter and nerves in the first copper light of the sun. As she approached, a hush fell over them. The muscles of her stomach tightened as she waited to see what would happen.
"What are you doing here, one-eye, dressed up as if you were a man?" asked one of them.
Jacinth fought the old fury and pain as she replied quietly, "I am walking with you to the forest."
Several of the young men cried out at once. "But you can't!…But you're a woman!…You have no right to join in the lily hunt!"
Jacinth laid her hand on her dirk. "I have a right to walk wherever I please, whenever I choose. And if any of you think otherwise, then I invite you to stop me, at the expense of your own blood or mine."
A low muttering rippled through the crowd, and Jacinth tightened her grip on the dirk.
At that moment, a clear voice cut across the morning air, as sharp as the cry of a meadowlark. There stood the high elder of Aranho, a man who was old long before Jacinth or the lily hunters had been born. He rested withered hands on thin hips and said, "Who among you ever offered her a lily?"
Silence fell on the crowd once more as men looked away across the fields or watched their own feet shuffling uneasily in the dust. No one answered.
"Then none of you has the right to stop her," he said, standing squarely, like a battle-scarred hound who is well aware of his own strength. After a moment, he squinted at Jacinth and smiled through his wrinkles. She nodded her thanks.
Without another word, the young men made way for her, and she took her place among them. She stood as straight and tall as she could, resisting the urge to paw the ground like a nervous horse as she waited for the procession to begin. Neither did she turn her head, searching for particular faces in the growing crowd of spectators, as some did. Her cheeks burned, for she knew how she must stand out among the sturdy hunters. She imagined the citizens of Aranho whispering about her, snickering behind their hands, as they had done so many times before.
Though it seemed to her that hours passed, the sun was still low in the sky when the march began at last. They headed east, toward the sea and the deep forests.
As they approached the last stone cottage before the village gates, she heard someone call her name. From the grassy verge beside the road, her sister Wynna waved, children clinging to her skirts as Jacinth had clung to her own mother's skirts long years before. Beside her stood Joth, looking tall and strong in spite of the crutches tucked under his arms. Jacinth slowed her vigorous pace and blinked, for in all the years she had known him, Joth had never gone to watch a lily hunt begin.
"Good luck!" called Wynna.
Jacinth raised her hand to return Wynna's greeting, but her gaze never left Joth's face. He was smiling, and the smile illuminated him as if the day's soft yellow sun had risen from the horizon of his own heart. Its light crept into every corner of her, no matter how deep the shadows, and courage came with it.
"I'll be back soon," she cried. "I promise you!"
Then the tide of marching hunters swept her up, and the journey began in earnest.
They followed the road toward the east, traveling across grassy plains that ran unbroken for miles and miles. For two nights, Jacinth camped alone, ahead of the others. They would have nothing to do with her once the high elder had been safely left in the distance. On the first day's march, some of them made a game of throwing pebbles at her so that she was forced to choose between endless small bruises and solitude. In her pride and pain, she took advantage of the fine boots Joth had made for her and strode ahead smiling grimly while the strong young men of Aranho trudged along on tired and blistered feet. A bitter satisfaction filled her, for she had been forced to accept solitude many times over in her life. It was nothing new to her. No matter, she thought, as she lay beside her small fire. She tried to dream only of Joth and the lilies, but the night songs of toads and owls pounded down on her like cold, lonely rain, and she cried in her sleep, her fingers clenched white around the handle of her dirk. For it did matter. It mattered as much as it always had.
Jacinth knew nothing specific about where the lilies might be found. She suspected that some of the other hunters had received instructions from those who had gone before. But even if that was true, none of them would have shared such manly secrets with a woman-particularly one so proud and hideous. She knew only that lilies favored damp, shady places, loamy ground near bogs or the margins of deep forest ponds. She knew also that the forests lay in the low hills that separated the meadowlands from the eastern sea. When the hunters began their march from Aranho, the wooded coastal hills lay far off in the blue distance. But every day they grew closer, until on the third morning the faint smells of leaf mold and pitch and the vast, wet sea awakened Jacinth from her troubled sleep.
She sat up at once, sniffing the air. The sun had just risen. Birds twittered sleepily, and somewhere in the shadowy grass a cricket still chirped. She looked into the windless sky, and eagerness surged through her as she realized that before this day was over she might well be holding a lily in her own hands. She scrambled into her boots, picked up her weapons, and started down the road.
