Shadows and Light

that calls to her, not the quieter songs of rivers and streams. This Old Place is too far away from the sea for someone like her. By the time I came to live here, she had left for good, leaving Nora and the land in her own mother’s care.”
    Neall snapped to attention. “Came to live here? This wasn’t your Clan?”
    No matter how she turned, she was still caught in those emotional thorns. “No. But I needed ... a different place ... so my grandfather brought me here where I would still have kin. That’s why—” She bit her lip.
    “Why what?” Neall asked quietly.
    “I didn’t know.” The words burst out of her. “I was nineteen when Nora and Kief died. My path wasn’t something I could change, so I couldn’t keep you here with me.”
    “Ashk.” Neall reached out to touch her arm in comfort.
    She stepped away from him. “I thought it would be for you the way it had been for me. People who were kin who would become family. I thought they would take care of you.”
    “They did take care of me.”
    Tears stung her eyes. “No, they didn’t. ‘Poor relation.’ I know what that means among the gentry in the human world. They had no right to say that to you. They had no right.”
    Neall sighed. “Ari cares about me. I think she’s colored things blacker than they were.”
    “And I think you try to heap flowers over a pile of shit to cut down the stink. It doesn’t make it any less a pile of shit.”
    He said nothing for a long moment. “You told me I had to leave in order to learn the ways of my father’s people. And I did. And now I’ve come home. If I’d never gone to live with Baron Felston, I never would have known Ari. Shadows and light. Isn’t that what you keep showing me during these walks through the woods? She’s my light, Ashk.”
    “If I hadn‘t left my family and gone wandering, I wouldn’t have ended up here in the western part of Sylvalan,” Kief had said. “I wouldn’t have ended up with Nora.”

    “Come on,” Neall said quietly when she didn’t respond. “I’ll walk you back to the Clan house.”
    A subtle change in the woods instantly commanded her attention. The power was old and waning, but it still called to her.
    “No,” Ashk said. “I have other business. You go home.”
    He studied her a moment, then bowed and turned to leave.
    “Neall.” She hesitated, then decided she could tell him this much. “Ari planted beans this year. Lots of beans. Because they’re your favorite.”
    She watched him absorb the message. Even after he left, she remained where she was, sensing his presence in the woods. When she was certain that he wouldn’t come back, she turned and followed the trails that led to the oldest part of the woods.
    She walked for several minutes, listening to the chirping of birds and the chattering of squirrels. Finally, she saw the stag, standing so still beside the girth of an old oak tree. If he’d been a true deer, his antlers would have been young and velvet-covered in this season instead of a full, mature rack. But he was one of the Fae in his other form.
    “Kernos,” she whispered. It had been many years since he’d been the Green Lord, since he’d been the Lord of the Woods. That didn’t matter. Not to her, anyway.
    She approached him slowly, bowed when she stood before him. “You honor me with your presence, Grandfather.”
    He didn’t move. Just watched her with those dark eyes.
    “There are shadows gathering in other parts of Sylvalan,” she said quietly. “If they aren’t stopped, they’ll creep into our part of the land, too.”
    He turned and walked up the trail, his left hind leg dragging a little, just as it did in his human form ever since the brain seizure three years ago. He’d regained most of his strength, but his left leg still dragged a little and his speech was a bit slurred.
    Obeying the silent command, Ashk followed him.
    The Clan where he lived was a day’s journey from here. He shouldn’t be traveling so far alone. Not anymore. Not that there was anything that would dare touch him while he was in her home woods.
    He had been there for her. Always. He had taught her to be a Lady of the Woods, and he’d trained her to be so much more.
    He was the one who had knelt beside her the first time she’d made the transformation to her other form.
    He was the one who had petted her, soothed her, encouraged her while the rest of her family recoiled from what she’d become. A rare form. Dangerous. Nothing was