Before noon, the road had become a narrow path among tall, leafy trees. Jacinth sat down to rest a moment. She wondered whether to follow the road until it disappeared entirely or strike out on her own. The thought of leaving the traveled way frightened her, for she had never been in a real forest before. Strange, bright flowers pushed up through the carpet of fallen leaves and needles; shining beetles crept over the rocks. She did not know what animals might lurk among the trees.
Suddenly, as if fierce bears and wild pigs had leapt from her mind into the woods, she heard the sharp snap of a dry twig.
She jumped up, drawing her dirk, and found herself staring into the grimy face of a lily hunter. His fair hair stood up in dusty spikes, and the lines of dirt around his mouth flowed into an arrogant grin.
"You slept too late, one-eye," he said, hooking his thumbs into his belt. "My friends and I will take all the lilies, and well be on our way back to Aranho before you even know where to look. Then maybe you'll understand your place in the world."
Jacinth's heart sank like a rock tossed carelessly into an icy stream. The long winters of lonely weaving washed over her, and she thought of the unfinished tapestry, of returning to Joth empty-handed and broken beyond saving.
The young hunter must have seen the terror in her face, for he leaned back and roared with ugly laughter. "That's what you get!" he shouted jubilantly. "That's what you get for trampling the old laws!"
She stared at the dirk in her hands, its cool blade gleaming in the sunlight. The old laws! a voice inside her screamed. The laws that say there is no place for a one-eyed weaver or a cobbler with one leg! In her fury she grasped the blade and crushed it until she felt the metal bite through her palm. Blood ran in scarlet rivulets down her wrist.
Through a haze of pain and passion, Jacinth watched the young hunter turn and swagger off down the path, his shoulders still jumping with laughter.
"I make my own roads!" she cried. "I make my own roads!"
But if he heard her at all, he gave no sign of it.
She sat down on a flat stone and bound her hand as well as she could with a strip she tore from the hem of her shirt. After a time, the anger and trembling left her. A cold, desperate courage replaced it. Let the menfolk of Aranho seek lilies where they always had! The woods were thick and huge and full of places where no human being had ever walked before. She would find her own lilies, or she would die in the attempt. She stood up, straightened her back, and plunged into the forest.
She followed the contours of the land ever upward, leaving a trail for herself by cutting notches into the tree trunks at regular intervals. The farther she went into the woods, the larger the trees became, and the thicker the undergrowth. Spiral ferns snatched at her arms and legs, and bloated insects stung her face. She tripped over roots and waded through thick, slimy mud. She tried not to notice the eerie cries and thrashings of the unknown creatures around her, tried to ignore the swollen fungi that sprang up in rank profusion on the damp forest floor.
Late in the afternoon, when dusk had already descended around her, she came to a place where the land sloped down in all directions. She stood at the base of an ancient maple tree and turned slowly. She had arrived at the crest of a hill. Yet the trees were so tall and closely spaced that she could see nothing, so she laid down her bow and set about climbing the maple.
Its trunk was almost as big around as her father's largest millstone, and the branches hung far above her head. But the maple had stood in the forest for many long years, and its bark was thick and full of ridges. By stretching and straining and planting her supple boots carefully in these small footholds, she gained the lowest branch. Higher and higher she climbed until at last she stood erect in leafy sunlight far above the other trees. She clung to the branches for a moment, giddy with the view that spread below her. As the sun sank lower and the land cooled, a spicy wind flowed out of the forest toward the sea, which lay like a bolt of blue-gray satin on the eastern horizon. The trees marched down to it, thronging over the hills until they reached the broad, white shore.
A valley lay at the southeastern foot of her vantage point. The valley cradled just what Jacinth had hoped to find-a small, glassy lake, fringed on one side by a marsh. Loons flew above it in profusion, making ready for the night. Their laughing cries floated up whenever the wind dropped. Jacinth's blood sang like the strings of a well-tuned harp. The land, the sea, the wind spoke to her like old friends, and she knew deep within her that if she could reach that lake, she would find the key to a new life for herself and Joth; she would finish the tapestry and pluck it from her loom in jubilation at last. She took one last worried glance at the sinking sun, then scurried down the tree and trotted off through the dusky undergrowth toward the southeast.
She knew full well that she oughtn't travel at night, but she was loath to camp in the closeness of the forest, which clung to her and made her feel as if she walked through invisible cobwebs. She ached to reach the lake and the wide sky above it. As the light waned, color seeped out of the woods until at last Jacinth saw only gray shapes everywhere, some deeper in shadow than others. Huge dusty moths flew out of the ferns as she passed. Mist hovered near the ground. She stumbled frequently, splashed through hidden puddles, and stirred up ashlike swarms of stinging insects. At first she slapped at them, but there were far too many. Before long, her face was swollen and tender from their venom. Still, she pushed on with as much speed as she darèd, stopping only to cut marker notches in the trees, for there were noises everywhere in the brooding darkness around her. Wherever the forest drew back enough to admit the sky, she saw the first stars twinkling. Sometimes she heard the calls of the loons as they flapped across the violet evening to the safety of the lake. Just a little farther, she thought. And she forced herself onward.
Though she could not yet see the lake, she could already smell its rank dampness, hear the splash of fish and loons on its wide surface, when she realized that something was tracking her. She stood still and listened. In the underbrush to her right, leaves crackled for an instant, then stopped. Jacinth felt her blood, like hot oil, surging through her knees and wrists, boiling in her throat and in the knife cuts on her hand. She took the bow from her shoulders and nocked an arrow slowly, as if in a long, uncomfortable dream. She squinted into the darkness, straining to discern the creature that must be lurking there. With only one eye, she was not certain that she could hit her target even if she could see it. Images of huge black bears and slavering wolves leapt through her mind. The bow and the ashwood arrow trembled in her hands as if they had nerves of their own. The woods seemed choked with the silence of waiting. Then she heard it again-the crackle of dead leaves under the weight of something large.
She whirled blindly toward the sound. Almost with surprise, she heard the twang of her bowstring, felt the sting of the wobbly arrow as its shaft and stiff feathers rushed past her left wrist. With a sharp thunk the arrow hit something substantial-either tree trunk or bone. It shivered musically in its unseen mark.
From the deep shadows came a cry of indrawn breath. And an instant later a quavering voice called, "Don't! Don't kill me! I'm alone."
Jacinth lowered her bow in astonishment. "Show yourself," she shouted into the gloom, half relieved and half furious.
With great crashing and crackling, a man emerged from among the trees. By the light of the stars and the rising moon, she could see that he held his hands out at his sides, palms up and empty. When he stood within a few steps of her, she recognized him as the arrogant lily hunter who had confronted her on the road. He had no arrow in him.
"I'm…I'm sorry," he stammered. "I…we've found hardly any lilies where the elders told us to look. Only two or three. There's not enough food. The hunting's been bad, and today a bear killed the baker's son. It was my idea to follow you. Because of what you said…that you make your own roads. I thought…I thought you might…"
His voice trailed off into self-conscious silence. By the faint, cold light of the moon, she saw that he was nearly weeping with fatigue. His face and hands were covered with dark scratches, and mud smeared his clothes.
Jacinth stared at him dumbfounded. She felt as she had when, as a child, Noa had blindfolded her and forced her to walk across a narrow, bouncing plank. They were playing in the rafters of the mill. Noa told her that the plank stretched high above the grinding stones, and that if Jacinth slipped, she would fall to a grisly death. Jacinth had started across the plank, her knees quaking and fear clawing at her insides like a wild animal. Midway she had fallen, and in the moments after she realized that Noa had lied, that the plank was only a few hands above the floor, she had felt just as she did now-betrayed, foolish, and ashamed of her gullibility.
All her life she had revered the lily hunt, connecting it with the mystery of that summer dusk when Sten had come for Wynna, attributing to it all the magic of hard-earned passage from a child's thralldom into the independence of maturity. But now the blindfold was ripped away. So this was the lily hunt! The old men of the village told the young men exactly where the prizes were to be found and what to expect along the way. If it had ever been a true test of courage and resourcefulness, it was no longer. The brave lily hunter who stood before her was just a boy, whining because he'd had an unexpected taste of manhood and didn't like the flavor. If he found a lily tomorrow, he would think of it as something he deserved, and probably sulk because it hadn't come more easily. If he ever became a man, what happened in these woods would have precious little to do with it.
Like a cave dweller who has climbed up through bleak caverns and seen the sun for the first time rising at her door, Jacinth now realized that the thing she sought had been there all along. She had convinced herself that without the flower talisman, she could never be a woman. She had spent her life in bitter longing because her peers had judged her by her eyeless cheek and found her wanting, and so, she thought, withheld from her the thing she desired most. All along, the lily had been inside her. And Joth, dear Joth, who had always known, waited patiently while she found her own road to it.
In the forest night, Jacinth threw back her head and laughed, more freely and joyously than she ever had before. The lily hunter shuffled his feet and watched her nervously as if she had gone mad, which only made her laugh even more. Her ribs ached, and her voice was hoarse by the time she stopped.
She smiled at the disheveled young man and shook her head. "All right then. If you'd like, we can share a fire tonight," she said, wiping the tears of mirth from her eye.
She looked up into the starry sky. "Do you see those loons?" she asked. "They live on the lake that lies just ahead of us. Stand still a moment and you can hear the water lapping at its banks. It's the kind of place where lilies are likely to grow. I plan to camp there."
Without another word, she turned and started through the dark woods again. The young hunter breathed deeply, dragged the back of his hand across his forehead, and trotted after her.
Before another hour had passed, the trees suddenly gave way to open meadow. Jacinth stood at the edge of the clearing, silenced by its beauty. The stars and the full moon hung like pearls in the deep sky. The surface of the lake shivered with cool light. Loons laughed softly from the safety of the cattails, and frogs and crickets warmed the night with their songs. But most wonderful of all were the lilies.
Mingled with the grasses, the lilies grew in rich abundance, their blossoms waving in the soft breeze like the bright faces of a throng.
"Silver!" the young man murmured beside her. "They're silver!"
And indeed it was true. Even in the moon's chilly light, Jacinth could see that the graceful lily trumpets bore no hint of orange or yellow. She laughed once more, softly this time, with wonder. She had made her own roads indeed. And they led to lilies such as no one in Aranho had ever seen before.
Jacinth and the young hunter made a fire, caught fish and roasted them without speaking, for the lake and the lilies and the light of the moon cast a spell that words would have broken. When the fire had died to red coals and the hunter lay beside it, twitching in his sleep, Jacinth rested in the soft grass and looked up at the stars. Dearest Joth, she thought. I will be home soon, and I will bring with me greater treasure than I had ever hoped to find.
In the morning, Jacinth left the hunter where he slept. She broke off a piece of journey bread and laid it in the grass beside him, as a sign of goodwill. Then she went about the happy business at hand. First she wove a basket from cattails. Root and all, she dug a single silver lily decked with two blossoms and several buds. This she planted in the basket with good loamy earth and water from the lake. With her bow slung across her shoulders and the lily cradled in one arm, she set off through the forest again, back the way she had come, following the notches she had cut into the trees.
By afternoon, she reached the main road. Her heart was light as thistledown as she strode along, humming a tune and wondering idly what kinds of dyes could be made from the unfamiliar flowers she passed.
Once, she heard voices. She crouched behind a boulder as two lily hunters trudged up the road toward the forest.
Jacinth kept silent until they had passed. Then she continued toward home, whistling.
She reached Aranho on the evening of the eighth day. Though she was tired and hungry and her body ached, she stepped proudly along the main street. The lily, snug in its basket of soft, moist earth, glowed softly in the dusk, still as fresh as it had been on the morning when she dug it. As she passed, curious citizens thrust their heads from windows or walked out onto their doorsteps to whisper with their neighbors. It was not the usual greeting reserved for the first returnee from the lily hunt. Nevertheless, she noticed the onlookers much less than she noticed the familiar stone houses and straw roofs. Whatever its shortcomings, Aranho was her home, and she was glad to be back.
Through the purple twilight she marched to the door of the cobbler's shop. Joth opened it as she raised her hand to knock. His face was as luminous as the lily.
"I'll tell you a story," he said as they stepped into the street on their way to Jacinth's cottage. "About a lame cobbler who fell in love with a one-eyed weaver."
She laughed. "I already know that one. I'll tell you one even better. About a weaver who traveled all the way to the sea and back just to find out that all she really wanted was to marry a cobbler and live the rest of her life in the town where she was born."
Joth gazed at her merrily as he swung along on his crutches, his eyebrows arched in mock surprise. "All the way to the sea?"
"Oh yes. It took that great a distance," she replied.
And they laughed and sighed together as Jacinth began to tell him all that she had seen.
Later, they lay together on the soft straw of her pallet before a small fire in the house she had built with her own hands. She held Joth close to her as he slept. She gazed drowsily at her warm, familiar room. There was the loom, and the thick window above it, and the baskets of many-colored yarn. There was the lily. She would plant it tomorrow, in the cool sheltered light on the east side of the cottage. In a shadowy corner, the unfinished tapestry stood waiting, as if today were no different from any other.
Quietly, she rose and began to thread it back onto the loom.
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